Before today, my site was a single landing page on Carrd. Copy-pasted text in a template that didn’t feel like me. I had messed around with WordPress and Carrd before and never clicked with either. I didn’t want to learn CSS or HTML. I just wanted it to work. So I tried building a website with AI and no coding experience. Two hours later I had a real site.

Why WordPress and No-Code Builders Kept Failing Me

I had built my wife’s website and my music hobby site before this, going back and forth between Claude chat and Gemini, pasting output into a terminal on Ubuntu. It worked. But I burned through my Netlify credits too fast by letting it auto-update live after every single change.

WordPress never clicked. Carrd was fine for a placeholder. Neither felt like something I actually wanted to share.

The Stack I Used (All Free Except One Thing)

This time I did things differently. Everything built locally first, pushed to GitHub and Netlify only once I was happy with it. I used Visual Studio Code with the Claude Code plugin so Claude Code could tell me what to type in the terminal. Same window, no switching apps.

Full stack: Claude Code, Cowork, Netlify for hosting, GitHub for backup, MailerLite for the newsletter. All free except Claude Pro at $20 a month.

The Workflow That Saved the Most Time

Agree on all copy before touching anything. That’s it.

Early on I kept having Claude Code make a change, checking how it looked, coming back to adjust a word, checking again. That burns tokens and patience fast. Once I told it to get sign-off on every word before making any changes, the whole process got cleaner.

The process in short:

1. Start in a regular LLM chat, Claude or ChatGPT, and describe what you want
2. Use that conversation to plan copy and design before touching any code
3. Get sign-off on every word before making changes
4. Bring the plan into Claude Code and build locally first
5. Push to GitHub and Netlify only once you’re happy with it

What AI Can’t Do For You

At some point I looked up and had a functional website. Home page, blog, about section, contact section. Before AI tools I would spend days going back and forth on a site and eventually abandon it because I never liked how it came out. This one just got done.

But design judgment is still yours. AI gave me a solid starting point. Color palette, dark or light background, that still comes down to personal taste. Nobody’s solved that part yet.

How to Start If You Think You’re Not Technical Enough

Start in a regular LLM chat and describe what you want. Use that conversation to plan and design first. Then bring what you planned into a vibe coding tool like Claude Code. The chat gives you the plan and the prompts.

Don’t expect perfection on the first pass. After a few rounds of telling it what to change, you’ll have something real.

Fair warning: you might get addicted. Sleep accordingly.