01 / Understand
Begin with a real need.
Jess's examples start with lived context, then turn that context into something useful.
Office Hours #61 · A small need. A wider impact.
Jess Wharton's Return to Work Navigator, building for good, finding real users, and keeping resources trustworthy.
Choose a problem you understand firsthand. Jess began with real needs, not a feature list.
Session #61 / The recap
Sam welcomed Base44 ambassador Jess Wharton for the closing session of Build for Good week. A 14-year breast cancer survivor with an HR background, Jess explained how a personal reference guide became Return to Work Navigator: a free app for cancer survivors returning to employment, with an AI assistant and more than 90 curated resources.
The conversation followed the work behind the app: months of iteration, manual resource verification, a small trusted test group, organic distribution, and opportunities to help more communities. The second half covered the seven-day Build for Good challenge, translation, feedback collection, and practical credit and support questions. Product and event statements below describe what was said on 20 August, not a guarantee of current availability.
01 / Understand
Jess's examples start with lived context, then turn that context into something useful.
02 / Verify
Links, contact details and practical relevance matter more than a convincing-looking directory.
03 / Grow
Share a focused tool, learn what people need, and improve the part that helps.
What was taught
7 teaching points, with the practical details and limits preserved.
Jess began with a return-to-work guide she personally needed. Medical guidance existed, but practical help with fatigue, disclosure, accommodations, and workplace rights was hard to find. The broader lesson was to identify a concrete unmet need before expanding the audience.
The app took several months and multiple iterations. Jess prioritised relatability, clarity, and low intimidation for her audience, using checklists, search, document creation, and an AI coach rather than visual complexity.
Jess described checking the applicability and links of more than 90 resources as the hardest part. An AI-produced reference list is a starting point, not evidence that every document is correct for the intended audience.
Friends and family tested ease of use before wider release. Sam recommended the Testing Agent for repeated end-to-end flow checks and an in-app feedback board that records the originating page. Voting can help useful suggestions rise to the top.
Sam suggested an npm-based internationalisation prompt for German, Spanish, and French. After a report that translation overwrote English, he added the safeguard to include English in the language list and explicitly keep it as the default. The demonstration was advice, not proof that one prompt always yields a complete translation.
Jess shared the app in LinkedIn survivor groups, Facebook groups, and her subreddit. Growth was organic rather than a paid outreach campaign. Sam encouraged looking for real needs in local contacts or using his Build for Good idea generator when stuck.
A nonprofit-oriented build can still support fundraising: an optional donation banner or a game with a charity-linked donation were examples, not implemented features. The purpose should be helping the cause, not merely relabelling a profit-making app.
From the session
These updates reflect what was said on 20 August 2026, not a promise of current availability.
The seven-day Launchpad challenge opened as the One Prompt challenge closed. One legitimate, approved submission per user earned 20 credits; winning was not required. Entries needed to serve a good cause and pass the rules and abuse checks.
Sam said the top ten community selections plus one Superagent selection would go through checks, with winners expected the following week. Continuing to build after a one-prompt submission breached that challenge's rules. Credits and a profile-name award were mentioned.
Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese Discord channels had launched with four community language moderators. Members could unlock them through Channels and Roles.
Sam described an ambition to partner with nonprofits that would supply real briefs for future challenges. This was a proposed direction, not an announced partnership or date.
Sam proposed a code for the first ten redeemers to receive 20 credits after the session. Additional community codes were offered. These were time-limited session giveaways, not ongoing benefits.
Sam said some accounts were in a test allowing purchases of extra credits from account settings. Access was not universal.
Sam announced Yoav as the planned guest for the following Thursday's Office Hours. This recap records the announcement, not confirmation that the later appearance happened.
Keep these close
Every substantive question
Search all 33 answers, or filter by topic. Open a question for the full response.
33 of 33 answers
Not yet. Jess said it was focused on cancer survivorship. Parental leave and other situations were discussed as possible extensions, not features already available.
Jess made several iterations over months, keeping the experience relatable and avoiding bulk or complexity that could intimidate the intended audience.
Sam clarified that the One Prompt challenge was ending while Build for Good was about to open. A misleading closing label was discussed; Build for Good was to run for seven days after the session.
Sam's starting heuristic was that something genuinely useful to you may help others too. Jess's example added concrete feedback from a trusted test group and relevant communities. Personal usefulness alone was not presented as a measured market-size study.
Yes. Sam said Office Hours recordings are retained and that the live YouTube VOD can be rewound while the session is still running.
She used communities she already belonged to: LinkedIn breast cancer survivor groups, Facebook groups, and a subreddit. She received useful feedback through those channels.
The AI coach remembers searches and documents created in the app, making subsequent help more personalised without requiring users to repeat the same context.
Verifying the resources and documents, including checking links and whether they applied to her audience. Jess described the process as tedious but necessary.
Jess was considering it. A community member later offered to buy a year's domain registration; the session did not show a completed purchase or connection.
No. Jess described organic distribution through existing circles and interest from different countries. The auto-captions garble the traffic figure, so no numeric growth claim is retained.
Yes. Friends and family checked that it was easy to use, understandable, and not too bulky before broader sharing.
She was still learning. The original article, the natural order of the guide, what she herself would need, and Base44's suggestions shaped priorities. Sam added testing and feedback-board suggestions rather than claiming she already had a formal prioritisation process.
Yes. She named Prompt Cowboy as a free tool for preparing and personalising her initial prompts. The spoken URL is unclear in the captions and is not reproduced as a verified link.
No. She said Base44 felt intuitive enough to build something useful for herself and others without one.
Interactive parts such as document creation and the AI coach needed iteration. Unexpected issues appeared as she built; she worked through them rather than starting with a complete technical roadmap.
Add a feedback feature for bugs, feature ideas, and questions, and save which page a report came from. A Product Hunt- or Reddit-style voting interface can surface priorities. Sam endorsed the idea; no universal automatic bug-fixing guarantee was made.
Open Channels and Roles near the top of Discord and select Spanish, Portuguese, or Japanese. The role unlocks the corresponding moderated community channel.
Sam said there was no tracker, but members could request updates through support tickets.
She was considering other nonprofit projects as well as expanding the existing app. No next product or release date was confirmed.
Yes. She welcomed conversations with organisations that could benefit, including local cancer charities.
Sam said internationalisation could be added with an npm-based prompt and a language selector. He also suggested Spanish and French. This was a proposed implementation for Jess, not a completed translation in the session.
Include English among the supported languages and state that it remains the default. Sam gave this extra instruction after a user reported a translation attempt replacing English text.
Yes, including oncology practices and cancer associations that see a benefit. She also expressed interest in adapting the concept to other return-to-work situations.
Yes. Sam suggested helping a nonprofit or a service such as a food shelter that needs a website, landing page, or CRM but cannot readily fund one. The social benefit, not revenue for the builder, was the point.
Sam discussed paid or donation-supported experiences whose proceeds benefit a cause, including an optional donation banner or a charity-linked game. These were ideas; entries still needed to comply with the published challenge rules.
Look for unmet needs among friends, local organisations, disaster-relief efforts, or people with limited mobility. Sam also supplied a Build for Good idea generator with ten topic buckets.
Sam said prompt credits should not be consumed without builder use and recommended cheaper models and caution with Superagent automations when budgeting. He specifically warned that Fable is costly. The session did not investigate the account's ledger, so no individual billing fault was diagnosed.
Sam said ordinary unused monthly credits do not roll over. He separately said an upgrade carries remaining credits through; that was the session's explanation, not a verified current billing rule.
Sam usually asks for HTML first and then a PDF conversion, but did not resolve this user's RTL case live. He offered to inspect the working HTML and faulty PDF side by side and try a small reproduction.
Some accounts could, as part of a test. Sam directed the user to account settings and did not claim universal access.
Sam said direct transfers would be logistically complicated. He framed building a useful app with your time and credits as the current practical way to contribute, rather than announcing a transfer feature.
Open a support ticket with the billing details. Sam said an actual duplicate charge should be corrected, but the session did not inspect the account or verify that a refund had occurred.
Sam suggested documenting or live-streaming the build because there is an audience for watching people code. It was a content-distribution idea, not a promise of audience growth.
The original recording
Watch the demonstrations, questions and in-the-moment decisions in full.
Continue from here
Named resources are retained without inventing missing links.
Return to Work Navigator — demonstrated; exact destination not recoverable from captions
Prompt Cowboy — named prompting tool; captioned URL unclear
Build for Good rules — shared in Launchpad and Discord; exact challenge URL not audible