The SketchUp model was done. A catio—one of those enclosed outdoor cat patios. Plans looked good. The hard part should have been the building. Instead I got stuck on the shopping list.
How many boards do I buy from Home Depot? Where do I cut each one? What’s the least wasteful way to get all my pieces out of standard lumber lengths? I’m a beginner woodworker at best. I make ugly but useful things. Optimizing cut layouts is not where my brain goes naturally.
I searched for a free online tool. Nothing usable. Paid apps existed. Subscription-based cut calculators with features I’d never touch. I’m a DIY-to-my-detriment kind of person. I’ll spend three hours building a tool to avoid paying $5 for one.
So I Built One
I sat down with Claude and described what I needed: input board dimensions, input the cuts, tell me how many boards to buy and show me how to cut them. A few hours later I had a working app.
I went with Flutter as a PWA. Wanted something interactive, accessible from any device, and I didn’t feel like React for this one. Flutter has its own annoyances, but it fit.
The app doesn’t need to be pretty. It shows me a cut layout and lets me print it. That’s it. I called it Chopwise, threw the code on GitHub, and shared it on r/woodworking.
The Point Isn’t the App
Chopwise is simple. A weekend project at best. That’s the whole point.
I needed a specific tool. It didn’t exist for free. I built it in an afternoon with an AI assistant. Not a prototype. A working app, deployed, shareable.
Software can be personal now. You don’t need to subscribe to some bloated app with features you’ll never open. Build what you need, for your use case. Share it or don’t.
Part of me wonders if these little apps even have a long shelf life. Models keep getting smarter. Maybe at some point you describe your lumber and your cuts and the model handles it. No app needed. The tool dissolves into the conversation.
But today, chopwise.app exists, and the catio got built.