How to Collect Feature Requests — Fast

I wanted a way to collect feature requests. Not a mailbox of “have you thought about…”. A list people could see, vote on, and add to — so I would stop guessing what to build next.

I did not want to make it myself. Expressed already has enough surface area. Auth, a database, a queue, and a vote that cannot be stuffed is a weekend I do not have. This is not building the product with AI . That needed a developer - this is more “I wanna collect features, have it look the same as the main website, but not really touch JS/infra/second site/etc - yeah I’m lazy - and?”.

Google Sheets was the honest first idea - glued somehow magically together with Forms. The look failed it fast - along with the idea that Forms can’t do a whole list of features - this is starting to sound like work. Or a nightmare. Ewwww.

A search later I tried Fillout . Winner. There are others of course.

With AI prompts I built a feature collection system: database-backed, authenticated submissions, one vote each person. I did not write the login, capture, forms, theme/CSS. I did not stand up a database. I did not learn a JavaScript framework to make a list look like our site. I described what I wanted until it existed.

This is the new reality.

What shipped

  1. Voting behind a login — one person, one vote. I did not write a line of that. Win.
  2. It looks like Expressed — same paper, same ink, same accent. Copied from the main site so the board does not feel like a third-party dump. Win, especially since I didn’t have to touch CSS - yuuck.
  3. A main list — title and description. People can see what is already on the table; and what they already voted on - nice bits. You guessed it - Win!
  4. Anyone can submit a new feature — it lands in a queue, not on the public list. I am not handing the homepage to whoever types first.
  5. I get an email when something new arrives, and I can promote it onto the list. That last bit I added after the first version was already live. Extending it was the same trick: describe the hole, prompt, ship.

The board is live: Feature Vote . If you use Expressed, go vote. If you don’t - get Expressed - then go and vote - if something is missing, submit it.

The point is not Fillout

The point is that AI tooling is incredibly useful.

This is a few hours of work to bolt a third-party service onto an existing Hugo site, safely, without me having to understand the JavaScript, the database, or whoever’s auth stack sits underneath. I filled a hole in the marketing and customer loop that I had been walking around: people had no obvious place to tell me what they wanted, and I had no ranked list to look at.

I can extend it. I already did — mail me when a new request lands. The downside is a dependency. If that service dies, gets expensive, or gets bought into a mess, I have to replace it.

Given the speed I created this at, that replacement is another couple of hours with the same tools. Totally acceptable.

Cool right?

Did you try out Expressed? Come on… answer honestly…