Build a full web app with database, storage and landing page
Plus some must know tips. Task: Plus some must know tips. The last time I seriously cut any code was back in the early 2000s. Even then, it was using Borland Delphi and Microsoft Visual Basic to write add-on applications for the ERP software that we sold and implemented to various clients. Things quickly moved on in the coding world and I got left behind, embarking on a career of management and data strategy consulting. Since then I have always wanted to get back into building applications but as technology continued to progress, so did the learning curve. Want to create an app? Go ahead and learn backend, front-end, and database tools. Then put them all together and there you go! If only it was so easy. Thanks for reading The Data Coach! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When no code platforms started become mainstream I spent some time looking at these. I tried Bubble and whilst building business logic and workflows was easy, creating the user interface was hell on earth. Next, I gave Adalo a try which was not too bad. It was very easy and quick to build a user interface and data elements but that also made it limiting because there were just somethings that were not possible. Also, it was not that cheap, especially if you wanted to use certain features like geolocation. At $65 a month, it was an expensive subscription for what is essentially a hobby. You can see a demo of the app at www.ecofloats.app. After hanging out on YouTube for many hours, and I mean many, I came across several AI-enabled software development platforms. Like Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, and Replit. I played around with Bolt and Lovable as both provide a limited amount of daily credits or tokens to build an app. I was quite impressed and wanted to go a bit deeper. I had also started looking at Replit, although to use the AI agent to build, you needed a paid plan. I had seen the founder, Amjad Masad, in several interviews and was really impressed with what he had build. So one afternoon in the last week of 2024 I signed up for a $25 a month plan and started building. Here is how I did it. Warning: the process of building and testing is very addictive! Step 1: An Idea Something that I am not short on is ideas! I needed something that would not be too big scope or too complex and something that users would find interesting. I settled on a website that allows the public to report bad or selfish driving, with the view of creating awareness of road safety and a social conscience when using the roads. I noted down the key features that I wanted and moved on to the next step. Step 2: The Initial Prompt After signing up to a paid plan on Replit, I start with prompting the agent, describing the app I wanted it to build. There is a feature which helps improve the prompt and this is what I started with. The agent began work, first by creating a mini project plan and asking me to validate it. It then began building. The agent is also creative and suggested features to add, most of which were pretty relevant to what I was trying to achieve. It is fair to say that the first results were not bad but a little refinement was needed. This is all done in a conversational way and fairly straight forward. Each time the agent makes a change of a certain significance, it creates a checkpoint to which you can roll back. Each checkpoint costs $0.25 and this is offset against your monthly subscription charge. I continued this process till everything was working to my satisfaction. I did encounter problems along the way when something would not work or the app crashed and the agent was pretty good at fixing things. I usually copied and pasted any errors I encountered and this helped things along. The agent created the app as well as a relational database. This was done using Postgres hosted by Neon and fully integrated into Replit. Step 3: Adding Third Party Integrations Most of what I wanted to active, the agent did with JavaScript code and additional libraries but there are some third party platforms that it used. I am not sure how it decides on what to use so probably something for me to learn more about.; tools: Replit Agent. Human role: The original post does not say how a person stayed involved.; limitations: Replit Agent requires a paid subscription ($25/month) and consumes credits for checkpoints ($0.25 each). The author highlighted that the agent's choice of third-party tools can be opaque, and that development and production databases share a single instance, risking data loss during testing. Basic coding knowledge (e.g., SQL) was noted as helpful for backend management..
Tools
Published on Agent Work Atlas:
Overview
Plus some must know tips.
Workflow
Plus some must know tips. The last time I seriously cut any code was back in the early 2000s. Even then, it was using Borland Delphi and Microsoft Visual Basic to write add-on applications for the ERP software that we sold and implemented to various clients. Things quickly moved on in the coding world and I got left behind, embarking on a career of management and data strategy consulting. Since then I have always wanted to get back into building applications but as technology continued to progress, so did the learning curve. Want to create an app? Go ahead and learn backend, front-end, and database tools. Then put them all together and there you go! If only it was so easy. Thanks for reading The Data Coach! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When no code platforms started become mainstream I spent some time looking at these. I tried Bubble and whilst building business logic and workflows was easy, creating the user interface was hell on earth. Next, I gave Adalo a try which was not too bad. It was very easy and quick to build a user interface and data elements but that also made it limiting because there were just somethings that were not possible. Also, it was not that cheap, especially if you wanted to use certain features like geolocation. At $65 a month, it was an expensive subscription for what is essentially a hobby. You can see a demo of the app at www.ecofloats.app. After hanging out on YouTube for many hours, and I mean many, I came across several AI-enabled software development platforms. Like Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, and Replit. I played around with Bolt and Lovable as both provide a limited amount of daily credits or tokens to build an app. I was quite impressed and wanted to go a bit deeper. I had also started looking at Replit, although to use the AI agent to build, you needed a paid plan. I had seen the founder, Amjad Masad, in several interviews and was really impressed with what he had build. So one afternoon in the last week of 2024 I signed up for a $25 a month plan and started building. Here is how I did it. Warning: the process of building and testing is very addictive! Step 1: An Idea Something that I am not short on is ideas! I needed something that would not be too big scope or too complex and something that users would find interesting. I settled on a website that allows the public to report bad or selfish driving, with the view of creating awareness of road safety and a social conscience when using the roads. I noted down the key features that I wanted and moved on to the next step. Step 2: The Initial Prompt After signing up to a paid plan on Replit, I start with prompting the agent, describing the app I wanted it to build. There is a feature which helps improve the prompt and this is what I started with. The agent began work, first by creating a mini project plan and asking me to validate it. It then began building. The agent is also creative and suggested features to add, most of which were pretty relevant to what I was trying to achieve. It is fair to say that the first results were not bad but a little refinement was needed. This is all done in a conversational way and fairly straight forward. Each time the agent makes a change of a certain significance, it creates a checkpoint to which you can roll back. Each checkpoint costs $0.25 and this is offset against your monthly subscription charge. I continued this process till everything was working to my satisfaction. I did encounter problems along the way when something would not work or the app crashed and the agent was pretty good at fixing things. I usually copied and pasted any errors I encountered and this helped things along. The agent created the app as well as a relational database. This was done using Postgres hosted by Neon and fully integrated into Replit. Step 3: Adding Third Party Integrations Most of what I wanted to active, the agent did with JavaScript code and additional libraries but there are some third party platforms that it used. I am not sure how it decides on what to use so probably something for me to learn more about.
Reported result
The app was successfully deployed to a custom domain with a total project cost of $35.82. The author noted that the initial deployment failed once but succeeded on retry, and that switching to Firebase for authentication broke existing functionality, requiring debugging. The process was described as addictive but required careful management of agent-suggested features to avoid scope creep.
Human role
The original post does not say how a person stayed involved.
Limitations
Replit Agent requires a paid subscription ($25/month) and consumes credits for checkpoints ($0.25 each). The author highlighted that the agent's choice of third-party tools can be opaque, and that development and production databases share a single instance, risking data loss during testing. Basic coding knowledge (e.g., SQL) was noted as helpful for backend management.
Try it
Act as a technical lead guiding an agent to build a web application. 1. Define a small-scope app idea [replaceable: e.g., a simple inventory tracker] with key features. 2. Use Replit Agent to generate a project plan; I will validate it before you proceed. 3. Build the core functionality, including a database (e.g., Postgres/Neon) and basic UI. 4. When errors occur, I will paste logs; you must fix them and create checkpoints. 5. Integrate third-party services [replaceable: e.g., Auth, Storage] only after I provide API keys. 6. Deploy to a test environment first. Do not publish to production or spend beyond the $25 monthly credit limit without my explicit approval. Measure success by: app loads without errors, database records persist, and total cost stays under $40. If inputs are missing, ask for specific API keys or design briefs.
Source reports are not independently verified. Publication date is the catalog publication date, not the original article date.