I built this whole site by talking to an AI

You're reading this inside the thing I'm about to describe. The room around you, the books on the shelf, the dog by the desk, the door that swings open when you click it. I didn't write that code. I described what I wanted, an AI wrote it, I looked at the result, and I said what was wrong. Over and over until it was right.

I'm not a developer. I want that on the record before anything else. I can't write React from scratch. What I can do is look at something and know when it's off, and it turns out that's most of the job.

I can't code. What I can do is look at something and know when it's off, and that turned out to be most of the job.

The room was the easy part

This surprised me. I figured a 3D room rendering live in your browser would be the hard thing and the writing would be easy. It was the other way around.

The 3D scene came together fast. React Three Fiber does the heavy lifting, and the AI knew it cold. I'd say "the camera should drift a little when I move the mouse" and a minute later it drifted. "Hang a painting over the TV." Done. "Make it a long one." Done.

The slow part was taste. Knowing the painting was hung too high. Knowing the dog looked fake.

The dog looked fake for a long time

I wanted a dog in the room. His name is Bandit. Easy ask, right?

First version was a beagle that tilted his whole body to "look up." It looked like rigor mortis. We tried a rigged shiba off a free model site. It was huge, and the way it was turned, all you could see was his back end. Swapped angles. Still looked digital. Wrong for the room.

So Bandit is a beagle who just breathes for now, until I find a properly rigged dog worth paying for. That's the honest version. I'd rather have a dog that sits there and breathes than one that moves wrong and pulls you out of the whole thing.

Update (June 30): I found the dog. He's properly rigged now, he watches your cursor, and he turns to look at you when you mouse over him. I'm keeping a running log of him coming to life in bringing Bandit to life.

That's a real lesson, not a humble-brag: the fake-looking thing that moves is worse than the real-looking thing that's still.

What broke

A few things broke hard enough to teach me something.

The build wouldn't compile on my own laptop. Turns out my OS kills the tool that bundles the code the first time it runs. So every build happens on a little server instead. Annoying once, then it's just the routine.

The pages were also stamping the wrong title into the code search engines read. Every page claimed to be the homepage. Had to pull that out and give each page its own. Boring fix, big deal for getting found.

The actual workflow

Here's the loop, start to finish:

1. I describe what I want in plain words.
2. The AI writes or changes the code.
3. I look at the live result. Not a slideshow. The real thing.
4. I say what's wrong, specifically.
5. Repeat until I stop finding things wrong.

No step in there requires me to know a programming language. It requires me to know what good looks like and refuse to settle. That part I'm good at.

If you want the step-by-step version of all this, not just the story of this one build, I put it in how to build a website with AI when you can't code. That's the full playbook.

And if you want a real, live website built the same way without doing it yourself, that's literally the service. Otherwise, stick around. I'll write down every build as it happens, the wins and the stuff that broke, right here.