I've never been consistent when it comes to meditation. I lean on the practice when I'm stressed, which is counterintuitive. The goal is to do it daily, so you can better center yourself.

I don't love having to search for a specific meditation on YouTube or having to pay for an app that I don't use enough to make it worth the cost. I also find there are seasons of life I theme my sessions around. Right now, it's getting pregnant. 

After two years of fertility treatments, I wanted to see if I could create an app that could help me connect with my womb, process the pain and get in a good headspace before my next embryo transfer. 

And wouldn't it be cool to send it to my fellow IVF warriors, if it worked well? I came across Thunkable AI, which lets you ideate, build, test and launch a fully native mobile app on a single platform. Thunkable launched back in 2016, but its no-code layer (also known as vibe coding) was released in March. There's a free tier and paid options that range from $19 to $189 per month. 

Deep breath. Here goes.

Vibe coding a new app

I signed up as a free user and was taken straight to the build page. I was curious to see how far I'd get as a non-technical creative person, without any tooling training.

Before I put anything into the prompt, I spent a few minutes pondering what I wanted the app to do. Because IVF makes conceiving a medical experience, I wanted the app to help bring me back into my body and to tap into the energy source in the womb. 

Here's what I told Thunkable: "I've been doing fertility treatments for two years. I had a recent early-stage miscarriage. I want to build a meditation app specifically for myself, that other IVF patients might be able to use, too. 

"I want it to bring me back into my body, connect with my womb and the source of creation. I will do daily meditations for the next few weeks in the lead-up to my next embryo transfer. I want to be calm and confident, without putting pressure on the situation." 

Here's the initial response:

I was hoping to be able to pick multiple preset prompts, but it wouldn't let me, so I picked the most applicable one. Here's how it looked:

Then, Thunkable AI opened this screen and coded for a few minutes to create this.

There was a Runtime Error issue that I couldn't resolve with the "Fix with AI" button, so I asked Thunkable in the chat. I prompted it to generate prerecorded mediations. 

The result was pretty impressive. It generated six themed meditations, created a dashboard to track sessions, and a section for intention-setting. I don't do any journaling on screens, so I requested a bigger library of meditations so I wouldn't need to keep repeating. It even gave my app a name: Bloom.

I followed it up with more context: "Please create more versions of each topic, like womb connecting, womb creativity, body scans, transfer prep, post transfer, challenging limiting beliefs that I can't get pregnant."

It also suggested I add features like difficulty levels, a bookmark option so you can save your preferred meditation sessions, and a filter for session duration.

It created a library of 20 meditations, which was a great start. I asked it to add 10 more, with a few specific to IVF -- and it did it within seconds. It even created one called Inflammation Calm because I told it I have silent endometriosis.

But when I pressed play to listen to one of the meditations, nothing happened. I told Thunkable I couldn't hear the audio, but I got hit with a usage limit, so I needed to upgrade. Keep this in mind if you're creating an app, as you'll likely need the $19-per-month plan for higher usage limits.

Silence is golden?

I wasn't able to hear the audio, which I thought was because I needed to upgrade. I queried it in the chat.

I moved on to run a live test preview of the app on my iPhone to see if the audio would work there.

I downloaded the Thunkable app, generated test code and fed that back into the dashboard I was building in. The audio still didn't work.

I reached out to support, and they confirmed the AI tool doesn't generate the audio content. I'd have to create the meditations separately, then upload them into code in the app. 

I jumped over to ChatGPT to create a 10-minute script, using the prompt: "Create a 10-minute guided meditation script for a daily grounding practice in the lead-up to IVF. This meditation app will be solely focused on IVF/for patients."

Then I went over to ElevenLabs to generate the audio by reading ChatGPT's script:

I then had to use yet another platform to host that audio, so I could add the public link into Thunkable. I prompted it to update the code in the chatbox, then checked if the code had been updated. 

But still, it didn't play. 

I told Thunkable support I couldn't no-code my way out of it. They gave me the prompt and code fix. 

That worked, but only on the web, not in the app. It's also a bit buggy, as it doesn't show the progress bar in the audio. Plus, the audio voice sounds very robotic and not the most meditation-friendly. 

You can check out my AI-generated app and try the meditations here.

The verdict 

I was able to create something that looked like an app but didn't exactly work as I'd imagined. If the platform had been able to generate (real-sounding) voices as well as scripts, I would've been able to ship an app from scratch within a couple of hours. 

I liked the idea of having a custom app just for meditations, so I don't have to search for fertility meditations on YouTube and get interrupted with ads. 

But it's a much bigger project than I expected without the audio generator. 

I'm also cautious about being guided by AI-generated advice with something so intimate. Creating a series of words of affirmation might be the better move. In a journey that's already so medical, I want to lean into humanity and not add anything artificial. 

If I continued working on this, I'd probably just pick a few meditation topics that are more personal to my IVF experience and maybe record them myself. 

For example, adding a meditation for each IVF milestone, such as "waiting for the embryologist call" after the egg retrieval. Only an IVF patient will know the importance of these intimate moments and milestones.