I watched Ryo Lu’s RyOS demo and the tiny iPod player he built inside that online OS. His version plays local music. I just thought it was a cool project and wanted to build my own with a slightly different purpose.
That idea turned into YTPod: a desktop player that looks like an iPod, connects to YouTube for search and playlists, and plays audio through the official iframe player.
I vibe coded the first version in about an hour using Cursor, ran out of free credits, then finished it in Codex. Codex ended up being the cheaper option and it works well enough for me. It was genuinely fun to build as a personal experiment.
It’s a good reminder that small apps are worth building even when they aren’t monetized or part of a startup plan. Having an idea and seeing it running an hour later is still one of the best feelings in software.