A one-day, hands-on workshop for anyone in the village with an idea. Never written code? Perfect.
Bring one sentence about who your idea is for. Leave with a name, a look, a live website and a working app at your own address, built with Claude as your crew.
You don’t need to lay bricks. You need to know what goes where. Keep scrolling and watch one go up, room by room, from the first idea at sunrise to the lights coming on at night. Each room is one thing you’ll build on the day.
Part one · Morning
Start with the outside.
A name, a look, the right words and a page people can visit. Before you eat, your idea has a front door and a waitlist.
You describe what you want in plain English. Claude does the building and shows you every change.
Think of yourself as the architect with a very fast crew. You never swing a hammer; you decide what you want and say “yes” or “not like that.” That’s the skill you’ll practise all day.
At the workshopOpen Claude on your laptop and type what you want. One click puts a starter site online in your first half hour, so you build on something real from the start.
What we learnedWrite the house rules down once and the crew follows them every time. Ours live in a file Claude reads before it starts.
The real tool:Claude Code
Peek at the real thingwhat you’ll type
> /design home-cooked lunch for remote workers in North Goa
> /review-my-diff
> /ship-it
Room 02Morning
The blueprintis your idea, on one page.
Who is it for, what’s annoying about their day now, and what’s the one thing you want them to do?
Before the crew lifts anything, someone decides who lives here. Your blueprint is a few sentences, and every later choice (the name, the colors, the words) gets checked against it. Our practice idea is Tiffin: hot, home-cooked lunch for people working from cafés and villas up the coast.
At the workshopBring one sentence: who it’s for and what changes for them. Claude asks a few questions and turns your answers into a one-page brief.
What we learnedLook around before you build. We once spent two days making something that already existed, and the existing one worked better.
The real tool:/design
Peek at the real thingTiffin’s blueprint
One sentence: Remote workers in North Goa can eat a hot,
home-cooked lunch every day without paying café prices,
eating oily food alone, or losing an hour to cooking.
Feels: neighbourly, hot, dependable
Never feels: app-like, curated, touristy
Room 03Morning
The name on the gateis what people call it.
Short, easy to say out loud, and something you can actually own online.
With the blueprint in hand, Claude suggests a long list of names. You cut it to a few favourites, then check the web address and the Instagram handle are free before anyone falls in love. Tiffin is the name of the steel lunch carrier itself, so the name explains the business.
At the workshopThirty names, then five, then one. Check which web addresses you can get.
What we learnedNames that last borrow a word from the world they serve. A chef hears “Mise” and knows you’ve worked in a kitchen.
The real tool:namingdomain check
Room 04Morning
The sign out frontis your logo.
Recognisable at a glance, across the street or on a tiny phone screen.
Same sign, now designed: a simple mark, the name in the right font, and it still works when it’s small. Tiffin’s mark is the three-tier lunch carrier, because that’s what turns up at your door.
At the workshopClaude proposes a direction and a mark. You pick, push back, and approve.
What we learnedUse the original logo file, every time. A logo redrawn from memory is always slightly off.
The real tool:/design
Room 05Morning
The paint swatchesare your colors and fonts.
Pick a few colors and fonts once, give each a job, and use them everywhere.
You choose paint before you paint, not wall by wall. One color for buttons, one for text, one for the background, saved on a single card. Every page reads from that card later, which is why the whole site matches without you checking each screen. Watch the fence: it just got painted.
At the workshopTurn your logo and mood into a small palette and two fonts.
What we learnedGive every color one job. When two jobs share a color, buttons start blending into text.
The real tool:design tokens
Peek at the real thingTiffin’s paint card
brand #a3412a the main button, the 1 pm mark
background #f6f0e6 the page
text #221a16 words
steel #9aa1a5 the lunch carrier
Room 06Morning
The listingis the words on your site.
The few sentences that make a stranger want to walk up the path.
A house listing doesn’t describe the pipes. It says “sunny kitchen, five minutes to the beach.” Your words work the same way: talk about your visitor’s day, make one promise, ask for one thing.
At the workshopWrite your headline and a short pitch in your own voice, with Claude as your editor.
What we learnedNever invent numbers or reviews you don’t have yet. Real words from your idea beat clever ones.
The real tool:/design
Peek at the real thingTiffin’s headline
Lunch from a home kitchen down the road,
at your door at 1 pm.
Room 07Morning
The front of the houseis your website.
A real page at a real address, where people can join your waitlist.
The name, the sign, the paint and the words come together into one page that works on a phone. Walk around the back and you’ll see there’s nothing behind it yet. That’s the trick: people can start signing up while you build the rest.
At the workshopCreate a photo for the top of the page with AI, put it all together, and send the link to someone over lunch.
What we learnedLive first, polish second. A page people can visit beats a perfect one stuck on your laptop.
The real tool:/designAI imageswaitlist
Part two · Afternoon
Then build what’s behind it.
Now the parts you never see but always rely on: where things are kept, who gets in, and the smart bits that do work for you.
Signups, customers, orders: everything your product needs to remember.
Remember the waitlist on your front page? Those signups need somewhere to live. The foundation (developers call it a database) is a set of tables, like spreadsheets that can’t get messy: each signup is a row, and the tables refuse things that make no sense, like an email without an @.
At the workshopConnect your app to its own database and watch your first signup appear as a row.
What we learnedWrite down every change to the foundation, so you can always rebuild it exactly.
The real tool:Supabase
Room 09Afternoon
The frameis the layout of your app.
Rooms are pages; hallways are the links between them.
Once the foundation is poured, the frame decides the layout: a front room anyone can walk into, an entry hall where people sign in, and an office only you can enter. Adding a page is adding a room.
At the workshopAsk Claude for a plan before it builds anything. Read it, then say go.
What we learnedPlan first, build second. Reading a plan takes two minutes; tearing out the wrong room takes an afternoon.
The real tool:Next.js
Peek at the real thingthe floor plan
homepage the front room, open to everyone
login the entry hall
crm your office, behind the door
Room 10Afternoon
The power lineis the AI itself.
AI comes in from outside, like electricity, and you pay for what you use.
You don’t build a power plant to switch on a light. The AI lives with a provider like Anthropic, and your house connects to it with a private key: one line, kept in one safe place, never shown to visitors. You’ll add five dollars of credit before the day.
At the workshopAdd your AI key once, in one place, then forget about it.
What we learnedKeep keys out of sight. Our AI crew is blocked from even reading them.
The real tool:Claude
Room 11Afternoon
The wiringis AI inside your features.
Buttons that do the thinking for you: summarise, draft, sort.
Wires run from the meter to every room. In your app, that one connection powers every smart button: “summarise this customer,” “draft a follow-up.” Switch providers later and you change the meter, not the wiring.
At the workshopGive every customer an AI summary, and add a button that drafts your follow-up email.
What we learnedWhen something fails, say what to do next. “You’re out of AI credit, top up here” beats a scary error code.
The real tool:AI SDK
Peek at the real thingthe one file all the AI goes through
// All AI calls go through here. To switch models, change AI_MODEL
// in .env.local. To switch providers, swap @ai-sdk/anthropic for
// another AI SDK provider. The rest of the app doesn't change.
Room 12Afternoon
The plumbingis how information moves.
When someone fills in a form, their details travel safely to where they’re kept.
You never see pipes, but you’d notice a leak. A visitor types their email; it flows from the form, gets checked on the way (is this really an email?), and lands in the foundation. Your waitlist has been running on this pipe since lunch.
At the workshopFollow one signup from the form to the database, so the invisible part makes sense.
What we learnedTest pipes with real water. A pretend test once told us everything was fine when it wasn’t.
The real tool:server actions
Room 13Afternoon
The front dooris signing in.
Visitors knock with their email and get a link to come in. No passwords.
The front of the house is public; the office isn’t. Your app emails a one-time link, and clicking it opens the door. Nothing to forget, nothing to leak.
At the workshopSwitch on sign-in and log in to your own app from your phone.
What we learnedThe free email service only sends two sign-in emails an hour. We found out at our own rehearsal, so you’ll set up a proper one first.
The real tool:Supabase Auth
Room 14Afternoon
The kitchenis what your product does.
The room where the real work happens: your customers, bookings or orders.
Every house is built around its kitchen. The starter’s is a simple customer list: everyone from your waitlist, notes on each conversation, and where they stand, from “new” to “customer.” For Tiffin that’s lunch subscribers. For you it might be guests, students, readers or orders.
At the workshopShape the starter’s customer list into the thing your idea actually keeps track of.
What we learnedWhen something breaks, fix it for everyone. Every hiccup from our rehearsal is already fixed in the starter you’ll use.
The real tool:customer list
Room 15Afternoon
The bedroomis private data.
Each person sees only their own things, even if something goes wrong.
Some rooms lock from the inside. The foundation itself checks who’s asking before it hands anything over, so one customer can never see another’s details, even if the app has a bug.
At the workshopTurn the lock on, then test it by signing in as two different people.
What we learnedA lock you never turned isn’t a lock. We once found a project with every lock installed and none switched on.
The real tool:row-level security
Room 16Afternoon
The furnitureis the buttons, forms and lists.
Everything people actually touch, tap and fill in.
Furniture makes a house livable: somewhere to sit, a table, a shelf. In an app it’s forms, buttons and lists, arranged around how people move. The photos on the wall? Those are the images you made this morning.
At the workshopRearrange the starter’s screens around your own customers.
What we learnedCheck every screen on your phone. Most of your visitors will be holding one.
The real tool:interface
Room 17Afternoon
The wallpaperis your theme.
This morning’s colors and fonts, carried inside the app.
Raw walls get painted, then the pattern rolls on. The paint card from this morning becomes the theme for every screen inside, including a dark version for night owls, so the inside feels like the same place as the front.
At the workshopBring your morning palette into the app with a single change.
What we learnedKeep every color on the paint card. A color typed straight into one screen is the one wall that never matches.
The real tool:themedark mode
Room 18Afternoon
The mailboxis email.
Welcome notes, sign-in links and reminders, sent from your own name.
Join the waitlist and a welcome note arrives. The sign-in links from the front door leave from this same box, from your own web address, so they land in inboxes instead of spam.
At the workshopSend yourself a real welcome email from your own address.
What we learnedSome email tools quietly rewrite links to count clicks, which can break sign-in links. Switch that off.
The real tool:Resend
Room 19Afternoon
The sprinklersare jobs on a timer.
Work that keeps running while you’re at the beach.
Set the timer once and the garden gets watered every morning. Your app can do the same: every day at nine, it emails you the people from the kitchen you haven’t followed up with in a week. Your laptop can be closed.
At the workshopSchedule your first morning summary email.
What we learnedIf one email in the batch fails, retry that one, not the whole morning.
The real tool:Inngest
Peek at the real thingthe timer, in the starter’s own words
// Every morning: email each user the people they haven't
// followed up with in a week. This keeps running when your
// laptop is closed.
Part three · Evening
Open the doors.
A quick inspection, the lights come on at your own address, and you head to the beach with something real to show.
Hosting: the service that keeps your site up for everyone, all the time.
A roof keeps the weather off everything underneath. Hosting does that for your app: it stays up when your laptop is off, it’s secure, and it copes when the whole village opens your link at once. You don’t build a roof from scratch; you pick a good one.
At the workshopNothing to build here. The starter comes with a good roof already on.
The real tool:Vercel
Room 21Evening
The inspectioncatches problems first.
An automatic walk-through so nothing broken or private slips out.
Before the keys change hands, an inspector walks every room. Claude reviews what changed, then an automatic check refuses to publish anything broken or anything that would expose a private key.
At the workshopRun the review, fix what it finds, and publish.
What we learnedInspect the house you’re actually handing over. Our own checker once looked at the wrong copy, so we fixed the checker for good.
The real tool:/review-my-diff
Room 22Evening
The lightscome on at your address.
Your product is live at a web address anyone can visit.
Point your own web address at it, open it on your phone, send the link to a friend. The windows light up, and the first guests walk up the path.
At the workshopShare your live link with the group and show the room what you built.
What we learnedSaving isn’t publishing. Done means the link works when someone else opens it.
The real tool:/ship-ityour domain
The whole house, in one day
Your keys.Come build yours.
Edge City runs on what people bring. This is what we’re bringing: one day, hands on from the first minute, for builders, writers, designers, filmmakers and anyone in the village with an idea they’d like to see live.
You’ll leave with
A name and a logo
A website at your own address
A waitlist that saves real signups
Sign-in with an email link
A customer list with AI that drafts your follow-ups
A summary email every morning
All of the code, yours to keep
Bring
Your laptop, charger and phone
One sentence: who it’s for, and what changes for them
Claude Pro (about $20 a month) and $5 of AI credit
About an hour of setup at home beforehand; we’ll walk you through it
I’ve never written code. Is this for me?+
Yes. That’s who it’s for. You’ll describe what you want in plain English and Claude writes the code. Your job is to decide, and to say “not like that.”
What if I don’t have an idea yet?+
Come anyway. You can build along with Tiffin, our practice idea, and swap in your own whenever it shows up.
Do I keep what I build?+
All of it. The code lives in your own account, the web address is yours, and the starter is open source (MIT), so nobody can take it back.
What happens after the day?+
The free course covers every step again at your own pace, and your Kit on Telegram keeps answering questions while you keep building.
We’ve spent 250 days building 80 products this way, with AI doing the heavy lifting and every lesson written down. This is the beginner’s version of how we work, and the starter has every one of those lessons built in. See you in Mandrem.