Comment by steve_adams_86

Comment by steve_adams_86 20 hours ago

This is a strange space in software. I have a tiny tissue culturing lab in my home and wanted to manage media batches and their ingredients, cultures using the batches of media, inventory for media ingredients, and general inventory for running things. Cleaning, cutting, measuring, etc. I couldn't find anything which would allow me to keep stock of what I've got in the structure I needed, let alone while also project things like "I've got enough inventory for n batches of y media". And all of the half-measure inventory software was expensive as hell.

I also built a solution for myself that was largely vibe coded. The underlying schema for inventories, batches, orders, cultures, etc was done in advance to help guide Claude along with documentation, but I'd guess 75 percent of the code is pure Claude.

It has worked really well for a while now. Since it's just me using it and I'm able to roll with issues it causes or verify outputs on the fly if I want to, it's totally fine not being super polished. It meaningfully increases my productivity by allowing me to manage things in a way that fits my mental model and business.

Like you, the cost of the project has been less than a subscription. And the subscriptions wouldn't even do what I needed.

sp4nner 20 hours ago

You're doing tissue culture at home?! That's impressive. I imagine you've got some background in bio - what projects are you working on?

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steve_adams_86 5 hours ago

Haha, no background. I might be the least educated person I know. I just enjoy learning new things, and this happened to stick with me. It's a very gratifying thing to do.
I culture plants which are popular in aquariums and terrariums. It's a nice way to get a break from software and science where I spend my days, get my hands dirty, enjoy refining different skills, make some money, and meet different types of people.

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hackingonempty 19 hours ago

Tissue culture is a thing in the Cannabis world for efficiently reproducing and storing different varieties. I think it can also be used to create non-infected plants from plants infected with hop latent viroid.
I think the main issue is maintaining sterile conditions but its doable.

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- steve_adams_86 4 hours ago
  
  That's right, it's very doable.
  The technique for creating clean plants from infected plants is really cool and remarkably simple. You typically take tissue from the part of the plant called the meristem, where cells are actively dividing and less likely to be infected, then rapidly disinfect and transfer the tissue to a sterile culture.
  It seems like it should be such a sophisticated and complex process, but all you're doing is cutting a chunk of fresh cells out and popping it into some goo where it can continue to grow.
  Extracting meristem tissue is usually the only difficult part. They can be extremely tiny. It takes a sharp eye and very steady hands. I've only done it for practice, never out of necessity. I'm pretty bad at it.
  It seems kind of like magic if you ignore the biologal machinery. It makes perfect sense why it works, yet it's also absolutely crazy that it does.
  
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