Show HN: Miniwhips – Transform your car photo into its toy version

Hey HN!

I'm Andrew, a former frontend dev who, after 18 years in the field, transitioned into Product Management - where I’ve been for the past 5 years. Lately though, I’ve been itching to build something again. But between time constraints and rusty coding skills, I figured it’d be tough to get far.

That’s when I turned to AI. After seeing so many folks launch projects with help from AI, I thought: why not? Not to make money, but to see for myself what’s truly possible.

That’s how [Miniwhips](https://miniwhips.app) was born. A fun side project for car enthusiasts like me (yep, I’m a bit of a petrolhead).

Goals of the project

- See how far I could go relying on AI for code (is the hype real?)

- Test dev tools like Cursor, Windsurf, Kiro, Claude, and ChatGPT

- Learn how Paddle works for modern payments

- Explore AI APIs for analyzing/generating images (costs, quality, prompting)

- Build something fun that I’d actually enjoy using

What it does

You upload a photo of your real car, and Miniwhips transforms it into a stylized "toy" version — think Hot Wheels vibes, but fully custom. GPT-4o analyzes the image and DALL·E 3 creates a one-of-a-kind collectible-style render.

Tech stack

- GPT-4o Vision → describes and interprets uploaded car photos

- DALL·E 3 → generates 1024×1024 stylized image

- Laravel (PHP) backend with Blade templates

- Alpine.js + Tailwind CSS for frontend

It’s free to try, and I’d love feedback on:

- The overall experience (UI, UX, image quality)

- How hobby/fun vs. monetization balance feels

- Anything you’d do differently with the stack or the flow

If you'd like to provide more direct feedback or just say hi - you can always reach out at contact@miniwhips.app!

Appreciate any thoughts or critique. Thanks!