blakeandersonw/ai-app-playbook

Clone https://github.com/blakeandersonw/ai-app-playbook and read AGENTS.md

Paste into Claude Code or OpenCode, in an empty folder.

Please follow me and star this repo to stay up to date!

How to build useful, profitable apps in 2026

My background: I've scaled 5 apps to $100k+ MRR in the past 3 years.

This is the stack I would start with today. We initially built EcoGPT (apply here) on this stack.

Good apps help people get fit, focus, learn, or feel calmer, and people pay for them. This playbook goes from picking a problem to your first profitable month.

Examples

| Help people… | Like | |---|---| | 💪 Get fit and eat better | Cal AI, Ladder, Yuka | | 📵 Take back their time | Opal, Structured | | 📚 Learn | Duolingo, Speak, Photomath | | 🧘 Feel calmer | Hallow, Finch | | 🌱 Understand the world | PictureThis, Yuka | | 💼 Earn | SideShift |

The path

| Phase | What | Check | |---|---|---| | 0 · Niche | Pick a frequent problem AI solves in seconds. Test it with 10 videos and a waitlist | Score ≥ 25/35, real demand | | 1–12 · Build | Brief, repo, backend, auth, AI, web, iOS/Android, payments, analytics, onboarding, retention, launch | "Done when" per phase | | 13 · First 1,000 | Short-form video, creators on SideShift / Trybe, DMs to influencers and meme pages | Content live and tracked | | 14 · Grow | Weekly: one funnel experiment, one product fix | Weekly report |

The stack

| Job | Use | |---|---| | Backend, data, files, jobs, email | Cloudflare (Workers, D1, R2, KV, Durable Objects, Queues, Workflows, AI Gateway) | | Auth | Better Auth | | Database at scale | PlanetScale | | AI | OpenRouter, DeepSeek by default. Pick models with Artificial Analysis | | Custom AI (ASR, image gen, self-hosted LLMs) | Vast.ai / RunPod. Much cheaper at volume | | Payments | Superwall (mobile), Stripe (web) | | Analytics + errors | Tinybird | | Clients | SwiftUI for iOS, React Native or Kotlin for Android, React + Vite for web | | Building | Claude Code, or OpenCode + DeepSeek |

Don't use: Vercel, Netlify, Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit hosting, Bubble, FlutterFlow, Firebase, Supabase, Clerk, Auth0, Sentry, PostHog, Next.js, ORMs.

The money (per month)

Benchmark estimate: 30% of downloads start a trial, 30% of trials pay $30/year. That's about $2.70 per download.

| | | | | | |---|---|---|---|---| | Downloads | 1,000 | 10,000 | 100,000 | 1,000,000 | | Revenue | $2,700 | $27,000 | $270,000 | $2,700,000 | | Superwall (1%) | $27 | $270 | $2,700 | $27,000 | | Cloudflare | $5 | $20 | $190 | $2,300 | | Tinybird | $0 | $50 | $275 | $2,500 | | AI processing | $35 | $350 | $3,500 | $35,000 |

Details: 12 · Costs.

Our stack vs. the popular stack\*

Per 1,000 users per month.

| Job | Ours | Cost | Popular | Cost | Popular costs | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Hosting + API | Cloudflare Workers | $0.21 | Vercel Pro | $3.48 | ~17× | | Database + files | D1 + R2 | $0.15 | Supabase Pro | $1.62 | ~11× | | Auth | Better Auth | $0 | Clerk | $10.25 | ∞× | | AI (60 calls/user) | DeepSeek | $29.43 | OpenAI gpt-6.1-sol | $420.00 | ~14× | | Analytics + errors | Tinybird | ~$1.45 | PostHog + Sentry | ~$4.97 | ~3× | | Email | Cloudflare Email | $1.04 | Resend | $2.15 | ~2× |

\*Estimates at 100k monthly users, same usage, list prices as of Oct 26, 2026. Sources.

Chapters

| # | Chapter | | |---|---|---| | 00 | Find your niche | Patterns, scorecard, validation, domains | | 01 | Building with agents | Harnesses, building fast, what not to use | | 02 | Backend | One Worker, no framework | | 03 | Database | D1 with plain SQL, then PlanetScale | | 04 | Auth | Better Auth, anonymous first | | 05 | AI | DeepSeek, Artificial Analysis, Vast.ai / RunPod | | 06 | Clients | SwiftUI for iOS, React Native or Kotlin for Android, React + Vite for web | | 07 | Payments & pricing | Superwall, Stripe, $30/year + trial | | 08 | Analytics & errors | All in Tinybird | | 09 | Design & UX | Finding UI to copy, onboarding | | 10 | Retention | Push, streaks, email | | 11 | Distribution | Short-form, creators, DMs, ASO | | 12 | Costs | Numbers and sources | | 13 | Security & compliance | Spend caps, privacy, App Store review |

Templates: worker.ts · auth.ts · wrangler.jsonc · AGENTS.app.md · dev.vars.example

---

MIT © Blake Anderson