I may have spent the last 10 years on the business side of things — after an early career as a technologist building stock exchanges and trading platforms, followed by a move into tech advisory — but those who know me will tell you I'm still very much a geek at heart. It's this dual experience of building technology, and more recently being a customer of technology, that helps Aldemis bridge the gap for our customers. But this isn't a sales pitch.

As a geek who still loves coding, I've followed the AI coding movement closely. While there have been some impressive advances, for me the proof is in the pudding. Until a real application is built, released and used, it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions about the actual benefits of using AI. In the vein of one of my favourite sayings: I could get my mum to build you a Windows calculator, it would look like it is working, but it wouldn't be scalable, secure, or anywhere close to being maintainable.

That's why I decided to take my latest idea and build it entirely with AI. The website below is the result, built using Claude Code on the Max plan. I've also pasted below every prompt I used along the way.

I did nothing beyond writing the prompts listed below — fewer than 100 in total. I didn't modify the code by hand. I didn't touch a single thing outside of the Claude window itself.*

The whole thing took me roughly nine hours from start to finish, though most of that was waiting for Claude to do its thing, so I was getting on with other tasks in the meantime. If I'd done this the traditional way, I estimate it would have taken around eight to ten days.

Here's what I find particularly interesting: if you look through my prompts, fewer than 5% of them are actual technical requirements. Everything else is business requirements.

The website and code are by no means perfect, but the result given the effort involved is genuinely remarkable. Some prompts felt especially easy — “deploy to AWS” and job done. Or “containerise everything”.

This was a greenfield build, which is always easier for AI to handle. That said, I have used Claude on an existing project too, and I have no reason to think the results would be dramatically different.

I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what's possible. One of my colleagues even took a screenshot of our Jira board and had Claude implement all the tickets assigned to him.

Website: cofound.website

Follow-up questions

I do have follow-up questions, for which I would love the view of any AI expert:

  • It is clear that AI companies are absorbing some of the cost of running the models. What will happen once AI usage is priced at real cost?
  • Given that so few of my prompts are technically driven, are we now in a situation where a non-technical person can start building very complex, production-ready applications?

I'm also happy to share the full source code if you'd like to review its quality — just drop me an email at contact@aldemis.com. And if you like the CoFound idea, feel free to spread the word and add your profile or project to it. It would be nice to turn it into something useful for start-up founders.

* Edit: following a question I received, I did indeed leave Claude to register the domain name and update the DNS settings.

Prompts used

Software architecture and first features (prompts 1–36)
  1. I'd like to build an application from scratch. It will be a website allowing users to register and post projects for others to comment on. I'd like the back-end to be node.js with a postgres database. What front-end technology do you recommend?
  2. OK, let's go with React + Vite. Can you start by creating a project structure please, with 2 root directories, 1 for the front-end and 1 for the back-end
  3. Could you please rename the client directory into frontend and the server into backend
  4. If I give you the connection details for my local postgres instance, can you install the DB and run the project yourself?
  5. localhost:5432/postgres, username is postgres and password is ∗∗∗∗
  6. The front-end is empty, I was expecting to land on a login and registration page
  7. There is no button to create a project, could you add one. I should be able to see the button on the home page but I need to be logged in to be able to create the project
  8. There shouldn't be a username on the registration, we should use the email for the username. But I'd like to add a firstname and lastname
  9. There is a UI display issue on the registration page, the lastname text box goes outside of the registration box
  10. I got a registration failed message when registering
  11. Can you also make sure the code is well documented and that there is plenty of logs for support and maintenance
  12. After publishing the project, I get redirected to the project details page, but that page only contains a title and no project information, could you fix it please?
  13. Can we add a settings section where the user can change its password
  14. I'd like the settings and logout link to be in a dropdown menu which appears when clicking on my name in the top bar
  15. Can we update the model so that the project publisher can add team members that he is looking for to join the project
  16. Could we add a professional profile section so that a logged in user can fill in his profile, short description of their skills and experience, their linkedin profile URL, their availability (number of hours available per week)
  17. Could you add the ability to upload a picture on the professional profile
  18. I'd like to split registered users into 3 categories: contributors, project lead, investors. Each category should have its own registration link
  19. Could we add a messaging area so that 2 logged in users can message each other
  20. From now on, please stop asking me to confirm code changes and db changes and just proceed
  21. Only project leads should be able to create projects
  22. I've upgraded my account, the limit should have been increased
  23. Can you add an email verification step please
  24. Here is the username and password, please update the .env file
  25. The email wasn't received, could you check what went wrong
  26. I tried again and the email was still not received
  27. I've updated the env file, can you restart the server please
  28. I tried the email verification link from that email but got an error message that the verification link had expired
  29. Can you get me the last 20 lines of logs
  30. Where is the log located on the filesystem?
  31. I just registered with a new user (firstname Karen) but I can't see anything in the logs
  32. I've tried again and the call to the backend responded with a 201, but I still can't see that registration in the logs
  33. You're running the backend for me so I can't check that, can you just give me the log file location and I'll tail it
  34. Can you run the project please
  35. Can you please start a new part of the project, in a root folder called 'admin' to create an admin portal for the application please
  36. Either I forgot my password or the login isn't working
Initial design attempt (prompts 37–45)
  1. The primary colour is #1a4b40 and secondary colour is #ffffff, please change those across the whole project
  2. How can I give you my logo so that you use it
  3. Here it is
  4. It's here: [path]\logo.png
  5. Sorry, can you use this logo instead: [path]\logo.svg
  6. The logo doesn't show, all I can see is a white box where the logo should be
  7. Can you increase the header size by 1.5x and make it white please, increase the logo size by the same ratio
  8. Increase by 1.5x again please
  9. On the admin portal only, could you replace the logo with this one: [path]\logo_white.png
Full design creation (prompts 46–77)

The design itself was produced separately, using the standard Claude web interface, from this brief: create a landing page design which should be fashionable but professional. The website is about helping start-up founders find co-founders on a sweat equity basis, posting their project and highlighting which skills they're missing.

  1. Here is a landing page design: [path]\landing-page.html, can you update the website design to match it, please match all logo and colours
  2. Colour changes are good, but I'd also like the landing page to match the html template I provided
  3. Thanks, the grey text (#6b6b6b) is a little too dark and difficult to read, can you change it to #ababab
  4. Can you rename contributor to co-founder
  5. And project lead as Lead Founder
  6. Please generate a relevant privacy policy and terms of use, given what the website does
  7. Please generate 10 test users for each category of registration, as well as 5 test projects, make sure projects are posted by different test users
  8. Can you increase all fonts by 20%
  9. Can you replace the login link under the main banner by 'browse projects'
  10. And can you add the number of projects already posted underneath it, just like the original design I provided
  11. Can you increase the fonts on the login and register page too, like you did for the home page. Also increase fonts on the admin portal section
  12. Increase fonts in the admin portal by another 20%
  13. Once logged in, the browse projects link on the home page doesn't work
  14. Browse projects links on the home page should link to another page where all projects are displayed, they should not link to a home page section
  15. On the project details page, please add a link to go back to the project list page
  16. Once logged in the post your project link should not appear for investor and co-founders
  17. Good work, please commit all that into a new branch called Feature/initial_build
  18. Can you push the branch to the repo please
  19. Thanks, move back to the main branch
  20. Can you please extract every single prompt I've made during this project into a text file
  21. Please add a forgotten password link on the login page for both the main portal and the admin portal
  22. The legal entity behind the website is [entity and address], could you update the privacy policy and T&C with that info please
  23. Can you make sure all requests and responses sent to the back-end (both portal and admin) are logged please, and any password is obfuscated
  24. Can you make sure there is proper exception handling, and related logging, throughout the whole project please
  25. The admin portal isn't responding anymore, could you have a look
  26. Can you configure the project to use gmail as the SMTP server
  27. I don't seem to have received the email, can you check if something went wrong
  28. The actual password has been updated, here is the app password
  29. It's still not working
  30. Can you run the project please
  31. Email is working, but the link in it isn't. When clicking on it, it says verification failed, invalid or expired link
  32. It's working well. Could you commit to a new branch called Feature/first_release and push it to the repo please
Monitoring, containerisation and AWS deployment (prompts 78–92)
  1. Can you now configure the project for AppSignal
  2. [API key]
  3. AppSignal doesn't seem to be receiving any data, could you check what's wrong?
  4. Still not working, here is what AppSignal suggests: check your log file and the docs, run our diagnostics tool
  5. Can you containerise the project and push to docker. Docker is already installed locally
  6. Here is the error I'm getting: unable to get image 'sweatequity-admin', error during connect
  7. There isn't any data any more, is this a DB connection issue?
  8. Here is my AWS access key and secret. Please install the full project on AWS. Use the existing vpc and subnet. It's for demo only so go for a cheap setup. Main website should respond to the www domain, please setup SSL certificates. Admin portal should respond to the admin subdomain
  9. Can you commit everything into a new branch called Feature/container-and-deployment and push to the repo
  10. Can you summarise to me what you did to deploy it to AWS please
  11. Sorry, I should have said, could you move everything to eu-west-2
  12. Have you made any code changes that need to be committed?
  13. Please commit and push
  14. Can you please extract all prompts I've made in this project into a text file
  15. Please update the file to only include the prompt, none of the analysis or context you provided. Could you also obfuscate any password or keys