Tech stack and playbook for rapid prototyping and launching

Without meaning to, I think I’ve put together/have been following a playbook that enables me to rapid prototype on a stack that will scale to running a full application while starting at JUST the cost of your domain. I.e. lots of free tier usage, and no need to switch services if/once your idea takes off.

Before I share the details, just know that I’ve sort’ve backed into this stack through a mix of prior exposure and following the path of least resistance. So if you’re set on Python, Flask, Postgres, on Azure, with a Vue frontend possibly hosted on Vercel… some of this may still be helpful? But v0.dev won’t be for you. At least not without react/nextJS to Vue conversion (I hear LLMs are pretty decent at that ??).?

Here’s the playbook I’ve been following without really thinking about it (until now!):

1. Buy the domain. I’ve used a half dozen out there. Recently appreciated Porkbun ? because it’s quirky, but more importantly, it has all the tools, is snappy, lets me pay with Apple Pay, and lets me sub-account in order to invite whoever in.?
2. Forward email to your personal account. I use Gmail and also Front but anything works. You can even set up a send-as pretty quickly with any provider. Voila!
3. (Optional) Create a Google Account for the new address and a Chrome Profile. This is a convenience and QOL thing for me. I don’t want to have to create a dozen passwords, even with a password manager (I use 1Password ) so signing on/up with Google works for most places. The Chrome Profile is great because I can save an opening set of tabs, get my default logins configured, and keep the various internet properties organized and split off from one another. (I’ve also created a Raycast command that lets me open/activate the browser window for the selected profile)
4. (Optional) Create a GitHub Org. Both GitHub accounts and GitHub orgs are free. Migrating a private personal repo to an org isn’t too difficult, but I find locking down the namespace for your idea on all places is both cathartic and sets you up with a bit of a growth mindset.
5. Create a Netlify account. We’ll be hosting our frontend here, and possibly your backend if you have a more lightweight need.
6. Create a PostHog account. You’ll see a recurring theme of trying to support COSS (Commercial Open Source Software) wherever I can. Posthog is a good one. Also interesting to see the decisions they’ve made to get more closed source over time. Anywho, they cover the analytics gamut, from web analytics to product usage. We’ll use this for all things analytics and tracking.
7. Create an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. Your choice. We won’t use this right away, but I just like signing up for everything in one go. We’ll be using this for more intensive compute and for the generous free tier they have. You can’t go wrong with Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure or another more niche specific one. I’m optimizing for “everyone knows, and generous free offering”. We’ll also be using for Frigg to develop integrations. More on that in a separate post.
8. Create a MongoDB Atlas account. Also more or less your choice. I just go with the stack I know, MERN, with a NoSQL DB offering so that we can flex our data model as we explore our app development. Also not going to use right away, but good to have signed up. Shared free clusters are just fine for prototyping.
9. Create a v0.dev account. See other posts, but I think this is a game changer to go from describing what you want to actually valid code up and running fast. Using it for the full app build constrains you to Nextjs and Shadcn components, but if you know what you’re doing you can easily break out or just use it for specific react components.
10. Download Cursor (acquired by DataRobot) cursor.com. Well, they’ve done it. They’ve supplanted my long affection for JetBrains ' Webstorm and Tabnine . Specifically, they go from “Here’s what you should do” suggestions to “intelligently Apply a diff to your code”, and you can review and reject/approve line by line. That’s critical. Too much copy-pasting for me from the existing AI coding assistant tools.
11. Create a Stack-Auth.com account. We won’t use much at first but, see above RE: COSS software, and love their offering to fit nicely into Next.js.
12. Create a logo. Go simple, prompt a few of the LLMs and see what they come up with, use a random logo generator. Simpler/flatter the better. We’re looking for the icon plus word mark if you want it. Icon if you don’t care for word mark yet. Also shoot for some color palette you like.
13. Generate the landing page you want with v0. Attach your logo to the query. Sign up for premium if you want to keep things private or create a project to organize multiple chat sessions and broader context.
14. Initialize your repo locally with shadcn via the “import this into my code” feature of v0. The shadcn CLI will prompt you to create a new Nextjs project with all of the sane defaults, then import your generated landing page and install all of the needed dependencies. Ready to go.
15. Run and fix anything you need. Cursor is your friend.
16. Deploy your landing page to Netlify. If you want automatic deploys but want to stick with the free tier, and you want your repo to stay private, you need your repo to live in your personal GitHub account. Otherwise, enjoy tinkering.
17. Set up Netlify to run your DNS. I like using their Nameservers. Easier for everything. But if you know what you’re doing, easy to do a CNAME or ALIAS. Options abound. Free SSL is great :-)
18. Publish, and you’re live! Now the game is iterate, and from here the playbooks abound for trying to gauge interest in your idea, exploring PMF (Product Market Fit), sprinkle some paid advertising, launching a beta program, and more.
19. (Optional) Hook up your DB and Auth. If you need anything more than a coming soon page, start hooking up auth and your database.
20. (Optional) Create a Frigg app to launch your first few integrations. I’ll have more on this as I go through some iterations. This makes sense to spin up, but also makes more sense once you’ve started building out your first set of features and have a rudimentary API up and running.
21. (Optional) Create an internal Frigg app for process automation. I’ll have more on this as well… you may want this early on so you can take control over your whole automation flow. For example, you could use Frigg to do email capture and drop folks into a bucket in your preferred email tool. You could have Frigg automate code sync between repos. Or have Slack notifications send any time someone signs up. Or any number of automations to wire you up.
22. (Optional) Incorporate the entity so you can take advantage of at least a dozen different Startup programs to get free credit and discounts on useful tools. There are some competing services all for ~$500 or less these days, but your call.

I could go on and on… but I’ll stop there and ask- any step I’m missing? Anything you’d swap out for?