Magic Bread
Design your ideal life and Magic Bread tells you what you need to earn to afford it.
I built this end-to-end as a solo project to solve a problem I kept running into as a freelancer and to push my own technical capabilities. Product management, design, and engineering, all me. The vibe is cheeky but earnest; a conversational AI that makes financial planning feel less like a spreadsheet and more like talking to a friend who happens to know about taxes.
The Problem Worth Solving
Financial advice always starts with the same assumption: you know what you make, now figure out how to spend it. But what if you don't know what you should be making? Freelancers setting rates, employees preparing for salary negotiations, anyone trying to figure out if their lifestyle expectations are realistic, none of them have a good answer to "what number do I actually need?"
Existing salary calculators work backwards. They take your income and tell you what's left. They don't help you figure out the target in the first place. I wanted to build something that started with the life you want and worked forward from there.
Try Magic Bread
Client
ME
Industry
Financial Planning
Skills
Vibe Coding
UI/UX
Product Management
Brand Identity
Year
2026
Key Decisions and Tradeoffs
The biggest decision was making the intake conversational. Budget planning involves open-ended, personal answers that don't fit neatly into a form. A chatbot powered by the Claude API could handle nuance, adapt to different household situations, and make the process feel approachable instead of clinical.
The hardest work was prompt engineering. I went from an overly rigid 4,500-word system prompt to a leaner 1,800-word version that trusted the model's natural intelligence. Rather than asking users to estimate every line item, I built in spending psychology questions that help the model calibrate what kind of spender someone is and make reasonable estimates instead of asking endless follow-ups. Reducing friction mattered more than false precision.
The Product
Magic Bread is a web app that walks you through your ideal lifestyle through a conversational AI interface, then answers two questions that seem basic but most people don't have answers to: what do I need to earn to live my best life, and what do I need to save to maintain that lifestyle in retirement. It calculates exact salary requirements with accurate tax breakdowns for all 50 US states. I vibe coded the whole thing: React and Vite frontend, Vercel serverless backend, Claude API for the conversation, and a neo-brutalist, retro tech design system that doesn't take itself too seriously.
Reflection
Magic Bread does what I set out to build, but there's more to explore. Editable line items on the results page so users can adjust estimates and see the salary recalculate in real time. Shareable results so you can send your breakdown to a partner or financial advisor. Side-by-side scenario comparison for freelance vs. salaried or Denver vs. Austin. I'm excited to explore phase 2 of Magic Bread.
