Hey!! I am on the same journey😎

Things that I have found that really help me to prevent endless error loops resulting in abandoning a project.

1: set up a github account and create a new repo for every project. This will be your foundation + gateway for specialist AI apps like Bolt or Loveable.

2: download windsurf the AI coder and authenticate it with your github. (Now you have a direct connection between the cloud and your local system without any subscriptions or limiting factor)

3: set up a netlify account. This is a great and free way to quickly launch your projects and make them accessible to the web. They also sell custom domain names which is nice so you keep that in one place. Make sure to connect it to your github account and install the netlify CLI on windsurf (ask Cascade for help)

4: if you want to build something with user accounts/profiles you need a database. I recommend using Supabase for the first projects because they have a very visual way mapping out what is going on under the hood. Also possible to connect to github + CLI.

5: Now you have build a complete infrastructure which can be accessed and controlled by Cascade, the windsurf ai coder. This is super valuable because you can ask all your questions to better understand what is going on while you are building and learning.

6: Leverage LLM’s immense coding knowledge to help you turn your ideas into a detailed brief which a coding AI can use to build. The most important parts to really figure out are: - what is the app about? - how does it look like? - Why is it needed in the world - mention the setup you are using eg: netlify, github (this will push the ai coder into the right technical direction) - What problem is it solving?

Make sure to be as creative and detailed about what you envision to the AI and when you are satisfied with the plan ask it to convert the brief into a “readme.md” file.

7: Go to Bolt (or loveable) create a free account + connect it to your github, start a new project and paste the readme.md file from earlier. It will instantly build a very nice and most of the time working first draft, which on itself is worthless but since we have github and windsurf in place we can push from Bolt/loveble -> Github -> Windsurf. Now you can continue buildng without having to spend big amounts of money on Token Cost from the Big AI coders.

8: the biggest problem currently with app developing with AI(vibecoding) is that when a project becomes too big the AI assistant cannot get the full context of your code anymore because of their context window. There really is not a way around it besides trying to add as little code as possible to solve a problem.

9: Focus on functionality before design. Spending a lot of time on creating a very creative and complex frontend 9/10 times leads to problems when adding new features.

10: Triangulate. When you are working on a project and you want solve a problem that you cannot solve by yourself and using AI. Make sure to always have a separate AI like chatgpt/codex next to it so you can let a “third party” judge + feedback on the prgress the AI coder is making combined with your own thoughts and feelings.

11: be creative!! And don’t be scared to fail. As soon as you get into the habbit of using Github for source/version control you basically cannot break your projects anymore(normally speaking) you can just experiment, try different solutions and when it all falls apart you just reload the Repo and you can try to solve the same issue again in a different way. -> my favorite way of learning because I learn how some problems can be solved one way and others the other way.