hi,

I got a small question.

Just for fun i am creating an app, i would like to organise our OR working list for all staff.
I fooled around in base44 (free version) and made something that defines all members (nurses/doctors etc), i defined their jobtime (100% - 38 hours / 80% ... etc) and i created shifts (like Night shift = 20u30pm - 7am) etc.

i got no credits left.. and i would like it to make a full working shedule for the full staff, that will think about how many people are needed every day, jobtime / holidays etc ... extract the working list in an excel file ...

i read that there are many restrictions and that base44 is kinda endless credit dumping .. and in the end it won't work.

What are restrictions for this AI tool? Do you think i can make this work with limited resources (i don't care about spending once 20-50€ on it ... but i don't want to spend 1000€on it and end up with crap that just doesnt do what i want).




Option aswell: do you think i can learn to build this myself by learning certain coding things? (i know nothing about coding but willing to learn). I don't want to make games or visual spectacles .. just things to make time spend much more usefull as making working shedules for a team of 100 people costs soooo many hours every month

thanks for your help


edit: i tried the same with "rocket" ... it just doesnt understand my needs .. it looks great, but it creates things i don't want/need ... just useless.

This post was edited by Falkerakatim on Jan 25 2026 03:00am

Claude has worked best for me to build entire programs because it tracks on updates and changes with a lower error rate than others

Is this out of pocket, or is this something sponsored by the (lack of a better term) business/hospital administration? I'll be a bit rough if you're simply working with an AI to generate this with little exposure yourself - youll hit tons of dead ends and in the end you'll still need to integrate it with a series of hosted or cloud services that facilitate and support the data pipeline. Your best bet would be to find a partner familiar, in some sort capacity. I'd throw my hat in, but I'm sensing that this is not a sanctioned effort, and as they say, time is money. That said, specific questions, I'm happy to lend some perspective.

This post was edited by sp0rk on Jan 27 2026 03:29am

Hey, this is not a paid-project.

This is just something i want to do for myself, i don't need to make money with it... i just want to see if i can make it work. Just because i see there are like 3-4 people spending like 20-30 hours at least each month at the desk making a working schedule for 100+ people (its complicated with all kinds of shifts / hours / surgical specialisation etc...) . I just can't understand they are doing this manually and i believe it can be made easier

Atm i have a "free plan" it means i can give limited input to develop the app each day/month ... but it gives me time to think about it. I learned alot from chatgpt about how AI works or how to do things without AI.
this is because i learned that if u want to integrate AI to support your app into doing things ... you will need to be on a "paid plan" ... i am currently reading and seeing how i can work around this so i don't need an AI (once the app is finished) to keep it working making things completely free and in the end also "offline usable".

so in the end: I want to make the full app, i got time to do this ... can take me months (cuz i don't want to pay for it) but i don't care. In the end i don't care if someone uses it or not... i just want to prove to myself it can be done. If in the end i can convince people to use it .. i don't need money for it

This post was edited by Falkerakatim on Jan 27 2026 04:43am

Just use the free agentic features of copilot in vscode.
or z.ai which is entierly free, unlimited and agentic and has a good a context window. (GLM 4.7 is pretty close to claudes ability) - it's quite exceptional at making fullstack webapps for free.
it's not the best, but it's not the worst either. can do what base44 does and you'll have access to the full source code.

For premium, go with claude. but it's expensive if your codebase gets large.
Qodo is also a good extension for vscode which gives you 75 credits a month that uses both GPT5 and claude.

Base44 is not worth it even if it offered you the source code; there's better alternatives for free.

i would suggest starting with z.ai (it's really good, give it a try)
then move the source code to vscode and use copilot/qodo to modify it further locally with sensitive information.

Assuming this app doesn't hold any valuable information, using AI is just fine.
If you're working with databases and sensitive information; I highly suggest you hire a professional or learn the fundamentals of programming before you deploy it online.
AI does not write secure code, it's very important that the codebase is reviewed thoroughly before you handle peoples credentials.

Feel free to PM me if you need help.

This post was edited by tshockterrarian on Jan 27 2026 07:03am

Completely agree with you, but it sounds like he needs a pro



Using AI before getting guidance sounds like a rabbit hole to me...

Not to mention the next iterative stage to this sounds like it might be payroll or at least tracking of costs for HR - speculation, but guarantee that it's something - the app would have so much business value and opportunity at that point, esp if reducing the cost of 3-4 people @ 20--30 hrs /month .... @ those hrs, thats a whole full-time employee spread over 3-4 people, which creates inefficiencies on its own... Solving one problem always creates a new one (or at least a newly identified need that it can help solve with *a little extra work*)

AI might help give a small foot forward, but it wont hit the mark on its own where it actually solves the problems being articulated

This post was edited by sp0rk on Jan 27 2026 09:45am

well, atm the AI from base44 works pretty good ... it understands where i want to go.. it follows instructions (sometimes i need to do small corrections).
i know that many other programs are probably better but i have no real understanding of coding/IT... wich makes it hard to work with more specialised programs

I will try this free software just to see what the limitations are, and try to work around it. As it is free, and just a personal project its no biggy if it fails in the end.

I really think that there must be a solution for my problem.. and i can't understand indeed how this actually costs almost 1 FTE / full year for this ... Maybe i am not qualified to solve this problem ... but there must be a solution for it.
problem with many things in life = people don't want to change, people are scared to change things... and many positions in health care are created, talent goes lost for desk jobs ...

thanks for the suggestions of other programs, i will certainly look into it

i got one i can do some adjustments for ur kind of business i use it on company server for our Train driver and teacher/ tester