1,000 days of Duolingo didn't work. So he built his own app with Codex.

How I AI · · 39 min

Claire Vo talks with solo founder William Imoh, who built Mural Chat, a native Norwegian conversation app, with Codex after a 1,000-day Duolingo streak failed him. He also shows how he runs his business with AI agents.

Claire Vo co-host · 1 pick WI William Imoh guest · 5 picks
Watch the episode 39 min · YouTube

The gist

  1. Imoh says Duolingo left him unable to hold a conversation, and polite Norwegians answered in English, so he built an app that speaks only Norwegian and corrects him.
  2. He built the app in Swift with Codex without ever writing Swift, starting from a detailed prompt asking for minimalist, light, autumn-colored design.
    Swift Codex

What they recommend · 6 picks

Codex Main topic · strong yes

OpenAI's AI system that translates natural language to code.

"I decided to build in Swift. Well, it wasn't going to be me building it. I needed Codex to build it... When we have AI agents building stuff, the language I know doesn't matter anymore. I just choose the best possible language for the type that I'm building."
William Imoh ▶ Play at 6:54

What William uses it for: Building native iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin) apps; reserved for complex work

98 creators recommend Codex, including Naval Ravikant, Tom Bilyeu, Y Combinator.

22:58
GPT Live Strong yes AI tools

"It's OpenAI's kind of real-time voice model and it does really good with real-time experiences and interruptions... The other thing GPT Live is really good at is voice control o..."

Claire Vo ·2 creators recommend it·Claire's AI tools →
28:54
GrokBot Strong yes AI tools

"I found Grok Bot and instantly I think it was amazing. It was a game changer for me because it gave me colleagues. Whereas with ChatGPT and Codex I got folders, on Grok Bot I go..."

William Imoh ·24 creators recommend it·William's AI tools →
9:30
GPT Live AI tools

"I want this application to run on GPT Live 1... GPT Live 1 was the technology that enabled me to build this. I don't think I'd be able to build this without GPT Live 1 today."

William Imoh ·2 creators recommend it·William's AI tools →

Made by someone on this episode

Three Pipes · William Imoh's — Internal people/HR system of record built by William for tracking c...

Also mentioned

5:20 Duolingo · "My husband and my kids are trying to learn Italian and they're doing it this very classic language learner..."
6:28 React Native · "Building a mobile app, I can do it with something like React Native, for instance. But today, at least when..."
7:02 Kotlin · "This is building Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android."
8:00 Codex · "It doesn't matter if you have so many on staff that know that language or not because you have our friend..."
11:41 Liquid Glass · "It should be light mode. Use light warm colors. Explore gradients and use Liquid Glass as much as possible..."
25:48 Notion · "First of all I had to figure out everything I currently do. I put together a list on Notion. That was my..."

Ads in this episode

WorkOS, Vanta. They're paid, so we keep them out of the picks above.

See what How I AI recommends without being paid →
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