I’m starting a new series today. It’s called “CubeSnap”, an Android app that shows you how to solve a Rubik’s Cube with a 3D animation after you scan it with your camera.

So, why a cube app all of a sudden? Well, there’s a sad(?) story involving my 7-year-old son behind it.

Nobody in My Family Can Solve a Cube

First, a quick intro to my family. My son is 7, and he suddenly got obsessed with the Rubik’s Cube when he was about 6. I’m not sure where he saw it, but the way the colors magically aligned must have looked like magic to him.

The problem was, nobody in our house knows how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

• Me (Dad): Can’t solve it.
• My wife: Can’t solve it.
• Grandma: Can’t solve it.
• Grandpa: Can’t solve it.
• My son: Of course, he can’t solve it.

Three generations, five people, a complete cube wasteland. lol. What a tragic situation where four adults can’t help one 7-year-old.

He first asked for a cube one day last year. We bought him a 3×3 cube from Daiso (a Korean dollar-store chain). I think it was about 3,000 won? Something like that. My son was so excited, struggling for ages to match the colors, and my wife and I were right there with him, racking our brains and wondering, “How on earth do you solve this thing?”

We even watched YouTube tutorials together on how to solve it. “F2L,” “OLL”… all these terms sounded like a foreign language to us. They said there were principles and patterns, but no matter how hard we looked, my wife and I just couldn’t wrap our heads around it. You have to memorize 8, 12, 30 moves and execute them? It felt like one of those things that made you question if it was even possible to learn.

My wife: “Why do we have to memorize this?”
Me: “…I don’t know.”

So, my wife, my son, and I just gave up. The cube became solidified in our house as just a “pretty, colorful toy.” Sometimes my son would fiddle with it, manage to solve one side, and proudly yell, “Dad, look!”

Then, during one holiday, we stopped at a convenience store at Busan Station on our way to Seoul. We were just grabbing some kimbap and drinks. But there on the shelf, what did we see? A 2×2 cube.

‘Hey… this one’s smaller, right? Fewer squares. Surely we can solve this one?!’

Filled with hope, we bought it. We were also excited, about to board the KTX train from Busan Station. I even boldly posted a picture in our family group chat, declaring, “We can definitely solve this one.”

The result?

Another failure, lol.

The 2×2 definitely looks simpler than the 3×3, but it wasn’t enough to break our family’s cube-solving curse. It just got scrambled even more absurdly because it was smaller. The whole family spent an hour on the KTX train trying to solve it, but we eventually gave up. And so, the history of defeat began on the very first day the 2×2 joined our household.

So now we had two unsolved cubes rolling around the house. One 3×3, one 2×2. And nobody in the family could solve either of them. My son would occasionally bring a cube to me and ask, “Dad, solve it,” and every time, I’d just manage to solve one side to make it look decent and then make a run for it.

Is the Cube Really That Hard?

I want to be honest here for a second. For those of you who can solve a cube, you might be reading this and thinking, “Come on, what’s so hard about it?”

Yes, I know the cube is something that can be solved through learning. I know anyone can do it if they just memorize a few algorithms. I know that for the beginner’s LBL (Layer By Layer) method, you only need about 7-8 algorithms, and once you get the hang of it, you can solve it in 2-3 minutes.

But that step—”memorizing 7-8 algorithms”—was a huge mountain for my wife and me. Memorizing algorithms in the evening after a long day at work, while our 7-year-old is begging us to do something else? Is that even possible? We tried once or twice, but it just wouldn’t stick, so we gave up. Same for my wife. We were just… adults who had pushed ‘learning to solve the cube’ way down on our priority list.

To someone who’s good at it, this might seem incredibly easy. But there are genuinely a lot of adults who can’t solve it, and their children grow up with parents who can’t solve it. Our family was a perfect example of that.

Sometimes, the YouTube algorithm recommends videos of speedcubers, and you see their fingers solve all six sides in less than a second. Their finger movements look like pure magic. I’ve zoned out watching those videos, then looked over at my son fiddling with his cube and drifted into a little fantasy: “Oh… maybe my son will grow up to be like that… Dad can’t solve it, but maybe my son is a genius…?”

The reality was, he couldn’t even match the colors and was just barely managing one side. A self-deprecating joke, haha.

Then One Day, the Kindergarten Incident Happened

Then One Day, the Kindergarten Incident Happened

It was a few days ago.

My son came home from kindergarten with his cube, but this time, it was different. It was perfectly solved. All six sides were neatly matched with a single color.

“Who solved this?”

“My teacher solved it for me!!!”

He carried it around so proudly, like it was a treasure. He wouldn’t let it out of his hands. He’d place it by his pillow before bed, grab it first thing in the morning, and keep it beside him during meals. It was so cute watching his little hands stroke the cube that I even posted a picture in our family group chat. He cherished it like that for a while.

And then…

He accidentally twisted one of the sides.

I probably don’t need to explain what happened next.

A sobbing 7-year-old.

“Dad, solve it!” he cried, holding out the cube. His treasured, solved cube was now a jumbled mess of colors again. And me… I just stood there, staring blankly at the cube in my hands. How was I supposed to solve it? Seriously. My wife came over, took one look, and just sighed.

That night, our family watched YouTube together. A beginner’s guide to solving the cube. But not even a minute in, it was just frustrated adults saying, “Wait, where is this supposed to go?” and a whining child who wanted to play with it himself. It was total chaos.

In the end, we left the scrambled cube on the dining table and went to bed. My son whimpered until he fell asleep, saying, “But my teacher solved it for me…”

That was the moment my heart as a dad just shattered.

I Figured There Must Be an App, But…

I thought about it. In this day and age, there’s no way an app that scans a cube with a camera and shows you how to solve it doesn’t exist, right? Someone must have made one.

The next day, on my subway commute, I opened the Google Play Store. I searched for "rubik's cube solver". A flood of apps appeared. Some with 1M+ downloads, others with 4.5-star ratings. They all looked promising.

But as I checked them out one by one…

1) Free for a moment, then a ₩4,900/month subscription

You get one free solve, and then a payment screen pops up. My son scrambles his cube two or three times a week. Are they expecting me to pay every single time? That’s over 50,000 won a year. For a cube app?

2) The Ad Bombardment Type

A 30-second ad before opening the camera. A 30-second ad before seeing the solution. A 30-second ad before the next step. A 7-year-old watching and closing ads 30 times in a row? Not gonna happen. And if a game ad pops up, he’ll start a whole new tantrum, yelling, “Install this for me!!!”

3) The Overly Complicated UI

Menus that even I, an adult, couldn’t figure out where to start. Multi-step guides like, “Step 1: Scan U-Face → Tap Center → Rotate Cube…” I can’t explain to a 7-year-old, “Okay, open the camera here, scan the first face, then turn the cube clockwise and…” If he makes one mistake, he has to start all over. After about five tries, he’d just throw the cube and walk away.

4) The No Korean Support + Ads + In-App Purchase Combo

Instructions in English like “Rotate cube clockwise to scan the U face,” with ads squeezed in between, and then another paywall to see the solution. How is my son supposed to use this? Even if I asked my wife, she’d get frustrated following the English guide and give up.

After comparing apps for about 30 minutes, I came to a conclusion.

There isn’t one. There’s no app that works for us.

I would’ve gladly paid if it just had Korean support and no ads, but the combo of Korean + No Ads + Intuitive UI was impossible to find. Most apps were made for serious cubers overseas, not for the “7-year-old beginner + clueless parents” combo.

Fine, I’ll Make It Myself

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “A non-developer is going to make an app?” I thought so, too. But wait, there isn’t much I haven’t tried to build already.

• A home server (see my ‘Even a Non-Coder Can Do It!’ series, Parts 1-9)
• The call summary app, Prsm
• Meeting minutes automation (a failure, but still)
• This WordPress blog (the very place you’re reading this)
• A trading bot
• A weekend trip recommendation script

And how were all these made? By asking an AI.

I can’t write a single line of code. For real. I can’t write let x = 1, and I don’t really know what print("hello") does. But if I ask Claude in Korean, “Hey, can you make this do that?” it somehow gets made.

Plus, these days there’s a tool called Claude Code. You can just tell it in the terminal, “Build this for me,” and it writes the code, builds it, tests it, and even pushes to GitHub all on its own. It’s like magic. It makes mistakes sometimes, but then you just say, “You made a mistake here, fix it,” and it fixes it.

So I made up my mind.

An Android app that scans a cube with a camera and shows the solution as a 3D animation. No ads, totally free, and simple enough for my son to use by himself. I’m going to make it.

I listed out the requirements:

1. Support for both 2×2 and 3×3 cubes (the Daiso + Busan Station convenience store combo, those two rascals from earlier).
2. Scan all 6 faces one by one with the camera.
3. Ability to correct misidentified colors with a simple tap.
4. The solution is displayed as a rotating 3D animation.
5. Controls for speed, pause, and moving one step forward or backward.
6. No ads, no payments, no sign-ups.
7. Korean UI.

It has to be simple enough for my son to use on his own. Got it? The goal is for him to be able to scramble his cube, open the camera, scan it, and follow the solution all by himself, without needing to call for his parents.

Okay, Claude Code…

Alright, shall we begin?

I opened the terminal, started up Claude Code, and stared at the blinking cursor for a long time. What should I ask? I’ve never tried to make an Android app before. And on top of that, color recognition with a camera? Is this really a difficulty level a non-developer should be tackling?

I took a deep breath and typed my first request.

Hey Claude Code, help me out…

I saw some apps on the Google Play Store that scan a cube’s current state with a camera and show you how to solve it, but they’re paid apps. Do you think I could make my own to use?

I imagined a personified Claude with an expression that said, ‘Here he goes again, asking for something bizarre…’ but Claude always helps out kindly. It always has.

And that was the beginning of this whole mess. For real.

Coming up next: The moment Claude confidently replied, “Of course!” began the debugging saga of 17 different versions. From the very first build where the camera recognized the cube as a solid white box, all the way to my 7-year-old’s first reaction. To be continued in Part 2.

The post CubeSnap (1) — A 40-Something Dad Convinced His Son Was a Cube Prodigy… Except Dad Doesn’t Code appeared first on Prsm Studio.