Useful patterns for building HTML tools
December 15, 2025
I’ve started using the term HTML tools to refer to HTML applications that I’ve been building which combine HTML, JavaScript, and CSS in a single file and use them to provide useful functionality. I have built over 150 of these in the past year, almost all of them written by LLMs. This article presents a collection of useful patterns I’ve discovered along the way.
One incredibly valuable use case for code generation, and a good way to explore, experiment, develop intuitions and capabilities with them is by building little utility tools for your own use, as Simon Wilson has been doing for several years.
I too have been doing this. I’ve taken spreadsheets, Bash scripts, Java’s little pieces of JavaScript that I had cobbled together over years to help in the production of our sites and content and even printing for our conferences and built special purpose mini web applications to solve the same problems much more efficiently and enjoyably.
So I highly recommend it’s something you try for yourself if you’re not doing already. Here Simon lists a whole bunch of patterns that he has gleaned from his extensive development of such tools.
