Things I've built
A candid inventory. Three live apps, and more in progress. Every project starts somewhere.
Live
Read to Earn
Started February 2026
A family reading platform where kids earn points by reading articles and answering quizzes. Parents submit articles; Claude AI automatically generates age-appropriate questions. Kids compete on a leaderboard and the whole family can track reading progress over time.
Daily Diary
Started April 2026
A note-taking and publishing tool. Capture notes throughout the day by typing or speaking, then use Claude AI to generate a polished diary entry and a LinkedIn post from the raw material. Entries publish directly to this site's diary section.
MAS Monetary Policy Insights
Started April 2026
A tool to track MAS monetary policy decisions and approximate where the S$ Nominal Effective Exchange Rate sits relative to the policy band — pieced together from public data sources. Covers all 62 historical policy statements with extracted parameters, historical S$NEER data, and an estimated policy band chart.
Private access — open to a close circle. Request access via the app.
In progress
Bookshelf
Started April 2026
An AI-powered personal reading companion. Add books to your shelf, have persistent conversations about each one — summaries, themes, quotes, author background — and discover new reads through three recommendation modes that draw on your existing shelf.
Practical Chef
Started April 2026
A family meal planning app. Scrapes recipes from URLs into a shared catalog, lets you plan the week's meals day-by-day, and generates a shopping list from the plan. Includes pantry tracking, staple management, ingredient substitutions, and an admin portal for reviewing submitted recipes before they hit the catalog.
alvinbuilds.com
Started April 2026
This site itself. A personal portfolio and build log documenting the hobby of building software as a non-developer. The meta-experience of building a site about building sites is not lost on me.
More to come
The backlog of ideas is longer than the time to build them. I add a project here when it's real enough to show — not just an idea. If you've got suggestions or want to follow along, drop me a note.