Live Vibe Coding: Building a Unified Member Experience Across All of Channel RVA
By Will Melton · September 12, 2026 · 1:02:07 read
Category: Business & Economy
Show: Live Vibe Coding With Will Melton
Live app build: designing the unified member experience that connects Channel RVA users across Daily Digest, live games, and the Scavenger Hunt. Today's build is the foundation for how Channel RVA mem
Live app build: designing the unified member experience that connects Channel RVA users across Daily Digest, live games, and the Scavenger Hunt.
Today's build is the foundation for how Channel RVA members experience the whole ecosystem, not just one piece of it. Right now, someone might know Channel RVA through the Daily Digest, or through a live trivia game, or through the Hey Richmond Citywide Scavenger Hunt, and have no idea those are all the same platform. That disconnect is exactly what I'm solving live today.
I'm designing what a Channel RVA member sees the moment they sign in, working backwards from the question: how do we give people clarity about what Channel RVA actually is, and what it means to get involved in their own community? The goal is to move people from passive subscribers to active users, people with a customized, personalized experience who understand every way they can plug into Richmond for free, whether that's a scavenger hunt, a live game, a community event, or simply staying informed through content built for their neighborhood.
Channel RVA started as an AI-powered hyperlocal media platform, but it's growing into something bigger: an ecosystem of local creators, games, and civic opportunities all living under one identity. That means solving real product questions live. What does personalization look like for a hyperlocal audience? How do you surface community opportunities without making the platform feel cluttered? How do you make a member feel like they belong to something, instead of just receiving another newsletter?
Why this matters for Richmond: most local platforms are siloed by design, one app for news, another for events, another for volunteering. Channel RVA is testing a different model, a single hyperlocal hub where personalization surfaces what matters to each member specifically, and where showing up to a scavenger hunt or a trivia night is just as core to the platform as reading the daily update. If the model works, it's one other cities could run too.
This session sets up the member dashboard and identity layer that everything else plugs into. Tomorrow we start wiring up the actual game interface for the Hey Richmond Citywide Scavenger Hunt, happening November 7th and benefiting AI Ready RVA, but none of that works if members land in a siloed experience disconnected from the rest of the platform. So today is about the connective tissue: one login, one identity, one clear picture of what Channel RVA is and how to get involved.
Built live using Lovable and Supabase as part of the 52 Apps in 52 Weeks challenge, where I build and ship a new AI-powered app publicly every single week, no edits, no pre-recording, just the real process including the bugs and the decisions. Grab 10 free credits on Lovable here and follow along building your own apps: https://lovable.dev/invite/S8XSI99
Streaming every Saturday at 1 PM EST and Sunday at 10 AM EST at studio.willmelton.com. Come watch the build happen in real time, ask questions in chat, and see exactly how a real civic media platform gets designed and shipped with AI tools, from the product thinking down to the code.
Links:
studio.willmelton.com
https://lovable.dev/invite/S8XSI99 (10 free credits)
channelrva.com
onscreengames.com
xponent21.com
willmelton.com