🤖 Weekend AI Launch #002: AskSubstack

AI tools in 48 hours - from idea to launch.

Ryan Ong, Ph.D. 🎮

May 18, 2025

Hello creators 👋🏼

Introducing the second launch of Weekend AI → AskSubstack.

Second week.
Second tool.
Second launch.

Last night turned into a mini solo hackathon. I was building until 4am.

Did I need to? Not really. But I was excited to get it over the line and also to tidy things up a bit.

The truth is, Weekend AI isn’t just about launching tools with messy code. It’s about learning how to build right so I can easily return and improve later.

I’m learning a ton. I’m also experimenting with different tools and techniques. But most importantly, I’m shipping.

That question that was bothering me a few weeks ago — “What have you built and launched?” — is starting to fade. Because now, I have been building and launching for two weeks now. And more to come :)

One lesson already: the more I build more, the more codebases I will need to maintain and remember and so I need to prioritise good documentations for future me!

Anyway, the second tool is here!

AskSubstack.

A chatbot for your Substack. It turns your entire newsletter into a searchable, interactive chatbot. You and your readers can ask questions, explore topics, and uncover forgotten ideas.

I’ve written 130 newsletter posts since 2020. Not a massive number, but enough to overwhelm a new reader. Most won’t dig through the archives. And honestly… even I have forgotten what I’ve written in the past 😅

The knowledge is scattered. Buried. And it’s only going to get worse.

AskSubstack fixes this.

Here’s a good example. I’m passionate about lifestyle gamification, but I haven’t written about it in a long time. So I asked my Substack chatbot — which has read all 130 of my posts — “What is lifestyle gamification?”.

Here’s what it gave me.

Now, when I ask my chatbot about lifestyle gamification, it doesn’t just surface the obvious article #037 | Lifestyle Gamification but also articles #038 and #030, where I briefly touched on the topic.

That’s the magic!

Articles that would’ve stayed buried suddenly resurface. You can click each source to dive deeper into the originals.

I’m excited to share AskSubstack with you 😎

🚀 If you are new here…

Hi, I’m Ryan 👋🏼 I am passionate about lifestyle gamification 🎮, which it’s just a fancy way saying I approach life like a video game, designing my character intentionally, and strive to level up every day. I am obsesssssssss with learning things that can help me live a happy and fulfilling life.
I recently launched Weekend AI 🧪 - my space for building and sharing AI tools that can 10x the way we live, learn, and thrive.
If you want early access to AI tools, build breakdowns, and blueprints to launch your own AI apps in 48 hours or less, subscribe below to stay in the loop.

AskSubstack: Ask Your Favourite Substack Anything

🔗 Landing page for AskSubstack
🔗 Try The Limitless Playbook 🧬 Chatbot

If you run a Substack newsletter and want a chatbot for yourself or your readers to engage with, I’d love to help.

I haven’t built the full self-serve setup yet (coming soon!), but I can personally help you get your own Substack chatbot up and running using AskSubstack.

You can test mine here — it’s digested all 130 of my newsletters. Let me know what you think!

Launch breakdown

Build time: 15 hours

Frontend:
Built as a website with a clean mobile version. I reused design ideas from past projects (I built a similar product for YouTube channels and books), so design didn’t take long. I went with a Perplexity-style format: sources first, then answers with follow-up questions.

Backend:
This took longer than expected. Bugs in unexpected places. I initially used Milvus, but the library was too heavy to deploy for free. I had to switch to Pinecone last-minute. Reminder: always deploy early to catch issues like this before setup is complete.

Chatbot:
At this stage, the chatbot is just a simple RAG. Nothing fancy yet. I’m keen to explore some advanced techniques soon.

Landing Page:
Built with v0. Color scheme took a while to brainstorm. The launch was simple this time; just a form and a demo video.

Launch time: 2 hours

Video for Landing Page:
For the video on the landing page, I tried a new zoom-in/out technique during the screen recording, which it’s awesome! It’s these small 1% improvements that will eventually compound and stack up. Check out the demo video:

Copywriting:
Faster than last week, though I debated whether to target readers or Substack creators (I went with creators). Still unsure, but moving forward.

Logo:
Late-night decision. Couldn’t find a good AI logo tool, but I liked the orange one and it fits the theme lol.

Again, if you have a Substack newsletter and want a chatbot for you and/or your readers to engage with, please reach out directly as I will be interested to help you bring it to life.

Try my chatbot here → [The Limitless Playbook 🧬 Chatbot]
It’s trained on all 130 of my newsletter articles.

Challenges

The only real hiccup was Milvus. Thankfully, I hadn’t gone too deep before switching.

Not so much a challenge, but a reminder: documentation is important for the Weekend AI project. In a few weeks or months, I’ll probably have multiple repos scattered around. Without good notes, picking things back up will be a pain.

So yeah — good documentation is key.