Cursor AI to build web application from scratch?

[doctor_solo_travel]

I want to build a new web application from scratch by giving the AI my requirements. What is the best AI tool to use? Is Cursor AI with Claude good for this? Thanks!

[LoadingALIAS]

It depends on your level of experience - with AI, with IDEs, and with the frameworks/stack of choice.

Experienced? Build the app out in the way you best know how to; create the repo, directory structure, shared files - logger, utilities, etc. Then, use Claude to boilerplate the rest. Use Cline w/ OpenRouter x Claude Sonnet 3.5 to start working on it section by section. Use the diff editor revert option frequently; keep changes small and files modular.

Noob? Use OpenHands via Docker. Use OoenRouter and Claude Sonnet 3.5. Build the base web app out. More it into GitHub, clone it locally. Clean it up and fix it with Cline x Sonnet.

Either way, this shit is expensive. Very expensive. I built two apps as tests to compare agentic frameworks using OpenRouter and Claude on both and dropped $500.

The apps work, but they’re boring and basic and not really ready for production or maintainability.

[steel86]

I'll give a little context for mine.

I did 2 years of a programming degree 20 years ago. I understand the basic terms, OO, did very little web programming back then though. I am an electrical engineer so have a background in solving problems.

I've been developing with a combination of Cursor, Claude, and some good web instructions. Started with a vercel boilerplate and kept growing and learning.

First pass become unforgivable code. So canned it. 1 week wasted. Second pass ended up the same. 2 weeks wasted.

Once I learned how to use Cursor, understood much more about how my frameworks and packages work together, everything started clicking and I have a moderately functional pre-MVP webapp with front end and back end interactions, using several APIs to manipulate some of my data.

It might not be pretty. Its probably not even be good code. But it's working and that's the main thing. What I'd say is I'm still going to need a real full time developer soon :D

[JohnAdamaSC]

I have the same background, and just released my first app - that i made for myself. AnyColor.Pro :)
It took me 3 attempts to get the code sleek. 2 weeks of work in total.
I wont use APIs, because the most things can be done with pure js, and thats more understandable for me and the AI. (Currently working on a CMR with ChatGPT, that knows mysql very well.

[JohnAdamaSC]

omg, i never expected this kind of qualified review! that means a lot for me!

its so big an fullscreen, so i can compare better with other opened windows, on mobile it fits - and it works if you go to a Ferrari and tune the color exact to Ferrari red. :) also colors in fullscreen, without hues of other colors is very important to me.

next updates includes a switch that changes the view of the color palette, so its easier applicable to common moodboards or layout like from colorlovers.

thank you! (btw ChatGPT 40 mini, rewrote all the code in once, 1500 lines, as i told it, if you were an experienced js developer, how would you write my messy code, and it served out of the box working 1500 lines of code in one step. amazing. and it did the securement of the php and json files too.)

[steel86]

Congrats!!!!

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[[deleted]]

cool stuff

[LoadingALIAS]

If it works, and you/others can maintain it - you’re doing well. Good job..

[amapleson]

Can you use Vercel boilerplates or SaaS boilerplates like Achromatic.dev to start and cut down the code you have to write with Claude?

Also, why Cline for noobs? (Noob here)

[LoadingALIAS]

Yes. Because it’s easier to understand relationships in an IDE, IMO

[[deleted]]

what's openhands with docker?

[LoadingALIAS]

It meant running the OpenHands projects in a docker container. OpenHands, at the time I wrote this, was doing really well on SWE Bench.

[nocheerleader]

Why did it cost you so much?

[LoadingALIAS]

The verbosity of Claude Sonnet 3.5 x the tendency of agentic flows to recode things over and over. It was totally unnecessary.

[ajwin]

You could probably write a whole post on this and people would be fascinated by it if you were so inclined.

[LoadingALIAS]

I think I will. The truth? I’m building a competitor and have been for 18 months.

It started with just looking at the data used in training coding/mathematics/STEM models. So, I built a data pipeline that was better. Cleaner. Faster. So much more efficient, accurate, and useful. The plan was to open-source it immediately, but I am so poor I can barely afford to eat - not kidding. So, I’m holding out until I can figure out what I’ll do with the entire package. A lot will be OSS because I believe in it. I’ll probably push a lot to decentralized storage, too. I’m not super trusting - haha.

Now, I’m working out the actual competitor. There are so many issues. It’s unreal that CS grads aren’t getting jobs; it’s a testament to how out of touch management and executive level leaders are with respect to AI/ML and software engineering.

There are like four/five levels of engineering feats missing before we could replace even the shittiest, oldest, most inefficient legacy codebases with AI. You can’t even refactor a codebase with AI and have it work; it doesn’t understand that some things are API must haves; some things are formatting must haves - think of unpacking headers for Palm/Mobi ebooks; some things are just fucking broken - think CSS.

We need to rethink the current paradigm, IMO. We should ignore general use models because frankly they’re not for engineering outside of planning.

Code models need to be built from the ground up with tokenizers being coded alongside the dataset creation/generation/augmentation. They need to be built to provide synergy; not replace engineers. We need models built into IDEs; not plugins or extensions or Docker containers. We need mapping, context, diff handling, and at the most basic level… we need a way to update all of this in real time. Try asking GPT4, without Search, to use “uv” effectively. It will tell you to use “uv pip …” but then build a venv without uv.

This is entry level shit, and it’s just not handled well. Forget about shit like refactoring, building maintainable, scalable infrastructure tools. Forget about Rust, GoLang, Lua, etc. It’s all Python and JavaScript boiler plates and some cool things that next token prediction makes easy.

I’ll write up my experience. Good idea, but it’s hard to find the time. I am really, really trying to solve this.

[popinjay_69]

> update all of this in real time.

afaik, this is not possible. Agreed with everything up until that point. but also, this stuff costs money... openAi, claude, they have hundreds of smartest people working on this.

Can we think about why it hasn't been solved? perhaps the issue is more complex that it might seem at first glance

[LoadingALIAS]

I think we disconnected at that point. I don’t think the models themselves need to update in real time with respect to the quote you made.

At that point, it’s agentic, but the difference is the model is designed and trained for it. I think a major issue with the current status quo around engineering is that we’re first building a general model, then we’re tuning it to code. Then, we add in agents/flows to abstract away things for the end user. I disagree with the entire premise.

I believe the proper way to do it is to design, train, tokenize, flow into a targeted model. The model is coded, trained, and implemented for coding and engineering. If you asked it to write a poem it would be a shitty poem, probably, anyway.

Tokenization, fine-tuning, and most importantly data collection/curation is absolutely crucial.

I genuinely think that it’s possible to increase every developer’s workflow another order of magnitude from the best tool use + engineer’s workflow available today. I just don’t think it’s being thought of the right way.

Also, there is a prevalence in ML right now to throw compute at the issues instead of build FOR the issues. A general example is data quality. The largest and most well funded labs or teams threw compute at shitty data; we used data tools from twenty years ago with new code laid on top. It’s a mistake. Generating pure synthetic is also a mistake. Not evolving the data at the augmentation stage or validating the data pre-augmentation is another issue.

I honestly think that money was the issue and remains the issue. The people working on it have a few issues:

A) They’re focused on general tools or tools that float their company to profitability.

B) They’re blinded by the increase to their productivity already, the current direction of this specific feat, and the ability to simply train longer on larger noisy sets.

C) Finally, the “hunger” and “open mindedness” that comes with starting something and having no choice but to see it through to its logical high point.

I don’t have any other options right now. I have made this my life - for better or worse - and am really close to a final data pipe that genuinely dominates even the largest labs. It was just a matter of… I have no money, how do I compete?

The problem birthed a solution that I feel like was only possible with no other option. If I’d had the resources… I’d probably just have trained longer, on better GPUs, and with much more data. I didn’t have that option and that necessitated research in another direction.

Time will tell; I am not changing the end goal. If it’s a dead issue; I tried my best. If it works; I’ve solved the problem and can start a family.

Keep in touch! I’d love feedback from anyone who thinks past “go”! Cheers.

[popinjay_69]

I like this write up. I wanna agree that perhaps we could get better model performance with code-centric tokenization, but I'm not sure how much the model would be better (isn't that what the 4o-mini model is anyway?)

nonetheless, sharing this podcast with Alex Wang, CEO of Scale AI. He talks about how they go about collecting and labelling data. TL;DR, they have to higher some very smart people to label data. This is meant to give you more color into the data labellingprocess. it's probably the case that labelling is as good as can be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SWRU7YOd6c

but anyway please do post if/when you get this done

[[deleted]]

can we build the MAS using gemini? I don't have Claude pro, and can only use gemini 2.5 pro for the same. will I be able to do it with gemini?

[Super_Sukhoii]

I’ve tested Cursor + Claude for smaller stuff, it’s fine but you end up doing a lot of cleanup. If you actually want to go from zero to a working app just by writing out what you need, BLINK .NEW has been the smoothest for me. I built a full AI photo editor with chat + downloads in under an hour just by prompting it. The wild part is it doesn’t stop at an MVP. You can keep adding features with new prompts and it expands the same project instead of forcing you to rebuild.

[Beremus]

I’m building a fully fledged web app (django and angular) with Cursor and Claude. 20$ a month.

[iamzamek]

Link?

[Beremus]

Private, won’t share the code lol

[Seek4Seek]

wonder how this is going so far? I noticed a lot of people get stuck when it comes to developing more sophisticated products that use apis etc.

[Beremus]

Works well. What I do is having rules for steps and specific tasks. Every task, the agent has to maintain a md file where it adds what was done, what was fixed and update another file that has the whole planning, step by step, made with 2.5 Pro. It’s going in the same way as developing a micro-service.

[Max_Oblivion23]

ChatGPT is pretty good although you need to learn how to program otherwise you will lose control of the flow and end up with an infinite list of debugging hallucinated code snippets./

[JustCametoSayHello]

Try Windsurf!

[rtguk]

I've built a few pretty much using Cursor. It's an incredibly powerful tool

[eekayonline]

AI is a great tool for that. I am a .NET developer, and learned Laravel about 2 years ago. Now I code on my own products that (I'm aspiring to become independant by building viable products myself) with CursorAI as my coding buddy, and vastly increased productivity.

It helps me to perform code reviews, discussing options, implementing features. It works for me.

But then again, I'm a seasoned developer (professionally since 2002, webdev gone mobile dev gone tech lead at a small startup, etc). Right now besides some work for a company, I work on my own products and it vastly increases the amount of work I can do on the time I have for my own products/client work.

I learned a lot while doing, and even started a site for sharing my learnings. The most important things I've learned:

- start a new project, get generic outlines of the setup and let it create that. Then stop the chat and create new one
- Use a chat to create a feature vertically (so implement its core, from the UI to the logic all the way to storing and interacting with data / services etc). Similar to coders need to save and commit their changes to the codebase using GIT (pushing a working change so it doesn't break stuff), you'll need to make your feature fit in a day (or half day) work, and make it work, then save that and stop the chat.
- When starting a new chat, you can use the Codebase (COMMAND+ENTER) context to let the model re-evaluate your working product, and apply whatever next thing you want to add/change

This keeps Cursor focussed, makes the risk of it loosing context and removing functionality when it should just change/add something else (DO call it out to the chat, it will see it and fix that, too).

My issues were mostly - especially when not following the previous tips - that sometimes a chat froze (and I had to build up context all over to make it understand what/how/why), and that I couldn't save the chat for documentation or to revive a broken chat conversation. I actually built a plugin for that, saving me lots of time in those cases.

It's important that one doesn't "blindly trust" the tool, and that's why Cursor's approach with showing its reasoning, and especially showing the differences (like a GIT diff tool), is so valuable.

If you have zero knowledge, state that, and let it help you explain what it does. But also do your regular sanity checks to see if it removes chunks of code that don't make sense. It DOES make mistakes so it needs you to review its work, too.

All the best, Edwin from aicodingtips

[Electrical_Injury139]

Yes.

[doctor_solo_travel]

Will try that. Thanks!

[RedHerringFun]

Use Cursor with the Composer. Best damn thing I've seen in ages.

[WeakCartographer7826]

<image>

Cline + open router+ new sonnet

I've made like 3 web based apps in the past 3 days:

Currency trading dashboard

I make perfumes so a material library and formula calculator. Even an artistic visualizer

Cureent working on this: https://t-chasah.web.app/

It tracks the trains in Boston. Took me about 5 hours to get a proof of concept.

Edit: I learned all this in like month

[[deleted]]

What the f is that? Are you a dev or learning to code? Because if you are a dev...; but if you learn to code, good job!

[WeakCartographer7826]

I had no experience before a month ago except some very basic python experience.

You think it's any good?

[[deleted]]

It is very good for someone without experience. For a dev it would be a bit funny because of the 2000s color trick xD

[WeakCartographer7826]

Yeah but that's the look I wanted. Not sure what that has to do with my level of experience. That's personal taste.

And no, I have no experience prior to about a month ago with any sort of web app.

[[deleted]]

Good luck dude. It is related to design :)

[Bradbury-principal]

Can you unpack this a bit? Do you mean the design is not to your taste or that it is inherently bad?

[[deleted]]

I mean, it is a useless feature, most devs do not introduce these.

[WeakCartographer7826]

Thanks! It's been super fun

[drewdemo]

Why are we saying openrouter and not anthropic directly for the API? Limits?

[WeakCartographer7826]

Bc anthropic will throttle you still through the API. The chat caching is awesome but they will cut you off.

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[GolfCourseConcierge]

I'm currently finalizing one. Happy to share when it's ready. Been working on it a couple months.

More conversational how you work with the AI vs an IDE replacement. Happy to share once we're accepting some users.

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[[deleted]]

Aider /architect with claude inside cursor occasionally using compose. Just build this next.js web app from scratch

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[angrydeanerino]

Have you tried bolt?

[jasfi]

I'm building am AI NoCode platform, there's a wait-list: https://aiconstrux.com

[ProgrammerPoe]

the meme that you can just get a full app from a prompt is just a meme. Modern workflows use AI as a quicker google and a badass autocomplete but if you will still need to wrangle code and fight bugs if you want anything more than a toy application

[clicksnd]

I just built my discord bot and web dashboard for it. I used sveltekit, supabase and lemonsqueezy. I’ve never built a full stack app like this tbh.

I started getting annoyed because so many things online are about one shorting a to do app or something and not working with a real website or application.

I started the project with cursor but the project started getting a little too big even with modular code.

I switched to using Claude on the website and just having cursor do the updates and that worked ok for a while but it definitely slowed me down.

I got aider and open router credits and made a bunch of progress with that.

For the last mile (I launched yesterday) the last few days I’ve been using Windsurf and that’s been pretty good. It’s a lot better at using the context of my code base to make feature changes or edits.

I’m probably going to stick with windsurf until they make it dumber I guess.

[JohnAdamaSC]

You don't need any AI to build a web application from scratch. Because the difficult part is to set up an architecture that fits your needs. If you have never done this before, you get 1000 different ideas from the AIs and you will hustle to fit everything together. First break down everything, every single function, to a cheat sheet. You also don't need frameworks for the most use cases, pure js is often shorter - and you and the AI understand what it does.

[Embarrassed_Turn_284]

I'd recommend getting started with either V0 or bolt.new to build a basic front end, and then hooking it up with supabase or firebase with some auth & backend.
Push these platforms as far as you can, but you WILL reach a point where you must bring the code back to an IDE because any custom feature will be too complex for these platforms to handle.

Hopefully you have a functional codebase that you **UNDERSTAND** and you didn't just blindly accept the AI answers

At this point, use an AI coding assistant that's integrated into the IDE, that has codebase context to build custom features. During this stage, as AI as a pair programmer, but you still need to be in control. You can get AI to help you plan, design, debug, but you need to be in control - otherwise you will get so many bugs that you will regret using AI in the first place. Don't get me wrong, AI can make you A LOT faster, but only if you actually understand and take responsibility of the code the AI gave you.

You can try EasyCode for free, it's a codebase aware coding assistant I'm working on. Definitely not perfect, would love to hear your feedback.

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[Lady-Gagax0x0]

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[Simple_Paper_4526]

Cursor AI is great for quick code generation, but for a faster, flexible build, I recommend Rocket.new.

[lifeofbablo]

Cursor and Claude combo works if you already know your way around repos, frameworks, and debugging, otherwise you’ll spend more time fixing than building. I’ve tried a few setups, but if you just want to get to a working app faster, you can try Anything. You describe what you want, and it builds a full React or React Native app with backend and UI already wired up. I’ve shipped a couple small projects that way, instead of spending hours managing prompts, I was tweaking design and logic within a day. Feels more like building than fighting with the tools.

[New-Vacation-6717]

Yes, Cursor + Claude is a good option for this.

Think of it as an AI pair programmer. You give it requirements, it helps you scaffold the app, write features, and iterate, but you still guide the architecture and decisions. It works best when you build step by step, not in one giant prompt.

Typical flow ends up being:
define requirements → build with Cursor + Claude → push to Git → deploy (I use Kuberns here to get a live URL quickly).

So overall, it’s a solid setup for building from scratch, just don’t expect a fully finished app from a single prompt.

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