I'm building real apps with AI now. No team. No big budget. Here's what I've learned so far. 🚀
Start with one clear problem.
Not "an app." One annoying task you repeat every week: a spreadsheet you keep fixing, a form you fill by hand, a report you rebuild every Monday. The smaller the problem, the faster AI gets it right, and the easier it is to tell if it works.Describe it like you'd explain it to a colleague.
What it does, who uses it, what information it needs to remember, and what should happen when something goes wrong. Plain words beat technical ones. If you can explain it in a minute, AI can build a first version of it.Test early, fix in small steps.
The first version is never right. That's fine. Click through it like a real user, write down what feels off, and ask for one change at a time. Small changes are easy to check. Big rewrites hide new bugs.Keep your judgment in the loop.
AI writes the code. You decide what's useful, what's safe, and what ships. Check the data it stores, who can see it, and what happens with wrong inputs. It removes the wait, not the thinking.Ship, then improve.
A working app in a few hours beats a perfect plan in three months. Put it in front of one real person, watch where they get stuck, and improve from there. Real feedback teaches more than any spec.
The lesson: AI doesn't replace the builder. It shortens the distance between your idea and something you can click.
I'm applying this to real projects, from internal tools to AfroTech Cuba Solutions. More soon. 👀