I Built a Social App With AI, Changed Its Focus Five Times, and Now It’s Becoming Something Much Bigger

I’ve been building a social connection app called BRUH, and the project has changed considerably since the original idea.

The concept began with a problem I kept noticing: adults can live in a city surrounded by millions of people and still have a difficult time finding someone who is actually available to hang out.

Dating apps make it easy to find dates. Professional platforms help people network. But there aren’t many places where someone can simply say:

“I’m free tonight. Does anybody want to get coffee, play basketball, go hiking, work out, play video games, or just get out of the house?”

That was the starting point for BRUH.

The original idea

BRUH initially started as a friendship app specifically for men.

The reasoning was that many adult men have a difficult time making new friends. Once people leave school, change jobs, move to another city, or lose touch with their old social circle, there isn’t an obvious way to rebuild that community.

The original version focused on helping guys discover other guys nearby who wanted to hang out.

The message was simple:

No swiping. No dating. Just real plans.

The main feature was a live map where members could see people nearby, view their interests and availability, and start a conversation.

But as the app developed, the idea kept evolving.

How many times did the focus change?

If I count only the major product decisions—not every small design or feature change—we shifted focus about five significant times.

1. From a profile directory to real-time availability

The first version was mostly about browsing nearby profiles.

We eventually realized that another list of profiles wasn’t enough. The more important question was: Who is actually free right now, and what do they want to do?

That moved the app toward live availability, nearby plans, group hangouts, and a map showing what was happening around the city.

2. From a basic friend finder to a complete social connection center

The project grew beyond profiles and direct messages.

We added or began developing nearby discovery, live maps, direct and group chats, hangouts and activity planning, a hyperlocal community board, group video rooms, notifications, safety and moderation tools, BRUH+ premium features, and an administrative operations center.

At that point, BRUH was becoming less like a traditional friend-finding app and more like a local social infrastructure platform.

3. From monetization first to building community density first

Originally, I spent a lot of time thinking about subscriptions and premium features.

Then I encountered the biggest challenge every social platform faces: people can open the app and find nobody nearby yet.

That changed the priority.

Instead of concentrating primarily on paid memberships, the focus became recruiting founding members, launching city by city, improving the free experience, and creating enough local activity for the platform to feel alive.

BRUH+ still exists as an optional premium tier, but the basic experience needs to remain useful without requiring payment.

4. From an app-only product to a content and marketing platform

We created the BRUH Journal to publish articles about friendship, loneliness, city life, social confidence, community building, and ways to meet people offline.

We also started building an AI-assisted marketing system that can prepare journal articles and adapt them into content for X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Reddit.

The administrative console is being expanded so social accounts can eventually be connected and managed from one place. The goal is for journal content and social posts to support one another instead of functioning as separate marketing channels.

5. From a men-only app to an all-gender platform for adults 18+

This has been the most important shift.

I realized that “bruh” isn’t really a gendered word anymore. Men use it, women use it, and people of every identity use it.

That led to a new direction:

BRUH isn’t a gender. It’s a vibe.

BRUH is now being positioned as an all-gender, platonic social platform for adults 18 and older.

Members can privately choose whether they want to discover men, women, or everyone. A person’s gender does not have to appear publicly unless they choose to display it.

The app is still about friendship and real-world social connection—not dating.

Location privacy became a major priority

Expanding the platform also forced us to think more seriously about safety.

Some people, especially women and other safety-conscious users, may not feel comfortable placing their exact location on a public map.

Members can now choose between Hidden, Neighborhood, and Wider Area.

The app does not display someone’s exact coordinates. It generates an approximate location and shows broad distance ranges rather than a precise measurement.

Nearby searches also use the signed-in member’s securely stored location instead of allowing someone to submit arbitrary coordinates and probe the map.

Date-of-birth information used for the 18+ requirement is also protected from other members.

These weren’t cosmetic changes. They required database permissions, location obfuscation, security testing, and changes across the map, Nearby section, Local Board, onboarding, and account settings.

What programs were used to build BRUH?

BRUH has been built using a combination of AI development tools and traditional cloud services.

Lovable has been the primary application builder. It helped generate and refine the TypeScript/TanStack web app, user interface, routes, components, and production deployments.

Supabase powers much of the backend, including the PostgreSQL database, authentication, file storage, realtime features, database security policies, server-side functions, user profiles, messages, locations, reports, and administrative data.

Google Maps Platform is used for maps, location search, Places, and geocoding.

Twilio supports SMS and phone verification.

Stripe is being integrated for BRUH+ subscriptions and payment management.

Google Workspace is used for the heybruh.app business email and domain operations.

ChatGPT and Codex have helped with product planning, writing, technical reviews, testing, security audits, marketing strategy, policies, and identifying problems that weren’t always obvious from looking at the interface.

We are also working with the APIs and connector systems required for X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Reddit publishing.

I didn’t just give an AI one prompt and receive a finished company. The process has involved hundreds of decisions, failed attempts, database migrations, interface revisions, security corrections, testing, and constant changes in direction.

AI made development more accessible, but it did not eliminate the need to understand the product or question what was being built.

What stage is BRUH at now?

BRUH is currently in an early public beta, beginning with Los Angeles.

The website is live at https://heybruh.app.

The core platform is functioning, including authentication, onboarding, profiles, maps, discovery, messaging, privacy settings, the Journal, administrative tools, and the underlying premium architecture.

The most recent inclusive discovery and location-privacy release passed 34 automated tests, type checking, a security review, and a production build before it was published.

But I don’t consider the product finished.

The current stage is about recruiting founding members, increasing local activity, improving onboarding, testing the product with real users, strengthening moderation and safety, connecting the social publishing accounts, refining analytics, fixing issues as they appear, and determining which features people genuinely use.

The hardest part is no longer proving that the app can be built.

The hardest part is building a real community inside it.

That’s where BRUH is right now: live, functional, evolving, and still early enough for user feedback to shape what it becomes.

Join as a founding member

If any of this sounds like something your city needs, you can become a founding BRUH member and help set the tone early. BRUH is for adults 18 and older, it is platonic by design, and your location is always approximate on the map. Start with a conversation, keep first meetups in public places, and take it at your own pace.

If you were joining a new social platform like this, what would make you feel comfortable enough to create a profile and actually meet someone through it?