Your first app with AI in an afternoon

Beginner path

Before you open a tool

You need an email address and about two hours. You do not need a GitHub account for the first publish. You do need to pick one tool.

Those ceilings are the vendors' published limits, copied onto the tool pages with links. They are not a measurement of how far a credit goes on your idea.

The prompt

Paste this, then replace the brackets.

Build a one-page website for [a band tip jar].
Show the name, a one-sentence description, and three items a visitor can look at.
Add one button that goes to [a payment link I will paste later].
Do not add login, a database, or a second page.
Use a plain light background and large type.

When it finishes, click through the page yourself. If a button does nothing, say so in the next message. Do not say "make it better."

Change only the button color to deep red.
Do not add pages, fonts from the internet, or a new library.

Publish

Use the tool's own publish button. Save the URL in your notes with the date and the tool name. If the page shows the tool's badge, that is the free plan working as documented, not a bug.

• I used one tool, not four.
• The page has no login.
• I can explain what the button does.
• I saved the URL.
• I know which free limit I am near.

Advanced path

If you already have a repo

Skip the browser builder. Open the repo in Cursor, Copilot, Devin Desktop, Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini CLI and ask for a branch, not a rewrite. The git guide and the rules-file guide are the constraints that keep an afternoon from becoming a drive-by refactor.

Do not point a second agent at the same files until the first diff is committed. That is the whole advanced version of this exercise.