I Rebuilt My 2004 Side Project Over Christmas. The LLM Made Me Fall in Love With Building Again.

Back in the early 2000s, I was a touring musician who got tired of posting on Craigslist every time I needed to find a band. So I did what any reasonable person would do - I built a website called Musolist.

It exploded. Tens of thousands of musicians around the world using it to find each other, form bands, connect. Musicians classifieds before that was really a thing.

Then I tried to monetize it.

Pro tip: don't try to monetize broke-ass musicians.

The site faded. Life moved on. But the idea never really left me.

The Christmas Vibe Code

This past holiday season, like apparently tens of thousands of other people, I decided to doodle on pet projects. And something hit me: what if I rebuilt Musolist?

I fired up Claude Code, connected Postgres, and just... started building.

And here's what I discovered: there's no cost to trying things anymore.

Want to see if a weird 80s arcade aesthetic would work? Just build it. Curious if that interaction pattern feels right? Ship it and find out. I'm a child of the eighties, so I leaned into it hard.

The Moment Everything Changed

I built the standard flow first. Browse listings. Post an ad. Pick your instrument from a dropdown. Select your city. The whole Web 2.0 form experience.

And as I was building it, I felt... nothing.

Guitarist. Dropdown. Los Angeles. Dropdown. Guitar. Dropdown.

This wasn't fun. I wasn't interested. The old way of building felt dead to me.

So I scrapped it and built Terminal Mode instead.

"Yo Bro, I'm in LA and I Need to Find a Band"

That's literally how you post now. You just talk to the MusoBot.

Type that in, and it responds: "Player One detected. So you're in LA looking to join a band. I've got your location locked in."

No dropdowns. No forms. Just conversation.

"I am a killer lead guitarist."

The LLM looks at the instrument list and slots you into guitar. Then asks about genre.

"Rock. Dude, I love me some Eddie. When I feel like playing with my left hand, I switch and scream Jimi Hendrix."

Try putting THAT in a Web 2.0 form.

But the MusoBot gets it: "A legendary combo. Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix influences. You've got serious firepower, rock vibes."

It even suggests a title: "Van Halen/Hendrix Influence Lead Guitarist Seeks Band."

The Guardrails Still Work

At one point I got lazy and typed: "Yo dude, just use all the info I gave you and make shit up."

The bot pushed back: "Hold up player. I can't fabricate details about your musical experience or availability. That's not how MusoBot rolls. The other musicians need real info."

I laughed out loud. The LLM maintained integrity while staying completely in character.

And Then There's Arcade Mode

Because why not?

Hidden key sequence unlocks Space Invaders. Power-ups. Shields. Multi-shot.

I'm sitting here thinking: what if people had to beat a level to create an account?

This is the kind of idea that would have taken weeks to prototype five years ago. Now it's just... there. Because I wondered if it would be fun.

What This Really Taught Me

Building with these new tools isn't just faster. It's fundamentally different.

The friction that used to kill ideas is gone. That weird thought at 11pm - "what if the signup was a game?" - doesn't die in the gap between imagination and implementation anymore.

You just build it. See if it sparks something. Keep going or pivot.

I fell in love with building again this Christmas. Not because the technology is impressive (though it is), but because it let me play again.

If you know a musician looking for a band, point them to musolist.com. No signup required. Just start talking to the bot.

Cheerio.