Steal this idea: the song of the summer, chosen by your listeners

A screen title that sets the scene: Song of the Summer. And the rule, stated upfront in one line: One device, one vote. Change your mind until August 31.

Below it, the eight candidates: cover art, title, artist, a Vote button. (The eight songs of our demo station, Radio Alba, are invented, artists included.) One tap, and the section confirms it: your vote is in. A listener has second thoughts on August 15? They come back, vote for another song, and the new choice simply replaces the old one.

What the screen doesn't show is deliberate: all August long, no totals, no trend — everyone only knows their voice has been counted. Then on September 1, the section switches by itself: full ranking, vote counts, and the winner celebrated at the top of the screen. A back-to-school appointment the app creates on its own.

Radio has always known how to run an audience vote: phone lines, texts, forms. What the app changes is that the game lives where your listeners spend their summer — in their pocket — and gives them a reason to come back: you check in, you change your mind, you wait for the verdict. Like the summer movie quiz, it's a seasonal format; unlike the quiz, this one is played together.

Because that's what's new in this episode: everyone's votes count together. For that, the section needs a server side — developers call it a "backend": the place, outside the phone, where everyone's voices add up. Building that yourself means a server, a database to create, access to protect, and someone to maintain it all long after September. Here, it fits in one line of the prompt: the moment it becomes necessary, the platform offers to connect a database — subscribed in your name, ready to count.

And the suspense is not a gimmick: totals shown too early crush the game — the first votes decide, the rest follow. Hidden results, a dated reveal: that's the dramaturgy of an on-air vote, and it's in the prompt.

The full prompt is below. If you adapt it, four lines carry most of the weight — keep them.

1. "Votes from all listeners are counted together and stored in a shared database." The line that changes the section's nature: it spells out the shared game in black and white. The moment the prompt promises it, the generation pauses and offers to connect the database — a two-screen authorization, on an account in your name — then creates what's needed and wires the section to it. You never see tables or servers: you see voices adding up.

2. "The new vote replaces the previous one — each device counts once in the results, never twice." Ballot control at the level of a radio game: one device, one voice, and the right to change your mind. Our first try got this rule without asking for it; we wrote it down so it survives every regeneration. What must stay true, write down.

3. "Until August 31 … without revealing totals; from September 1, it displays the full ranking…" Suspense is something you order, with its two dates. The switch is automatic: nobody gets up on September 1 to publish the results — the app does it, and the morning show just has to comment.

4. "The section must feel calm and stable: nothing flickers or flashes." The line born from our tries: the first version worked, but the screen blinked at every visit. Comfort can be described like everything else — updates in place, animations played once, no loading screen when there's already something to show. One line, and the calm arrived.

One last detail: the eight covers are images uploaded into the section, and the prompt refers to them by file name — they show up as-is, next to each title. For the example we made fake artwork to match the fake songs; use your own.

Not a line of code behind this section: a written brief, handed to the AI Extension Builder. Here it is in full — eight fictional songs included, ready to be replaced with yours.

Change the eight lines and the question, and the same skeleton — a list, a vote that counts for everyone, a reveal date — works everywhere: the dish of the month for a restaurant, the photo of the year for a club, the season's jersey for a team, the favorite project for a youth council. Anywhere a community has to decide, and where announcing the result deserves a little event. Your own eight lines, with artwork you hold the rights to — and a reveal date that fits your calendar.

• Prompt teardown: the same word, two memories — the sister series: why one sentence makes a section remember "for one screen", and another "for everyone".
• The AI Extension Builder — describe a section, get it in your app.
• For the engineering-curious: We let an AI write code inside our no-code platform. Generating it was the easy part. — the behind-the-scenes, on dev.to.

The song of the summer is just a pretext. The Saturday mystery track, the name of the new morning show, the location of the next live broadcast: describe the vote the way you'd launch it on air — the list, the rule, the verdict date. If it can be described, it can be a section in your app — create your app with GoodBarber.

Do all listeners' votes really count together?

Yes — that's the section's definition: every phone writes to the same database and reads the same total. The listener on the beach and the one at the office vote in the same ballot box, and the September 1 ranking adds them all up.

Can a listener vote twice?

The generated rule is that of a radio game: one device counts once, and voting again replaces the previous vote. That's the right level for picking a summer song; if your vote carries higher stakes, state your rules in the prompt and see what the generation proposes.

Where do the votes live?

In a dedicated database, on an account subscribed in your station's name — what's in your name lives with you. The platform offers the connection at generation time, and only creates what the section describes. And if you ever remove the section, the data stays yours.

Can I reuse the mechanics for another vote?

Yes. Describe a new section — another question, another list, another date — and the database you connected once serves again with no extra setup. The summer vote can become a regular feature: the Christmas song, the Friday new-release duel, the album of the year.