I made an app with AI - Cost breakdown + Method
App URL: Traka .to (remove space) What does it do? It helps event organizers offer a community space for participants. People can connect with other members, ask for rideshare and roomshare and build real networks instead of going alone. Cost: $150 for development and testing. Tools used: 1. Emergent.sh for development, testing and hosting 2. Claude.ai for brainstorming 3. ChatGPT for domain ideas 4. Namecheap: domain hosting Recurring cost: $10/mo for hosting Steps 1: Discovering the idea: Since I regularly attend different events (and mostly alone), I felt like there could be a market for something like this. So, I asked ChatGPT and realized there is nothing exactly like this. There are tools like meetup. com, but most event organizers don't even bother. And Meetum doesn't actively promote itself. Laying out the foundation: I asked Claude to write down the precise steps for development. Then I requested landing page copy and other materials. But there was one problem. Claude was giving me a fundamental eagle eye view. Since app security and technical details are important, here is what I wrote: "Give me exactly what features need to be there in the MVP. Remove everything that is not necessary. Take inspiration from ..... " This allowed Claude to have more context. From here, I went to the ChatGPT image generator and asked for a few flow diagrams that I could incorporate into my development tool. It basically helps the code editor to understand how pages will behave and which page to add where. Then I took all this information and put it into Emergent. After 7 days of trial, testing, and developing one feature at a time, the complete app is now ready. I have also created a simple video to promote the app (script also given by Claude and my personal experience): https://share.descript.com/view/cp2r2exvMIg It doesn't cost much to build something meaningful now.