Build With AI

Build Your AI Platform: Why I Wrote It, What's Inside, and What It Saves You

9 min read

Build Your AI Platform is a book for non-technical founders on how to build an AI product without coding, step by step. It's 244 pages: 29 chapters in five levels, three complete builds and a 30-day build challenge, using Spec-Driven Development and Claude.

I wrote it for one kind of person.

The one I was a year and a half ago.

Why I wrote this book

In June 2025, I was travelling.

I lived on Google Maps. And I kept seeing the same thing: great local businesses, hundreds of 5-star reviews, and no website.

I wondered: could AI build them one?

I could design the whole system. I'm a mechanical and industrial engineer with an MBA, and I spent ten years as a UI designer, writer and international business development consultant.

But I'm not a developer. I couldn't code a line of it.

Two engineers were set to become my co-founders.

It didn't work out.

Then, in March 2026, one sentence changed everything: "Claude is ready now."

No team. No code. Just specs, and Claude.

What followed was about six months and 1,000 hours. Sleepless nights. Bugs that fixed one thing and broke another. And one rule I kept coming back to: every mistake became a written rule.

Today, SiteNeuro is live. It has built more than 1,000 websites (see what it built).

The receipts are in the git history, February to October 2026:

• 3,215 commits, each one a small, checked step
• 1,156 changes merged, each one reviewed and approved
• 175 working days, steady, not a sprint

Somewhere along the way, I realised something.

One person can now build what used to take a team of ten senior engineers, marketers and designers.

Not because AI is magic. It isn't.

Because there's a method. And nobody had written it down for people like me.

So I did.

This book is everything I learned, so you don't have to learn it the hard way.

What reading it saves you

Here's what I paid to learn this, and what you can skip.

• About 1,000 hours of trial and error. Every dead end I hit is a page that tells you which way to turn.
• Six months of learning the hard way. The order I wish I'd done things in, from day one.
• A team of ten senior specialists. Not hired. Led. The book shows you how to direct Claude like a team: engineer, designer, tester, marketer.
• The "fix one thing, break another" loop. The method that ends it, and the habit that stops the same bug from coming back.
• A wasted AI budget. How to get better results from Claude while spending less, for building and inside your own product.

And maybe the biggest one:

The months you'd spend waiting for a technical co-founder.

You don't need one anymore.

Your job isn't to learn to code. It's to learn to lead.

What will you learn? The full table of contents

Twenty-nine chapters in five levels, plus Your Turn and a Toolbox. Every chapter only uses what came before it. And Chapter 1 is free to read in full.

The book

Read Chapter 1 before you decide.

The whole first chapter is free on the book page, with the full contents and four prompts you can copy.

• 29 chapters, five levels, step by step
• Three complete builds, start to finish
• Templates, checklists and a prompt kit
• Chapter 1 is free to read, in full

Read Chapter 1 free →

Level 1 · Understand: why now, and why the method matters

• Ch. 1 · Why Now: The Window Just Opened. We're early. That's the opportunity.
• Ch. 2 · Vibe Coding vs. Spec-Driven Development. One is a conversation. The other is a blueprint.
• Ch. 3 · You, Claude and the Specs: Your New Team. You're the architect. Claude is the crew. The specs are the blueprint.

Level 2 · Plan: Spec-Driven Development, step by step

• Ch. 4 · The Constitution: Your Non-Negotiables. The rules that never bend. Written once, read every time.
• Ch. 5 · Specify: What You're Building and Why. Describe the what. Leave the how for later.
• Ch. 6 · Plan: How It Will Be Built. Claude proposes the how. You make the calls.
• Ch. 7 · Tasks: Small Steps You Can Check. Big plans fail. Small steps ship.
• Ch. 8 · Build and Verify. Trust, but verify. Every single time.
• Ch. 9 · Choosing Your Method: Spec Kit and Its Alternatives. The method matters more than the tool.

Level 3 · Equip: your toolkit

• Ch. 10 · The Terminal and Your Command-Line Tools. A text window that does exactly what you type.
• Ch. 11 · Your Workshop, Set Up. One hour today. Every build after this starts here.
• Ch. 12 · Working With Claude: Sessions, Memory and Parallel Work. Every session starts fresh. Project memory makes it start smart.
• Ch. 13 · Writing Prompts That Work, Including System Prompts. Clear in, clear out.
• Ch. 14 · Claude's Power Tools: Projects, Skills, Artifacts and Routines. Stop repeating yourself.
• Ch. 15 · Claude Inside Your Product. Claude builds your product. It can also power it.
• Ch. 16 · Using Claude Wisely: Better Results, Lower Cost. Spend your AI budget like a founder, not a tourist.
• Ch. 17 · Your AI Council: ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity. Different minds catch different mistakes.
• Ch. 18 · The Stack: GitHub, Railway, Cloudflare, Polar and Alternatives. Six jobs. One tool each. Two backups ready.
• Ch. 19 · Getting Paid: Payment Platforms Compared. Choose who takes the money, and who handles the taxes.
• Ch. 20 · The Lean Launch Stack. Launch for about the price of a lunch a month.

Level 4 · Build: three complete builds, start to finish

• Ch. 21 · LinguaPal: A Language Tutor Built Around Your Interests. From the specs to a paid subscription.
• Ch. 22 · Wander: An AI Travel Guide for Wherever You Are. Open it anywhere. Get five great picks. Tap to go.
• Ch. 23 · The Night Shift: An AI Helper That Works on a Schedule. It works while you sleep. Make sure it works when you wake.

Level 5 · Scale: launch and grow

• Ch. 24 · Guardrails: Spending, Privacy and Testing. Launch is when your mistakes meet real people. Meet them first.
• Ch. 25 · How the Pros Use Claude Code. Same tool you have. A different way of working.
• Ch. 26 · Then vs. Now: How Building Got Easier in 2026. Not a feeling. The receipts.
• Ch. 27 · The Builder's Mindset: Grit, Focus and Finding Your Fit. The tools got easy. Finishing didn't.

Your Turn

• Ch. 28 · The 30-Day Build Challenge. Thirty days. One idea. A live product with a buy button.
• Ch. 29 · Your Roadmap. Print this page. Pin it above your desk.

The Toolbox

Copy, fill in, build:

• Templates: constitution, feature spec, plan, tasks, project memory
• A prompt kit for every moment of a build
• Checklists, including a launch checklist
• An error decoder for when things break
• A glossary that explains every term in plain English
• Resources: every tool and link in the book, in one place

And all the way through: 34 diagrams, a "Try this now" box and a recap in every chapter, and a "Level complete" box at the end of every level, so you always know how far you've come.

Who is this book for?

It's for you if:

• You have an idea and no coding background.
• You're a consultant, designer, engineer or business owner.
• You'd rather lead an AI team than hire one.
• You tried "vibe coding" and got stuck at 80%.

It's not for you if:

• You want a shortcut or a get-rich-quick plan.
• You're a developer looking for a coding manual.

How to read it

There are three ways in:

1. The full path. Level by level, start to finish. Each level ends with a "Level complete" box.
2. The fast track. One weekend: Chapters 2 and 3, skim 4 to 8, then 11, 12 and 13. Pick the build closest to your idea and start the 30-Day Challenge.
3. As a reference. Keep the Toolbox open while you build, and jump to what you need.

Whichever you pick, start with Chapter 1. It's free.

What else comes with the book

• Free Builder Sessions. Every month, I invite ten readers to a free 30-minute call about their idea, their spec, or wherever they're stuck. There's nothing to apply for. Invitations come by email.
• Free updates. When the book is updated, the new edition appears in your account.
• The Builder Kit (optional). A starter project ready to open in Claude Code, four Claude skills and six guides. The book teaches the method. The kit sets up your first project in about 15 minutes.

And if you have an AI project in mind, write to me at hello@siteneuro.com or on LinkedIn. Once we've connected, I can sketch a plan and a possible roadmap for it.