Introduction

My name is Eric. I've lived in Singapore about 12 years. I'm from Norway originally. But as I said, I've been here for a while.

I like to think of myself as a multidisciplinary person of multidisciplinary people, end to end. This is a huge, huge problem for me because it has resulted in me knowing a lot, a lot about a lot of different things but it also makes it really hard for

people to understand who I am and how I think so today I'm gonna be very concrete about how to build stuff with AI to the point where you may not be able to do it 100 % when you come home but at least you know where to start and

how to get on it and there's a couple of overlaps with Gregor's presentation of of course. And I'll point them out.

Yeah, so this is me. I run my own consultancy. I build, I think I'm building five platforms at the moment.

I'll show some of it. And yeah, so that's what I do.

The promise of “build in five minutes”

so who has seen a video promising that everyone can build we've all seen them here's one i'm going to show you how you can use ai to build yourself a website with no coding experience no click and drag none of that so that's what i want to share with you guys today is called

lovable and it's so easy to use once you're on the platform you're going to have this little text box we're going to type in what you want to build what it's for what you want people to be able to do on it and from there the ai is going to take that information and it's going to build what you described that you wanted i recommend you to be very detailed if you want certain colors or if you want certain features on the website make sure you mention in the example i'm sharing with

you guys today i'm building a website where people can go in and share book reviews and here is what lovable gave me it took about five minutes for it to generate the website and it looks really freaking good i didn't have to code anything i didn't have to hire any developers i just went in and i told it what i wanted and i built it for me so that sounds pretty cool five minutes i didn't

have to build anything, I didn't have to hire any developers, I saved lots of money, I built it myself.

What the demos leave out: scale, reliability, and security

What she didn't say is what happens when you have a thousand users logged into your system?

What happens when you lose access to your database? What happens when that database is made public because you put the key somewhere where you shouldn't have put it?

That doesn't, they don't mention that in these presentations. So that's what I'm going to talk about and make sure that we do it in a better way and more properly.

From vibe coding to real product building

So in the demo it's one prompt, one flow, and everything just happens. And you can do that.

And when you start coding with AI, you will have a euphoric experience. A euphoric experience your first weekend will be oh my god i can do this i'm a freaking genius

right five months months later you'll realize that it wasn't so great but it looked all right okay it's similar to when you write the linkedin posts with using ai on the surface it's pretty good but if you start looking into it and say it's not this it's that type of

language you know that you've been duped by AI right so AI is amazing so I'm all pro AI I use AI every day but you just have to know what it does and how it

works so the sample data in these these demos they never breaks of course there's no real users no real accounts and nobody's depending on it so if you

want to build something that people depend on you have to think differently you have to build more you have to build thinking about real customers using real data it's messy it's inconsistent real accounts passwords payments it's a lot to manage and it has consequences when it breaks

Garbage in, garbage out—and the 80/20 trap

that's the difference between vibe coding and a real product when i many many many years ago

ago, did coding, they taught me one thing. And I remember my teacher saying this. This was back in high school. It was a very long time. I'm the oldest.

GI, GO. Garbage in, garbage out. Now, even in the day of AI where I can point out that this is garbage, that still stands. You have to make sure that you build properly.

So, I'm going to talk about the 20 % that Claude doesn't do for you. It writes the code, but it doesn't finish the product. That's on you.

The Pareto principle, which we all know is the 80 -20 rule, you're going to spend 80 % of your time finishing 20 % of the product. That is the trap of AI.

So when you're going like, you've done the 80 % and you're going like, amazing, I did did this in three weeks, then you're going to find out that you're going to now spend the next couple of months fixing all of those things.

But it's learnable. You can do it. You don't need to be a coder to do this. You don't need to understand programming. But you do need to understand some of the stuff around it.

I've worked in tech for many, many years. Even though I didn't do the programming, I did the architecture. I did the setup. up, I did figuring out the cloud services, setting up APIs, all of that stuff.

You need to understand these things.

Start with a problem worth solving

I use a framework I called humanistic thinking, but as Gregor also pointed out, find a problem worth solving before you start. Don't rely on AI to find that problem for you.

Or I want to be a tech founder but I have no idea what to do. That is not a good way to start something.

I've noticed that people find it frustrating when they do this or that that's a good place to start because then you know you have a real problem in front of you

listen to those people talk to people interview people understand the problem thoroughly before you start if you've experienced a problem yourself even better but don't think that you're the only person who has that problem so

listen to other people as well I'm not going to go through this but but this is is really about finding the problem worth solving.

A practical workflow: Claude, Claude Code, and you

The way I work is I divide everything into three. There's Claude, which is the normal Claude chat that I use every day. Then there's Claude Code, and I consider that another person. So Claude and Claude Code are two different things to me.

Now, there are other people who work in different ways. So this is my experience with this, but this is how I do it.

Cloud helps me plan. And as Gregor also pointed out, I can use a bit more expensive models when I do that part of it, and then I can use cheaper models when I do the building itself with Cloud Code.

Now over time, I go back and forth between these two.

Sometimes Cloud Code breaks something and can't fix it. Then I go back to Cloud and say, Cloud Code is messing up my life, please help help me. And then Claude comes back and says, okay, here's what you tell Claude. So this is a really great way of doing it.

Try to not just copy -paste, but try to read what they say as much as possible. Sometimes there's a lot. So I'm the judgment.

I'm the person who says this is what I want to do first. Then I'm the person who says, this is not what I was thinking. This is not how you should do it. Think differently.

And when you test you can then go back and say this isn't working the way i hoped and then you can redesign it this is a great thing about ai by the way in traditional development we had to have everything mapped out before we started building because it cost a fortune to build but now i go like well i know this is what i said i wanted but it turns out that's not what i wanted then i can go back and i I can fix it.

So that to me is really, really important.

Supporting tools: design, APIs, and planning modes

I have some what I call supporting cast. I use some design tools. Now I'm a designer, so I like to design things myself in Sketch or in Figma.

But sometimes I can't be bothered. And especially when I've done a couple of screens, I go, I'm not going to do the rest of this.

So I upload it to Stitch, which is a Google tool. Fantastic. fantastic. It makes everything look amazingly beautiful.

Or cloud design is also great. I like Stitch because it's very, very quick to do apps and screens.

Anthropic API, you can use lots of different APIs if you want to pull AI into your product. You can, but I find Anthropic really, really easy to use.

Just protect that API key because if that that gets lost into your code and someone picks it up from your repository, they can use that code to spend your money. So that's not a good idea.

And then Cloud Code has something they call Plan Mode. Usually it initiates that itself, but you can ask it to go into Plan Mode

and plan this build out. It's a very, very good way of ensuring Ensuring that it's all thought through before it starts building.

Okay? Sorry, that was the wrong way. Okay. Okay, I'm good with that.

Sorry, this is a bit of a lot. There are things that you need to learn. I'm not going to be able to teach you how to do all of this today.

The essential toolchain (and why it matters)

But if you have one takeaway from today, snapshot this slide. Because this is my go -to tools. There are many others. others.

I'm not saying that this is better than anything else, but this one really works for me.

VSCode and Terminal.

You need to understand a little bit about how VSCode works. VSCode is an IDE, an integrated development environment. It is where real coders code.

We're going to look at that code and we're going to go, I don't understand any of it. That's not important. That's where you can talk to Cloud Code. That's where you have all of this.

It will sometimes time tell you, you need to do something for me. You need to install something. And that is done from the terminal, which is also part of VS Code. And you have to be able to learn. It will tell you what to do. Don't worry.

But if you are, for example, building something in Expo, which I'll get to in a second, you'll have to type EAS build dash dash platform iOS dash dash profile production, for instance. instance. So you have to do a couple of those things, right? Okay.

Frameworks and services: Next.js, Expo, CMS, hosting, and email

I use Next .js a lot because it's built on React, and React is a very common library that developers use today.

It's based on TypeScript, which is both a, it's like JavaScript, but a bit more strict, and it has, can be used front -end and back -end, so it's very, very simple.

And React is used in react native to build both ios apps and android apps so that also makes it really easy so if you learn something about react that's a good thing but you don't have to

expo i mentioned expo is a system to build these react apps and it's free until you start using it a lot okay you also need if you're building mobile apps you need to have an account account with App Store connect so is Apple and a Google Play console this will cost a hundred dollars for per year for Apple and 25 for Google that's the only thing except for Claude that's

going to cost you anything I mentioned today everything else is free sanity is a CMS it's a headless CMS and it's built into everything so it means that you can build like anyone here built with WordPress before I used to build with WordPress a lot I wouldn't touch WordPress today wouldn't touch it because I can do everything else with sanity and XJS and it's much better and much easier to use but it's a CMS and firebase is a database Google and Firestore and off so like passwords and and everything is generated there.

Vercel is a great place to host, especially in XJS apps, because it's the same people who built it. It's free, unless you're making money of it. Then you have to pay for it. But if it's like a personal project, I have a website for my photography, and that one, I don't pay for it.

Same with Sanity, I don't pay for it, unless you're using it for commercial purposes. uses.

Version control and deployment: GitHub + Vercel

GitHub, anyone know what GitHub is? So GitHub is where you have your repository of code. Even if you're working by yourself, you need GitHub.

Set up a GitHub account. Try to figure out how it works.

Install GitHub Desktop, because then you don't have to do git commands and stuff like that. You can just simply press Commit the code, and then you push it.

And when you push it and you use Verso, for instance, it automatically updates your website. website. Very, very easy to use.

Resend is an emailing system, so it allows you to send out emails when people sign up and stuff like that.

All of these tools, again, will help you build what you need to build, and that's why it becomes a little bit more complex than our friend in the beginning said, which is five minutes, build your website. Sure, you can, but if you want to do real things, it will take a little bit more.

Okay, I'm not

Protecting secrets: environment variables and API keys

going to spend a lot of time on this i'm just going to say that all development has a dot env file um env local which it contains all of those secrets those are api keys they are secrets that you need to communicate they are not they have to be in what we call git ignore which means it doesn't go into github this is very very important if you don't know anything about the development this is super important.

Because again, anyone who gets hands on your API keys, they can utilize it for bad things. So you have to put it there, but you also have to then put it in Verso when you go live. All of this will be explained to you by Claude, but just be aware of this.

As I said, you don't need to understand GitHub. You just need to trust it. It really is a great place to ensure that you have everything running the way that you want.

All of this, so Cloud Code will tell you how to do all of this, but you really need to understand how it all works.

How does the CMS work? How does the database work? How does the authorization stuff work? Just to make sure that it works for you. And I really recommend people spending a little bit of time doing it.

I'm going to go very fast now because I'm running out of time.

Operating your build: documentation, testing, and red-teaming

.md files files, claude .md is your one source of truth. It sits with all of your code, and it tells Claude. So if you start a new Claude session,

it will read through Claude at md to get updated on what's happened in the past or what you're intending to do.

Because when you build big projects, you won't be able to do one prompt and build it all. You'll do one part at a time. Today I'm handling a database, so then we do that.

that, and then it ticks it off in Cloud MD. And then testing is super important.

And I'm not a, here's a prompt that you need to learn, and if you use this, it's going to fix everything. But there's one prompt that you can take home and use in every time you develop, and that is red team it in the subagent.

Red team is when you go in and you critically go through the entire platform that you built from a security and privacy perspective and you can get and you do it in a sub -agent because then cloud code doesn't feel a need to defend itself right it can literally go in and go like I know nothing about this project but I'm going to do everything I

Privacy by default: GDPR mindset and pseudonymization

can to break it and that's what red team means okay privacy I'm gonna quickly say something about privacy my go -to is following eu law as i'm based in singapore has nothing to do with the eu but they're the strictest in the world so if you're complying with them you're automatic so gdpr is stricter than pdpa for instance and eu ai act is the strictest ai laws on the planet so you follow those and then you'll be safe i like to do something i call there's something called

called pseudonymization, which is tokenizing all of the data. And tokenizing data means that no personal information is revealed, even if you lose the data.

I know I'm running out of time.

So it stops at 80 % because it doesn't know everything. And you need to be the person who knows those things when you build.

I know I'm making this harder for you, and I'm making people disappointed that I can't just do this in five minutes. but trust me when I say this is the way to go.

Do as much as you can yourself and use AI as your guide.

So I don't like to talk about vibe coding because that's prompt, accept, and hope. I talk about AI augmented development. It is me building something and all I'm doing is using AI to type

for me the stuff that I don't know how to type.

What AI-augmented development can produce (real examples)

I built some platforms. Here's one of my platforms.

platforms um this is going to be released uh very shortly it's a co it's a co -parenting app for uh uh divorced parents especially if it gets um uh acrimonial so on this platform you can document

everything it's even AI moderated chat so if you send a message and you say send him down you cow how, it will say, no, no, no, you cannot send that. Here's a suggestion. Please send him down.

It measures everything. When you pick up your child, it manages all of the communication. And all of this, obviously, I designed it, I thought about it, I know what I want, but I've used AI to build it.

I'm building a platform for tattoo artists, because they do everything with Instagram Messenger and WhatsApp and pay now. But they struggle to get paid on time. And some people, you know, it's easier. This is a booking engine for them.

I built another booking engine for a photography studio. Very simple, helping them just get on with their day -to -day lives. This is a couple of weeks build. easier for me to do and it makes their life much much easier and my own website

I'm not going to talk a lot about my own website other than the fact that obviously presents my company and whatnot but I came up the idea the other day and I built this over the weekend was what if there's a starting conversation on my website that you can do so I built in with with anthropic API that you can start and it's a it's a rag retrieval augmented generation so

basically it picks up information from my website so it says says what's your problem what problem are you dealing with that's what the question is and you say oh I'm struggling to get enough sales and then it asks you a little bit

more questions and then it ends up of obviously saying well set up a meeting with Eric right it's a it's a very very simple sales tool but it works okay so

Final advice and wrap-up

finally before you start get the accounts start signing up for expose start signing up for sanity just figure out how it works ever so all of these things that are free protect your secrets I've said that before I'll do it

again do not reveal those secrets and build small don't build everything in one day try to build fun feature by feature and add it up maybe you scaffold the whole thing and then you add go into details on on those things i think i've said all of this so i'll

skip that if you want to connect with me i'm on linkedin of course you're still the one who builds this product don't think otherwise Otherwise, and I'll send you a video.

Oh, Mike, don't say that, because that irritates me. Don't call me a vibe coder. I have a bunch of words in the mouth for saying that.

Don't you dare say that. All right, thank you.