You build it. And then the work begins.

I built a retro-weather app in about 30 minutes, with Claude’s help.

I figured I had another 15 minutes or so of cleanup, but then I learned a big lesson:

Refining your app is the longest part of the creation process.

After the build, the next step was to review and list the issues and work with Claude on fixes. Claude wrote new prompts to share in Bolt. Some changes worked right away. Others, like this “logo” stubbornly refused correction.

Often, it took several approaches to get issues to resolve. Fortunately, Claude is inexhaustible.¹

The pattern was simple enough: Describe what’s wrong → Claude writes fix prompt → Test → Repeat.

But even when I thought I was done, I wasn’t.

Bolt would not deploy the site with an SSL certificate, meaning browsers would flag the site as unsafe.”²

So, in one last lengthy revision, Claude helped me gather and export the code to GitHub, where the site now lives.

I thought the build would be tough, and adjustments would be easy.

But the opposite proved true. The v1 was simple to stand up, then it was on to review, followed by working with Claude to write revisions.

The revision process is the part triumphant “I built this with no coding!” stories skip. Yes, the AI can write code. But human judgement and refinement are critical, even when building a simple app for yourself.

Here’s the link to the live weather site.

Up next: Building an automation (and if refining a one-page website was work …)

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1. At least until you burn through the day’s tokens.

2. Admittedly, Michigan’s winter weather can feel unsafe.