Founder AI Prototyping — A Three-Level Path

Follow-up from our 2026-05-04 conversation — a quick overview of vibe coding a prototype, based on what we discussed.

Two questions first: do people want this enough to use it, and can a business support it? Here's the way to find out — by building, putting it in front of people, and watching what happens.

A landing page people can click

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What you build: A single-page prototype, no backend, no login. Clickable in a browser. You can show it to one person this week.

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What you find out: Whether the problem is big enough that real people care.

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You graduate when: 5 people have seen it, and at least one has told you “when can I use this?”

Key tools

Google AI Studio App BuilderDescribe your app in a paragraph, get a working page back. Free tier, browser, no setup. Builds full front-ends from prompts.

Google StitchDesign the visual layer. Stitch 2.0 pulls design systems from URLs, generates clickable prototypes, and exports to AI Studio. Free.

Watch first

Best end-to-end walkthrough of building an app from a prompt — covers everything from blank page to working prototype.

Mikey No Code · 16 min · 100K views · March 2026

A working web app with a backend

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What you build: A real product. Users can sign up, log in, save their data, come back tomorrow. Running on a real domain.

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What you find out: Whether people will keep using it — and whether a real product can hold their attention.

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You graduate when: 10 real users, 1 paying customer, or a partner conversation that demands a working product.

Key tools

SupabaseBackend as a service. PostgreSQL database, authentication (email/password + Google/GitHub login), file storage, real-time subscriptions. Free tier.

VercelHosting. Connect your GitHub repo, paste your env variables, Vercel auto-deploys on every push. Free tier covers your first project.

Watch first

Complete backend setup — database, auth, storage — all in 32 minutes. The fastest way to go from zero to a working backend.

Mikey Vibe Coding · 32 min · 16K views · 2026

A codebase you can keep building

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What you build: A real IDE, version control, and an AI agent as a teammate. When the prototype is the company.

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What you find out: Can I ship faster than I break things? Can another engineer look at this and understand it?

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You graduate when: You hire or partner with an engineer, or you are the engineer and the codebase is the foundation.

Key tools

Claude CodeAgentic coding tool. Plans, builds, debugs from natural language. Runs locally. $20/mo Pro tier. Start in Plan Mode, build with Opus, iterate with Sonnet.

CursorAI-first code editor. Built on VS Code. Agent mode with Opus model. Free tier available.

Google Anti-GravityGoogle's agentic IDE. Free for individual use. Plans projects, creates files, runs terminal commands, tests its own code.

Watch first

Hands-on intro to building your first app with Google's agentic IDE — start here to see what agentic coding feels like.

Teacher's Tech · 13 min · 127K views · January 2026