build-in-public

Day 0: Why I'm doing this

Mar 9, 2026

This is Day 0. The line in the sand.

For 5 years I’ve been building distributed systems for other people. Event-driven architectures, microservices, the works. Good work. Stable paycheck. Zero ownership of what I built.

Meanwhile, my personal GitHub is a graveyard. 7 unfinished repos. A habit tracker that got to 60% and died. A billing tool I abandoned after the Razorpay integration fought back. A “quick” SaaS idea that turned into 3 months of scope creep before I touched a single line of code.

Sound familiar?

Why now

Two things changed.

First, AI coding tools got real. Not “autocomplete on steroids” real — actually useful. I’ve been using Claude Code, Cursor, and v0 for the past few months, and the bottleneck shifted. It’s no longer “can I build this?” It’s “will I actually ship this?”

Second, I’m tired of consuming build-in-public content from SF founders with VC money and no day job. Where are the Indian devs shipping side projects after a 9-hour workday? Where are the Razorpay integration guides that aren’t from 2019? I want to see that content, so I’m going to make it.

Why AI products

Because the window is open right now. Every week there’s a new model, a new API, a new framework. The playbook isn’t written yet. A solo dev with good taste and fast shipping speed can compete with teams 10x their size. That won’t last forever, so I’m not waiting.

Why public

Because I know myself. If I build in private, repo #8 dies like the other 7. Building in public means I can’t quietly walk away. Someone is watching — even if it’s just future me, reading this post and cringing.

Also: the Indian dev ecosystem needs more raw build logs. Not tutorials. Not “I made $10k in my first month” threads. Just: here’s what I built, here’s what broke, here’s the actual numbers.

What to expect

Every week:

One new AI-powered tool, built and shipped
A build log covering the real process — what worked, what was painful, what I’d skip
Actual metrics — users, revenue, the works (even when those numbers are zero)

I’m starting with tools that solve problems I’ve personally hit as an Indian dev. Think: invoice generators that handle GST, payment integrations that work with UPI, SaaS starters that aren’t built exclusively for Stripe.

Let’s go

No grand vision. No 5-year roadmap. Just one tool per week, shipped ugly, documented honestly.

Week 1 starts tomorrow.

My AI Coding Stack

Mar 9, 2026

gabrubuilds

SDE → AI Product Builder

Everyone has opinions about AI coding tools. Most of those opinions come from people who tried them for an afternoon. I’ve been using these daily for months while building actual products. Here’s where I’ve landed.

Claude Code

The one I reach for first.

Claude Code is my default for anything that requires thinking. Refactoring a messy module, designing an API, debugging something subtle — this is where it shines. It holds context well, doesn’t hallucinate as aggressively as alternatives, and the reasoning quality is a clear step above.

The downside? It can be slow when you need quick edits. And the pricing adds up fast if you’re doing heavy iteration. But for anything non-trivial, it’s the best tool I’ve used.

Verdict: My primary coding partner. Worth the cost.

Cursor

The daily driver IDE.

Cursor is where I actually write code. The inline completions are fast, the chat is good enough for quick questions, and the tab-completion feels like it reads my mind about 60% of the time. The other 40% it confidently writes something wrong, but that’s the game.

What makes Cursor work is the speed. It doesn’t break my flow. I’m not copy-pasting into a browser — the AI is just there, in the editor, where I’m already working.

Verdict: Non-negotiable. This is where the code gets written.

OpenAI Codex

The async workhorse.

Codex is interesting because it operates differently. You throw a task at it, go make chai, and come back to a pull request. It’s great for mechanical work — migrations, test generation, boilerplate. I wouldn’t trust it with architecture decisions, but for “convert these 30 endpoints from Express to Hono”? Perfect.

The catch: it works best when your codebase is clean and well-structured. If your code is a mess, Codex will make it a bigger mess. Garbage in, garbage out — but faster.

Verdict: Great for grunt work. Not a thinker.

v0 by Vercel

The frontend shortcut.

I’m a backend engineer. CSS gives me anxiety. v0 lets me describe a UI in plain English and get something that actually looks good. It’s not perfect — you’ll spend time tweaking — but it gets me from “blank page” to “80% there” in minutes instead of hours.

The generated code is clean enough to ship. It uses Tailwind and shadcn/ui, which is exactly what I’d pick anyway. For a solo dev building tools fast, this is a genuine superpower.

Verdict: Essential for backend devs who need to ship frontend.

Bolt

The rapid prototyper.

Bolt is for when I need a working prototype in 20 minutes. It scaffolds full apps from a prompt — frontend, backend, database, the lot. The code quality isn’t production-grade, but that’s not the point. The point is validating an idea before investing a week into it.

I use it at the start of every weekly build to test whether an idea has legs. If the prototype feels promising, I rebuild properly. If it doesn’t, I’ve lost 20 minutes instead of 3 days.

Verdict: Brilliant for idea validation. Don’t ship the output directly.

The stack in practice

Here’s my actual workflow for a weekly build:

Bolt to prototype the idea in 20 minutes
v0 to generate the UI components
Cursor as the IDE for all actual development
Claude Code for architecture decisions, complex logic, and debugging
Codex for mechanical tasks — tests, migrations, repetitive refactors

No single tool does everything. The skill is knowing which one to reach for and when to switch.

These tools are evolving fast. What I wrote today might be outdated in a month. I’ll keep updating as my stack changes.