How to Build Unlimited Apps With AI Without Going Broke

Chris Davis 0:10
And we’re back. Welcome to another episode of the All Systems Go podcast. And I want to start this episode off by reading, reading a text exchange with one of my good friends. And he made a mention and I just told him, I said, you know, I’ve been building all types of apps.

Chris Davis 0:33
And he says, wait, you sell the apps, right? I said, no, they’re personal apps that do specific things for me personally or in my business. Maybe one day I’ll sell one. And this is the response that I think is happening in a lot of you all’s mind.

Chris Davis 0:52
This is what he says in response to that. I wouldn’t even know how to start making an agent to do that stuff. My coworker signed up for Meta’s Muse AI agent and that sounded pretty solid. Not giving it access to my data though, right?

Chris Davis 1:08
And I said, nah, nah, bro, we, we do it. We do it simple. This way, all you need is an idea or an existing spreadsheet and a ChatGPT account. People out here robbing folks, teaching them they need more.

Chris Davis 1:23
All right, I’ll stop the text exchange. Then we, we went on and I kind of continue to give him some more insight, but I thought that that was so appropriate to start because anytime I talk about app building specifically with AI, people always go to, I don’t even know where to start and oh, how do I get an agent and how do I learn all of these things? And it is so hard to slow people down to first off, to just understand the elements that go into building an app and, and then the tools and then the process. So I wanted to record this episode and really have it serve as like a audio overview of the course that I created.

Chris Davis 2:12
Because the importance of the course isn’t even really building the fact that you can build unlimited apps at the cost of your ChatGPT or Cloud account. It’s really understanding how the structure and architecture of an app works. So you know, when you’re going with a replit or lovable, you understand what you’re paying for and you understand that you can do it on your own for free. Not practically free, for free.

Chris Davis 2:44
The exhaustive list of tools that I use to, to build unlimited apps at no cost, no additional charge, besides my ChatGPT or Claude account in the community, as always, you can join at no, no costs. Free community. And the community that, that I’ve created is for the experience builder, not the person getting started. This, this.

Chris Davis 3:09
Although I have a course that will help you get started, but this is for people and want to optimize they small tweaks to what they’re already doing have, have large implications. Right? You are already moving and just want to move faster. Right?

Chris Davis 3:32
It’s a sharing space where me sharing a tool, someone else sharing a tool can collapse time. It can shorten the distance that you thought it would take for you to complete a project or learn a thing you thought would take you months, now takes you days, so that the exhaustive list will be in the community. But for now I just want you to know that again, it’s worth repeating. Building apps is not expensive.

Chris Davis 4:03
And I have to preface this. Go back. I build personal software. The teams that I lead build bigger softwares, but they’re usually still internal software dashboards, form replacement, just software to make the processes internally flow more efficiently.

Chris Davis 4:29
Me personally, I like to take what I learn by leading these teams and implement it in my personal life and in my business. So most of my app building is from personal use. The rest is from optimizing my business. Right?

Chris Davis 4:44
So that I can get more done, less time and less human hands. With that being said, you have to understand that what you’re paying for when you go to a replit, a lovable and all of that, this is not we’re against it. I just want you to be clear at what it’s doing for you. And it’s this term abstraction.

Chris Davis 5:06
It’s abstracting. They are abstract platforms. Most SaaS tools are right? And abstract means just remove all of the complicated elements and leave you with a simplistic interface or way to complete what you’re trying to do.

Chris Davis 5:22
And in that event they excel, all you have to do is go sign up and you’re prompting away. They handle all of the backend stuff, which I’ll get into and everything. And before you know it, you’re like, oh wow, I have an app. But it comes at a cost, a cost we’ll talk about later.

Chris Davis 5:39
And essentially under these models are really subsidized Claude, OpenAI and other LLM accounts that you can go direct to the, to the source and use, right? You’re, you’re paying for that abstraction that simplifies the use of it. When most of you already have a Claude or a ChatGPT account. And if you go straight, it’s like wholesaling.

Chris Davis 6:04
You go straight to the buyer or the seller, you get it, you get your tokens for much cheaper, right? And here’s the assumption that a lot of people are making. They’re thinking that these platforms are doing something special. If simplifying is special, then absolutely.

Chris Davis 6:26
But from a functionality standpoint, they are not. And you know, they often come with marked up costs on your tokens. You run out so quick. And then some of these platforms, which is amazing, require monthly tokens to host your app for you.

Chris Davis 6:44
And many of you who already have websites, now you’re paying double for hosting. And this is why I see a lot of times in these AI groups, people are like, I’m through. I just burned through all of my tokens and I can’t launch my app. And how do I remove this lovable sticker?

Chris Davis 7:04
I mean, all of the things. And I’m just watching with my popcorn like, no, I don’t have any of those, any of those issues. So let’s get into it. Let me first start out with the architecture of an app.

Chris Davis 7:18
An application is a front end, a user front end, a database back end, and then a place where the code for both is stored and deployed. That’s it. It’s no more complicated than that. I’m going to say it again.

Chris Davis 7:39
A user front end, a database back end in a place to store the code that produces both, or I should say it produces the front end and interacts on the back with your backend database for you. Okay. And I’m going to talk about the tools, not how to do it, but just so you know the landscape and give you, give you a very clear view of exactly how this is done. So let’s start with the author who is writing your code.

Chris Davis 8:15
Well, this is where my friend got to write agents, but not agents in the fact that you have to go and get one. Claude, essentially the browser chat is an agent, right? Every chat is an agent. Every chat in ChatGPT is essentially an agent.

Chris Davis 8:34
And then when you switch over to cowork and CLAUDE and CODA in chat, those agents then go from being confined to the browser to being able to be deployed and do things on your desktop, on your computer, right? You give it access. And then now in that chat, that agent, they call them chats, but they’re essentially agents can now go and do something, right? And if that’s weird saying, oh, chat agent, not really.

Chris Davis 9:03
Well, let’s, let’s say this. The chat helps you interact with an agent that either is going to display a response back to you or go do something on your computer. But when you start to download these tools, you don’t see chat more than you see agent, right? So agent chat kind of Synonymous, hopefully that’s not confusing to you, but in reality, and here’s what’s crazy, if I’d have recorded this, and this is AI for you, everybody, if I’d have recorded this maybe a month ago, it would have sounded totally different.

Chris Davis 9:40
And this is the importance of getting connected in a community that’s actually immersed in doing not just AI, but automation and systems, because everything is moving so fast. And the reason I say that is because chat GPT, OpenAI has made leaps and they did something that I’m still waiting on Claw to do at the time of this recording. That has me doing more prototyping in that platform and then building with Claw. But honestly, Codex can take it to the finish line as well.

Chris Davis 10:18
Just in case you don’t know, Codex is OpenAI, ChatGPT’s version of Agent that can write code. CLAUDE is Anthropics LLM and their agent that writes code is called Claude code. So whenever you hear me talk about Claude code or Codex, it’s OpenAI and Claude. Those are not the only.

Chris Davis 10:42
I know Gemini is out there, I know Gronk, I know there’s other ones, but those are the two primary that most people are familiar with and will usually end up using. So with that being said, you need an author. Your author is as simple as the browser based Claude or ChatGPT account. Okay, here’s what I want you to understand.

Chris Davis 11:03
In Claude, you can, you can have it create a standalone interactive artifact that you can click buttons in and it will serve as an app. In Codex you can, I mean in ChatGPT you could do the same thing. It 10 for me right now it tends to go fall under sites because sites provide you a URL that you can, you know, click and modify and even share. Now what I like about ChatGPT’s version is that their sites actually have a backend spun up for you.

Chris Davis 11:40
And I believe it’s powered by Cloudflare. But now you can create, for instance, I can create a quick landing page on ChatGPT and tell it that I want to collect leads, but I’m not ready to integrate it with the CRM and all that. I just need a quick capture and then give me another admin page where I can see all of the responses come in in a basic chart. ChatGPT can do all of that because it has a backend for you.

Chris Davis 12:07
It will generate. It’ll create the backend for you and you can lit and you can map a domain to the produced site. You’ve got a fully functional landing Page. Now, because we know that an app is a front end, a front user, a user interface, a backend database in code to deploy, we now can see that even something as simple as this landing page that I just outlined is an app.

Chris Davis 12:40
Now when you go to Claude, Claude can create the artifact, which I love artifacts by the way, that’s interactive, you can click and really get an idea. But it has no database backend. Everything is saved in the browser. If you want to have a back end, you’ve got to go into claw code and actually have it start to build it out on your device and push it to the cloud and all of those which we’ll get into.

Chris Davis 13:01
So just know you can get very far in the browser based chat, you can resume on your mobile phone, you can start on your computer, you can, you know, switch, switch between them, they’re interchangeable. But most people don’t realize how much you can get done. And one of the reasons why I like starting in the browser is because I am confined. I can’t do just everything.

Chris Davis 13:25
It helps me really flesh my idea out. And speaking of ideas, I want you all to know like my friend was like, I wouldn’t even know where to start. All you need is a spreadsheet, everybody. I haven’t met many people who don’t have a spreadsheet.

Chris Davis 13:38
Honestly, it doesn’t have to be complex. And I tell people all the time. And those of you that’s been following the podcast, you know, personal software, I say sell to yourself before you sell to anyone else. Create software for you.

Chris Davis 13:53
If it’s not good enough for you to use every day, do not expect somebody else to use it every day. That’s, that’s not authentic, that’s not real. And that’s not how app building should, should go. You should not be learning on people.

Chris Davis 14:07
Learn on yourself. Fine, fine tune that thing on yourself. And then when, then when you’re ready, like, okay, I have something. Yeah, sure, launch.

Chris Davis 14:16
And that’s an if. If you want to. So we have our author, our author writes the code, but then the code needs to be stored somewhere, right? And before we even get to the code being stored somewhere, the code needs to interact with a database backend.

Chris Davis 14:33
What does the database do? The database stores all of your information because your app, you using it is collecting and retrieving information on your behalf is happening, you know, like concurrently. So you need a database backend just for something as simple as if you have a notes app. Well, where are those notes stored?

Chris Davis 14:55
They’re stored in the Database backend, right. My podcast app that I use for all of these podcasts, my outlines, tracking the status, the MP3 files, they’re all stored in the database backend. And what the code does is it interacts with the database to display on the user interface, something easy for me to navigate so we don’t have to know database coding and all of that to access our information. And the beauty about this is the database should be owned by you.

Chris Davis 15:29
Now you see how replits and Lovables, their abstraction allows them to own more and you own less. Now, I believe Lovable has a Supabase connector and they’re starting to play better. But for the most part, you want, you want your own database back in. I have two solutions for that.

Chris Davis 15:50
Again, I’ll put them in the community. Both free. Everybody free. Free.

Chris Davis 15:54
Free. I’ll say this, I used to use airtable. I never, I will never use Airtable as a database back in again. And there’s a ton of reasons why.

Chris Davis 16:01
If you have questions, again, ask in the community. Now that handles two parts. We’ve got the user front end. That’s what you’re using the browser chat to create.

Chris Davis 16:13
You’re saying, hey, create a standalone artifact or create a fully functional site. Standalone artifact and claw fully functional site in ChatGPT that I can interact with, click and, and get a feel for this app. And from there you’re just gonna keep refining, right? Once it’s in a good place, what you, what, what’s next is you will deploy that code into the cloud now, because you’re in the.

Chris Davis 16:42
Already in the cloud for you. But at some point your app, you’re gonna say, hey, I wanna be able to run this on my phone and it integrate with my database backend. Even though ChatGPT does give you a backend, it’s limited. Their database functionality is limited.

Chris Davis 16:59
Once you have a good idea of what the app is, you’re gonna have to move it out of that environment and then place that code into the cloud somewhere so that it can be deployed. Where do you place that code? GitHub, another free tool. You place it in GitHub and what GitHub allows you to do is now that code can be deployed to platforms like Vercel or Netlify that give public access to the app.

Chris Davis 17:27
So GitHub, database backend, Vercel and Netlify essentially replace ChatGPT in the browser, clawed in the browser, and it emulates what Lovable, replit and base, base 44, whatever, whatever all of those are doing. And all of those are free tools. And with that setup, what, what it allows you to do is now I have, I have hosting. If, by the way, if you’re not using cloudflare for your hosting, for your DNS, for all of your domains, you should not be using the built in.

Chris Davis 18:04
If you’re on GoDaddy, you know, SiteGround, whatever people use these days, your DNS should not be in the same place where you buy your domains. You need an extra layer of protection and security. The DNS should be rendered through cloudflare. I know I’m talking very technical, I should have warned you all, but if any of this is confusing, it’s even more of a reason to join the community and ask questions.

Chris Davis 18:27
If you’re a builder, if you’re an experienced builder, if you’re just getting started, there’s communities out there that’ll help you get started. Once you’re started, this is the place to come and go to optimize what you’ve learned. All right? Now, with that being said, all of those tools that I mentioned are free.

Chris Davis 18:44
So I can have a database backend free. I can author code. That’s going to be the cost of your ChatGPT account. I can deploy this code into the.

Chris Davis 18:54
Or I can store this code into the cloud free. And then I could deploy this code into a platform that makes it accessible to the world via your. Via a URL free. None of it cost everybody.

Chris Davis 19:11
So I have ChatGPT account 20 bucks a month. Never exceeded it. I’ve exceeded it once. Then I went in and clicked the reset button on Claude.

Chris Davis 19:21
I’m at the $100 a month max plan. And truth be told, if they had a 50 or 60, I could do with that one. Because I never exhaust all my tokens while everybody’s out here talking about, oh, I ran of tokens this, this and that. I’m like, I don’t know what else to build.

Chris Davis 19:37
You know, I would love to have that. And I’m talking about, I use Fable, I use Opus Sonnet, I use all the models and I never, I just never run out. And what this opens up is full freedom, but full ownership. Full freedom and full ownership.

Chris Davis 19:56
My data is on all of my servers for all of my apps. I’ve got at least 30 apps right now. And again, they’re small, personal apps. Go listen to the previous episode when I talked about the three apps that I built.

Chris Davis 20:10
I just build them as I need them. I just, in fact, just yesterday, I built a WordPress plugin to do a more dynamic customer or user onboarding experience in my membership site. And most of it was done in the bed while I was watching football and chatting on my phone. Right.

Chris Davis 20:31
And then I eventually moved it over into an environment to create the zip file that can be uploaded. Right. But the reason why I wanted to tell you all of this is that you. I know we got technical and got in the weeds a bit.

Chris Davis 20:44
Let me come back up and let you understand that an app is a user interface, a database backend and code that deploys for you to use online. Right. That the code is interacting with the database for you while you’re interacting with the front end user interface. Okay.

Chris Davis 21:07
So once you have this set up, it’s just, it’s a one time setup everyone. And there are other ways, more advanced ways. Okay. Once you get beyond the basics of authoring codes and using multiple agents to code at the same time and deploy local to your machine and then ways to control that the coding environment from your phone so you’re not tied to a screen, you can be on the go on your phone and still having a code.

Chris Davis 21:37
Having your apps built. Once you have the setup, everybody it really unlocks. And I just don’t see many people talking about it. ChatGPT or Claude account GitHub, Vercel and or Netlify Cloudflare and understanding how to hook all three of those in a database backend database software.

Chris Davis 21:56
Understanding how to hook all of those up is a one time thing. And what I do is I have a skill. Every time I want to build an app that goes through all the security measures, it deploys to a back end, it does everything. So once I’m done in the browser and I’ve got it outlined exactly what I want to build, I have it create what’s called a prd.

Chris Davis 22:17
I think it’s a product requirements document or I’ll call it a handoff document. I’ll say hey Claude, I’m now going to have this app built in Claude code need you to create a document that specifies all of the functionality. Don’t worry about the, the stack and the branding. My skill will do that.

Chris Davis 22:35
I just need you to focus on the functionality so that it can be the standalone artifact, can be reproduced exactly how it was built in this chat thread. And then it create the markdown file, put that markdown file in a folder and then get the app built. So that’s actually the flow. That’s the flow.

Chris Davis 22:58
It seems simple in my mind, but I’ve walked people through this and I understand where you get tripped up and the course is there for self service. The community is there for ongoing optimization. All right. And let me just fill in some gaps here.

Chris Davis 23:19
Let me. Because there’s a lot of questions that come up all the time, not just with my friend but. But he’s using probably Microsoft Copilot at work. I’ve helped people build apps with Copilot dashboards.

Chris Davis 23:32
Right. It doesn’t matter. The LLM doesn’t matter to me. Except it’s very hard to get your code out of Copilot, I’ll tell you that.

Chris Davis 23:39
It’s much easier in Claude and in ChatGPT, at least to my understanding. But there’s a few other things that I want I want you to know is that with this setup, yes, you can produce unlimited. I’m not exaggerating. Unlimited apps for yourself.

Chris Davis 23:52
When you start having multi tenant is what it’s called when other users, when you’re giving access to other users to that code base is what you see in SaaS, costs do increase, but we’re not talking about astronomic costs. If you have in your mind a hundred dollars a month is the max that you’ll probably need until you get to a point where you’re really doing something major. You could do a lot of damage with $100 a month or less. Some people at $20 a month are killing it.

Chris Davis 24:21
Right. So the numbers, what, what does this setup save you? And probably hundreds of dollars. I’ve seen people spinning their wheels on platforms like Lovable and softer and, and repl it and all of that.

Chris Davis 24:41
And they’re, they’re used to spending $300 in a week just because they keep running out. And primarily. Let me go back. There is an art to prompting everyone and, and not just prompting.

Chris Davis 24:56
There is a level of understanding how technology code is deployed, software development practices, there is value in that. So knowing that is going to help you along the way. I just had an instance where the agent was telling was because I always read what it’s doing and I asked, I said why are you doing it that way? And it told me, I said no, that’s ridiculous.

Chris Davis 25:21
That’s the long way. I just need you to do it this way. But that’s because I understand code to an extent and software development process so I’m able to govern what it does a lot better. And, and the thing is this.

Chris Davis 25:38
The cost you save is not just monetary you are going to save monetarily, but the time and the convenience is next level. I mean to be able to go from idea to fabricated output quickly without having to worry about burning tokens and everything. It’s. It’s amazing.

Chris Davis 25:59
It’s amazing. So I did a lot of name dropping on this one and the outstanding question is, hey, Chris, do you sell these? Perhaps as I use my own personal apps, they just get better and better every time. And if I ever get to a point where maybe somebody sees it or somebody’s like, hey, I want that.

Chris Davis 26:21
I want to start where you left off on that. Perhaps I will. Or maybe I will get inspired and get an idea that I think is deployable for the world. The best part about app building is learning how to prompt and learning how to engage with AI for me, because the better you get at that, the better you get at everything else, let alone just understanding the ecosystem of agents and in deploying code in the form of applications.

Chris Davis 26:50
I think it’s going to be a standard skill moving forward. So if you are not in it now, get in it. I don’t care where you learn it from. Again, I do have a course that’s part of the paid membership, but you don’t even have to pay.

Chris Davis 27:11
You can just be a member and ask questions wherever you go. To learn it. Go learn it. Once you want to optimize and build on it and move faster with it, then come holler at me in the community.

Chris Davis 27:24
All right, Deal. Deal. Hopefully I see more of you joining. I’m starting to see you all trickle in.

Chris Davis 27:31
So the, the podcast is doing what the podcast needs to do. And I will, I’ll. I’ll say this. There is power in sharing.

Chris Davis 27:40
There is power in sharing your. Your do’s and your don’ts. I just had an incident the other day that I shared in the community and it’s like, I will never do this again. Well, now that I’ve done it and learned, you can learn from that as well and never do it.

Chris Davis 27:55
And then when we multiply that by all of the users, all of the members, it’s. It’s exponential growth immediately. And that’s my, that’s my hope for you, is not just that you build unlimited apps, but that in the building of unlimited apps, you find community, you find resources, you learn how to have relationships with robots. All of those things are going to improve your business and the value you bring to your clients.

Chris Davis 28:24
All right, thank you for listening. Thank you for putting up with some of my technical jargon here. I promise to keep it more higher level for you. I don’t want to lose you, but this was required because I want to Save you some tokens, save you some coins, save you some time.

Chris Davis 28:41
Again, if this is. If this is right up your alley, something you’ve been looking for, You’ve been kind of hitting your head trying to get that app out the door, and you just keep running into roadblocks. Come on. Come on down.

Chris Davis 28:53
Come on over. Join the community. And for those of you who are fine where you are, thank you for supporting. Continue to listen.

Chris Davis 29:01
I am greatly appreciative of all of you. So until next time I see you all online, Automate responsibly, my friends.