Prompt to Prod in a Weekend with Claude, v0, Cursor, and Vercel

I hadn't tried vibe coding before, but had been hearing a lot about it. I've been hesitant — ChatGPT's been a good friend to me in the past, when doing other startup work, but the thought of trusting it to take point on development was something I didn't anticipate would be effective for some time.

This past weekend, I had a new idea in mind for a business I wanted to pursue, and with speed and urgency in mind, I decided to also use this as an opportunity to see how well vibe coding actually works in practice. Here's how that went.

The Tools

Claude: For content strategy and technical planning
v0: For UI design
Cursor: For writing code
Vercel: For deployment

Friday Night

I needed an investor and product site. The traditional route — hiring designers, developers, going through revisions — would take weeks. I wondered if I could compress that timeline using AI tools.

I started with Claude. I worked through the site structure: what pages I needed, who the audience was, what message to convey. By midnight, I had a complete outline and rough drafts of the content.

The process was straightforward. I'd describe what I needed, Claude would suggest approaches, and I'd refine from there. It felt like having a knowledgeable colleague to bounce ideas off, and it helped that I had actual human friends to run my ideas past as well.

Saturday

Morning was design. v0 let me describe components in plain language and see them rendered immediately. "Modern hero section with two CTAs" became actual designs I could iterate on.

I built the site component by component. When something didn't look right, I'd describe the change I wanted. The feedback loop was instant.

By afternoon, I moved to Cursor. I'd take the v0 designs and ask Cursor to help integrate them into a Next.js app. It understood context — suggesting proper routing, catching accessibility issues, recommending optimizations.

The combination was powerful. v0 for visual design, Cursor for implementation. Each tool handling what it did best.

Sunday

Polish and deployment. I refined the copy with Claude, making sure the messaging was clear for both investors and potential users. Cursor helped with the technical details — page transitions, analytics, error handling.

Vercel deployment was simple. Connect the repo, push the code, watch it go live. No server configuration, no complexity. Just push and ship.

What I Learned

These tools are powerful when you know what you're building. They accelerate work but don't replace thinking. You still need to make decisions, provide direction, and know when something is good enough.

Starting with content strategy made everything else easier. When you know what you're trying to say, design and development decisions follow naturally.

The speed of iteration changed how I worked. I could try ideas that I might have skipped due to time constraints. Some of the best parts of the site came from quick shot-in-the-dark experiments.

Prompting Lessons

The biggest learning was about communication with AI tools. Be specific. The broader the instructions, the more time spent reloading checkpoints and burning tokens.

I learned to speak with these agents like a PM giving detailed instructions. Have a clear vision in mind before you start prompting. "Make it better" wastes time. "Move the CTA above the fold, increase the button size to 48px height, and change the color to our brand blue #0066CC" gets you there in one shot.

Some patterns that worked:

For Claude: Give context first, then specific asks. "I'm building an investor page for a B2B SaaS company. I need five sections that address common Series A concerns. Focus on market size, traction, and team." The Projects feature is fantastic for this!

For v0: Describe the visual hierarchy, not just elements. "Hero section with large 48px headline, 18px subtext in gray, two buttons side by side with primary/secondary styling, 80px spacing between sections."

For Cursor: Explain the why, not just the what. "Add email validation to prevent spam submissions. Use regex for basic format checking and show inline error messages."

The clearer your mental model, the better the output. Vague requests create vague results. Specific requests save time.

The Result

By Sunday night, minduo.ai was live. Professional design, responsive layouts, fast load times, clear messaging... It was honestly hard for me to believe it was all built in a weekend. No hours spent on Figma wireframing, just non-stop progress.

If You Want to Try This

Friday: Start with content. Know your audience and message. Saturday: Design in the morning, code in the afternoon. Sunday: Polish and deploy.

The tools make it possible, but you still need to guide them. Be specific about what you want. Iterate quickly. And then deploy when it's good enough, with notes in mind on how to iterate and improve later. As a good friend once told me, "shit code makes money."

minduo.ai is currently locked behind an access code, but you can preview the pretty little coming soon page now! Next, I'd like to experiment with the Vercel AI SDK and see if we can get the actual product rapidly prototyped.

Interested in knowing if this was helpful to anybody, please feel free to reach out with thoughts on any of the social media links provided.

Vibing with v0 (and friends)