Story of a Specific Need That Cost Me $0.75 - CSV Column Stripper

Cheap, fast and you can do it as well!

Hey digital adventurers! I know I've been a little absent for a week or so - life got busy, and honestly? I needed to chill a bit and give myself a mental break. Sorry if you missed my newsletter during that time! But I'm back now with another paid post (though remember you can grab a free trial if you haven't used it yet).

It's been a while since I shared an app that I created for myself, and this one has a special place in my heart because it represents EXACTLY what I've been talking about in posts like Building Apps with AI and When to Automate - solving a very specific personal need with minimal investment.

The $0.75 Solution to a Mind-Numbing Problem

The story is quite simple, but I want to encourage you to keep an open mind about what's possible with AI these days. You can have something tailor-made for YOUR specific needs while paying just a fraction of traditional development costs. In this case, I spent a whopping $0.75 on Replit... and the solution just works perfectly!

You're probably thinking, "What kind of problem could possibly be worth solving for 75 cents but not worth doing manually?" Let me tell you...

The CSV Formatting Nightmare

If you've ever had the "pleasure" of working with CSV files in e-commerce systems like Shopify, you'll immediately recognize this pain: CSV formatting differs WILDLY across regions, platforms, and use cases.

My specific challenge? I needed to edit over 100 CSV files for a product import. Each file had columns with extra spaces, inconsistent formatting, and other small issues that would cause the import to fail if not fixed.