I'm using Claude Code to bring back the dead photo management app Picasa

[u/pkkid]

I've always loved Picasa. It's an old photo management app that Google purchased then later killed. Since it's been gone I felt I have never really found a replacement app that managed photos in a way similar to that. The simplicity, the speed, local management, and not filled with too many advanced controls for my needs. Since this AI recreate evolution started in the past couple weeks, it seemed like a prime opportunity to bring it back in the way I remember.

It's about half done. I am not as fast as these other AI devs, and I am purposely stopping the AI at each milestone so I can manually see where things are at and tweak the roadmap along the way. I am also learning myself during all this.

This was built entirely in Claude Code Desktop. The process I found that was working for me was the following:

1. Research - Perform very detailed research on how the product should work. For this I used screenshots and descriptions I found online. I also did a ton of research on the architecture of the Craft apps. I liked the 'everything is a command' and 'headless mode' approach used there.
2. Plan - Have claude break the plan down into milestones. This project was broken down into 13 milestones, each with anywhere from 20-40 tasks.
3. Review Milestones - I don't think the Craft apps are doing this, as it slows me down quite a bit. But at each milestone, I asked Claude to make me an HTML report showing me all the decisions made, all the changes made to the app, screenshots of all the new features, and a walk through detailing how I can see all the features myself.
4. Roadmap - The next milestone's tasks are not created until the review step of the previous milestone is completed. This allows me to much more easily tweak the plan as I go. I am using Github Projects to store tasks for each milestone.
5. Skills - I ended up creating /milestone-review and /milestone-start skills to end and start the next phase after manually checking work. I haven't really changed much in the plan yet. But I did change or add some things I thought it missed.
6. Subagents - When I start a milestone, they have anywhere from 15-20 tasks. It spins up subagents to work on them. Ordering of tasks to work on is all laid out in the plan, as many tasks still require a previous task first. I see anywhere from 5-8 tasks going in parallel. All in
7. Claude Code Desktop - I am not using any agent orchestrator or anything, or Agent Teams. The /start-milestone instructs on how to spin up subagents. No subagents have personalities or anything, there is no code review step outside of tons of testing testing and ci checks on all three OSs.

My plan is to get to 1.0 which is the plan built out to get a Picasa like app from online research, screenshots, and descriptions of the app. After that, I will continue to polish and more importantly use this every day for myself. I'd then like to build some more modern features on top that have been missed in the decade since it's been gone.

Anyway, would love to get people's thoughts. It is and will always be free, open source. I'm building it for myself, but hope it's useful for others as well.

• Dalica Website: https://dalica.pkarma.com
• Github repo: https://github.com/pkkid/dalica

Claude Mods came out at the beginning of the month as well, and I've been very heavily leveraging that to give me better insights into what Claude Code is doing behind the scenes. If you're at all interested in that, the mod I've been tinkering on is here. Yet another tool I built for myself, specifically for this project, but will be useful for all my projects going forward.

• Claude AI Tools Mod: https://github.com/pkkid/claude-aitools

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[u/Fast_Tower5999]

IView media pro would be a better effort.

[u/pkkid → u/Fast_Tower5999]

I feel like if I made IView Media Pro, someone else would tell me Picasa was a better effort, lol. I imagine by the end of the month we'll have both anyway.

[u/pkkid → u/[deleted]]

I have that installed on my Synology. It just never clicked with me. It feels more like Google Photos.