October 19, 2025

I love AI for lots of reasons, but one of my favorites is how it enables me to quickly bring to life the ridiculous projects that have been bouncing around in my head for years. Not the “change the world” kind of stuff… more like the “wouldn’t it be fun if…” kind of ideas that usually die shortly after I think of them.

Case in point: I’m a big Dave Chappelle fan. And an even bigger fan of Chappelle’s Show. I’ve always wanted to create a digital version of the “Wrap It Up” box from one of the show’s skits. The gag riffs on something that you’ve probably seen in award shows: a celebrity’s thank-you speech runs too long, the orchestra begins to play, and suddenly it’s time to wrap it up and exit stage left. The Chappelle show had a fun twist: a portable box you could whip out in everyday situations to shut down anyone who didn’t know when to stop talking.

For years, this lived in the “someday” pile of project ideas. Fun in theory, but the kind of project that would demand way more time than I wanted to spend perfecting all the little details that make it actually work.

But with AI as my coding companion, “someday” became “this weekend.”

What would have taken me days of searches and trial-and-error became a focused conversation with Claude. I described what I wanted: a faithful recreation of the original box, complete with 3D perspective, an interactive button, flashing text, and audio playback.

The result? WrapItUpBox.com, a fully functional, responsive web app that captures the spirit of the original skit.

What blows me away isn’t the tech itself. It’s the speed. The jump from “this would be funny” to “it’s live on the internet” happened in hours, not weeks. AI didn’t just help me write code; it helped me think through the implementation. Should I make this 2D? Or 3D? What’s the best way to handle audio? How can we make it responsive so it works on a mobile device?

These are the kinds of questions that used to send me down rabbit holes for hours. Now they become part of a collaborative design conversation.

This project represents something I find fascinating about our current moment in technology. We’re not just automating repetitive tasks. We’re democratizing creativity itself. Ideas that used to require significant technical expertise or time investment can now be prototyped and realized in a matter of hours.

Moments like this remind me why I love to build things. It’s not about scale or impact. It’s about following a spark and seeing where it leads. And if that’s not worth doing… well, you know the line.

— Onyx