Building a Poetry App with Google AI Studio: The Making of VerseForge

This post is my submission for DEV Education Track: Build Apps with Google AI Studio.

🔨 What I Built

I built VerseForge ✨—an interactive poetry collaboration app that lets users co-create original poems with AI. The idea was to craft a tool where users input a mood (e.g., 😔 melancholic, 🎉 euphoric), a theme (like 🌿 nature, ❤️ love, ⚡ loss), or even just an opening line, and then work with the AI to complete poems in real time. Users can write a line or stanza, and the AI responds with the next portion—maintaining tone, rhythm, and poetic structure.

Key features include:

• 🖋 Poetry form templates: free verse, haiku, sonnet, limerick
• ✏️ Editable AI suggestions: accept, tweak, or reject each AI-generated stanza
• 🚀 ‘Surprise Me’ mode: AI adds unexpected but harmonious twists to spark creativity
• 🗂️ Save & 🔗 Share: Users can return to drafts later or share their finished poems

I used custom prompt engineering within Google AI Studio to guide the AI’s poetic structure, emotional tone, and stylistic consistency.

Here’s the prompt I used:

Please create an interactive poetry collaboration app where users can input a mood (like melancholy, euphoric, nostalgic), theme (such as nature, love, loss, adventure), or opening line, and then work together with AI to craft original poems. The app should allow users to write a line or stanza, then have the AI suggest the next portion while maintaining consistent tone, rhythm, and style. Include features for users to accept, modify, or reject AI suggestions, and provide different poetry forms (free verse, haiku, sonnet, limerick) as templates. The interface should feel like a creative writing session with options to save, share, or continue editing poems across multiple sessions. Add a ‘surprise me’ mode where the AI generates an unexpected but harmonious continuation to challenge the user’s creative direction. Name the app VerseForge.

🛣️ Demo

👉🏼 Visit the GitHub Repo

📚 My Experience

Building with Google AI Studio was empowering ✨. I was surprised by how nuanced the responses could be when given the right prompt structure. The biggest challenge was getting the AI to balance creativity with coherence—especially across different poetry forms. I learned how crucial it is to iterate on prompt design and to offer users creative control alongside AI input.

This project reinforced how AI can be a powerful tool not to replace, but to enhance human creativity. 💭