How a Technology Director Built Say it Anyway with Newly

Hatton had worked in application development, architecture and teaching programming before exploring AI-assisted app building. He wanted to update his skills and had already used Cursor to build a web-based inventory tool for his volunteer fire company.

Say it Anyway came from a different need. After his mother died, he wanted somewhere to write messages and record the kinds of voicemails he had previously left for her. Living far away, calls and texts had been part of their daily routine.

He built the app around that familiar interaction: choose a recipient, write a text entry or record a voice message, and keep the entry in a journal.

In the interview, Hatton demonstrates creating a recipient, writing a message, hiding or showing entries, and recording and saving audio. He also walks through themes, custom colors and background images added after feedback from his wife.

He describes using local storage deliberately so journal content stays on the user's device. That is his stated implementation intent at the interview, rather than an independent security or privacy audit.

Voice transcription and region-specific support information were future work he discussed. The demonstrated recording feature should therefore be distinguished from automatic transcription, which he had not yet implemented.

Hatton says he tried other AI-building platforms before settling on Newly, then called Natively. He found the environment helpful for keeping the project on track and valued its GitHub integration.

He described having the source in a public GitHub repository, while noting that he had not yet added the GPL license he was considering. Publicly available code and a confirmed open-source license are separate things, so this story does not assign a license to the app.

His longer-term aim was to understand the generated code more deeply and make some small changes himself. For him, AI assistance and developer control were complementary parts of the workflow.

Hatton describes making the initial prompt seven paragraphs long so the app's sections and behavior were clear. He also emphasizes understanding the resources consumed by iteration, rather than repeatedly sending requests without examining the result.

He says work on the project began in October across several tools. The interview does not give a precise Newly-only development duration or total project cost.

An earlier version was already live on the App Store. At the interview, he was preparing an update and said Google Play closed testing was approaching its end. That is a historical release snapshot, not proof of the planned Android publication date.

Say it Anyway shows an experienced technology professional using an AI builder for a small, personally meaningful mobile product. Hatton combined a clear idea, familiar programming concepts, generated code and a deliberately limited initial scope.

The useful lesson is to decide what belongs in the first release, test those interactions and keep future features separate. In his account, code access helped make that process more understandable.