I Tried Building an App Using AI —Here’s What Happened

Spoiler alert: AI is insanely helpful, but it’s not a silver bullet.

This past weekend, I decided to run a little experiment: Could I build an entire app using only AI tools? No tutorials. No Stack Overflow. Just me, a keyboard, and a lot of prompts.

The rules were simple—don’t touch Google. Just tell the AI what I need, let it generate the code, and deploy.

Here’s how it went—and what I wish I knew before I started.

AI Moves Fast—Like, Really Fast

Within minutes, I had it spinning up a React app. From there, I asked it to set up routing, drop in authentication, and scaffold a Node.js backend. Each task that would normally chew up a couple hours of my Saturday? Done in a fraction of the time.

If you already understand the tech stack, AI basically feels like an extra set of lightning-fast hands. Need a boilerplate? Done. Want some example logic? Sure. It’s like pair programming with a tireless dev who doesn’t take coffee breaks.

But that’s where the honeymoon phase ended.

The Cracks Start to Show When Things Get Real

As soon as I moved past the setup and into building actual features, the limitations started bubbling up.

- Components didn’t behave exactly how I wanted

- Logic often felt bloated or awkwardly structured

- Some functions technically worked, but not in a clean or efficient way

- I ended up rewriting a lot—sometimes most—of what it gave me

And this is coming from someone who’s comfortable with React and Node. If you’re not, you might not even notice the issues until they become a problem in production.

What Caught Me Off Guard: The Constant Rewriting

I went in thinking AI would “do the coding.” What actually happened? It gave me a solid rough draft—and then I had to dive in and clean it all up.

You still need to:

- Know how to structure and refactor code

- Spot bad logic or inefficient patterns

- Test thoroughly before you ship anything

And that brings me to something a lot of folks don’t want to hear.

The Hidden Risk for Beginners

If you’re just starting out, relying on AI can feel like a shortcut—but it might actually be setting you up for failure.

Because unless you know what should happen, you won’t know when something’s wrong. And the scary part? AI’s code often works just enough to seem fine, while quietly introducing bugs, security holes, or just really bad architecture under the hood.

If you don’t have the experience to catch those issues, you won’t even know what’s broken—until it’s way too late.

The Takeaway: Use AI, But Don’t Get Lazy

AI is a phenomenal tool. It can boost your productivity, speed up the boring parts, and even teach you a few things. But it’s not a replacement for actual skill.

So if you’re building with AI, keep this in mind:

- Use it to accelerate, not to autopilot

- Always double-check the output

- Don’t skip learning the fundamentals—because you will need them

AI might write the code, but you still have to be the developer.

And that means taking full responsibility for everything you ship.