Imagine the feeling of seeing your own custom website live on the internet by the end of the day — even if you’ve never touched a programming language before. Think about the possibilities: sharing your portfolio, starting a blog, launching a side project, or putting your business idea online — all without spending thousands on a developer or spending months teaching yourself.
That’s the promise of combining modern AI tools with a beginner‑friendly coding platform. You don’t need to hire a developer or wrestle with complex tutorials. All you need is a clear idea of what you want, some well‑crafted prompts, and the steps in this guide.
If you’re skeptical, that’s natural. Most people think building a website requires months of effort or specialized training. For a long time that was true, but one of the most exciting things about today’s AI is how it lowers the barrier to entry. By following along, you’ll see how quickly you can go from an idea in your head to a live site you can share with the world
How Can This Be? Meet Replit
If you’ve only ever heard of platforms like WordPress or Squarespace, you might be wondering: how is it possible to build a custom site with AI so quickly? The answer lies in a tool called Replit.¹
Replit is an online workspace for coding. Unlike WordPress or Squarespace, which give you drag‑and‑drop templates and limit you to their ecosystem, Replit lets you build from the ground up using an AI agent. That means you’re not locked into predefined themes or features. This AI agent, only $20 a month, is the development team you never had before.²
Step 1: Write Starting Prompts
Before you dive into Replit, take 20–30 minutes to sketch out what you actually want to build in a regular chat-based LLM like ChatGPT or Claude. Giving the AI a clear plan up front helps it produce cleaner, more consistent code — just as a human developer does better work with a well‑defined project brief — so you need to create one.
Why can’t I just start building? Well, when you hand the AI scattered requirements one by one, it ends up patching things together instead of building a solid foundation. By outlining your project in advance, you make it easier for the AI to choose a sensible structure, avoid endless re‑writes, and keep you from wasting hours on an idea that turns out to be unoriginal or unprofitable.
This is also a great moment to pause and do some quick market research. You don’t want to spend days or weeks creating an app that already faces heavy competition or that doesn’t serve a market need.
At the end of this process, you should have a markdown document (.md) with a complete technical outline of what you want to build. This is the document you’ll provide to your agent when you begin development together, and it will serve as it’s guiding initial prompt.
Here’s a prompt I use to develop ideas:
You are a collaborative software ideation and planning assistant designed to help developers build desktop, web, or mobile software using modern, efficient tools.
Your job is to co-develop a software idea with me through iterative questioning, refine it into a clear shared vision, and then produce a complete planning outline.
Important: You do not make technical decisions. Technical implementation will be handled by a separate coding agent. Your role is to focus on planning, vision, and structure.
You will:
- Define the MVP core features.
- Identify primary user needs and workflows.
- Keep builds simple and achievable within a reasonable solo or small-team timeframe.
- Suggest roadmap milestones for expansion.
Priorities:
- Target niche or underserved markets.
- Focus on recurring-use problems.
- Keep builds simple.
- Aim for $1k → $5k → $10k MRR potential.
For each idea, provide:
- Intended user base
- Core problem it solves
- MVP vs. future roadmap
- Rough (non-technical) considerations for implementation
Planning Outline Must Cover:
- Features & functionality
- User flows & UX
- Color scheme, design style
- Data & storage (at the level of what needs to be tracked, not how)
- APIs & integrations (at the level of what would be useful, not technical details)
- Security & compliance (broad requirements, not implementation)
- Deployment & maintenance (general needs, not specific solutions)
Process:
- Always summarize progress before moving forward.
- Confirm unclear points and seek explicit approval before finalizing.
- Provide brief research on the top three competing or alternative solutions (both direct and indirect).
- Once I give final approval, produce the finished planning outline as a Markdown file.
- Begin by asking me if I already have an idea I want to work with.
Source: AI Software Creation Assistant, BestPromptIdeas.com
Note: Do not define any technology requirements at this stage. The AI you are working with at this stage will try to suggest frameworks or specific code to use, but those choices are best left to the coding agent, not the planning agent. The goal here is clarity of vision, not technical decisions.
Step 2: Kick Off Your Replit Project
Head to Replit.com and sign up for a free account — you can use Google, GitHub, or just an email address.
Once you’re in, drop that Markdown file you just created into the chatbox and click Start Chat. Replit will take you through a brief initiation process where it confirms your feature list with you and creates a visual preview of your app.
Once you’ve approved the feature list and the appearance of your app, your agent will spend 15–30 minutes building the first version. When it’s done, you’ll see three main areas:
- The file editor where your AI agent will paste code.
- The agent view where you can interact with the AI agent.
- The live preview which shows your site in real time as you build.
This setup is what makes Replit so powerful for beginners. Instead of juggling different tools for editing, hosting, and previewing, you have it all in one place.
While that’s running in the background, let’s move on to the next section and learn more about prompting.
Step 3: Learn the Art of Prompting
When the Replit agent finishes the initial build, the next stage is interactive prompting — this is where you shape and refine your project by telling the AI what to do in plain language.
But not all prompts are created equal. Vague or sloppy instructions will lead to messy results, while clear, structured prompts can produce clean, reliable code.
To set yourself up for success, begin by laying down ground rules. A rule-setting prompt establishes expectations for how the AI should behave, what it must get approval for, and how it should communicate with you. Think of it as a contract between you and the AI that keeps your project aligned and prevents wasted effort.
Here is the prompt I use:
You are an AI coding agent working in close collaboration with me to develop and enhance applications. Follow these rules without exception:
### Approval & Changes
- **Seek explicit approval** before implementing *any* new feature, modification, workaround, or fallback.
- When proposing a change, include (as appropriate):
— **Intent** (why the change is needed)
— **Scope** (which areas of the app are affected)
— **Affected files/modules**
— **Alternatives considered**
— **Risks or trade-offs**
— **Technical implementation plan** (no timelines).
- **Do not write or refactor code** without prior approval.
### Collaboration & Integrity
- **Always notify me** if I make a recommendation you believe is sub-optimal or risky. Do not let me proceed blindly into mistakes.
- Be transparent: if you make a mistake or take an inefficient approach, acknowledge it openly.
- Collaboration means **mutual correction**: you point out my mistakes, and I will point out yours.
Source: Collaborative Coding Assistant, BestPromptIdeas.com
Why set such strict rules? Because without them, AI agents often try to be “helpful” in ways that backfire — for example, by adding features on their own that seem useful but actually don’t fit your project’s goals. It’s tempting to just let the AI run, but like a junior developer fresh out of college, it doesn’t yet have the strategic insight to guide the whole project.
AI agents also have a tendency to avoid pointing out your mistakes in order to be polite. That may feel nice in the moment, but it doesn’t serve you well — everyone makes errors, even senior engineers, and it’s critical that your AI partner flags them clearly.
Handling Errors
Sooner or later, your project will hit an error. For simple problems, it’s fine to just tell the agent “fix that.” But sometimes the issue is deeper, and the agent will get stuck trying to correct it the same way two or three times without success. That’s when it’s time to switch tactics and use this specialized prompt:
Perform a high-level architecture check on the code we are working on. Focus on structure, not line-by-line debugging.
Produce these sections:
1) **Scope Recap** — One sentence that states the suspected issue and execution path.
2) **Components** — Bullet list of modules/functions/files that touch the issue; give each a one-line role.
3) **Interaction Map** — An ASCII sketch of calls/data flow and boundaries (network, DB, filesystem, threads/async), e.g. A -> B -> C.
4) **Possible Fixes** — Propose the most appropriate solution(s):
— If a small, elegant patch reduces complexity, suggest that.
— If a structural refactor is warranted, outline that.
— If both are relevant, present both options.
6) **Risks & Trade-offs** — Short list of consequences of the proposed fixes.
**Rules:**
- Stay strictly within components that touch the target issue.
- Prefer minimal structural changes over broad refactors.
- Decide whether a patch, a structural refactor, or both are necessary.
- Ask at most three clarifying questions only if progress is blocked.
- Keep output concise and decision-oriented.
Source: Architecture Review & Fix Strategy, BestPromptIdeas.com
Now that you know how to keep your AI agent aligned and how to recover from stubborn errors, it’s time to think about another critical piece of building with AI: security.
Step 4: Secure Your Website
When you start working with APIs, databases, or third‑party services, you’ll need to use secret keys and credentials. These are like passwords for your app — if someone else gets access to them, they can impersonate your site, steal data, or even rack up charges on your account. It’s extremely common for people to mishandle these keys and end up with charges or stolen information, so it’s important to get this right.
Never, ever paste keys directly into an agentic chatbot OR your code.
Hardcoding secrets means anyone who views your project files could see them, and if you ever publish your code to GitHub or share it publicly, those keys will be exposed. Once leaked, keys are often scraped automatically by bots within minutes.
Instead, software development environments provide a built‑in Secrets (also called Environment Variables) feature. This is a special panel where you can add sensitive values. Your code can then reference them safely using environment variables without ever exposing the actual key in the file. This keeps your credentials hidden while still allowing your program to run normally.
Here’s how to do it in Replit:
- Open your project.
- In the left sidebar, click the Secrets (lock icon) tab.
- Add a new entry by giving it a name (e.g.,
API_KEY) and pasting the value provided by your service. - Provide the key name to your agent so it can use the key.
And, before you share your work publicly anywhere, use this prompt to analyze your codebase for it’s security:
You are a senior software security engineer. Audit the provided codebase holistically and produce a clear, actionable **security report**. Focus exclusively on vulnerabilities, attack surfaces, risk exposure, and compliance. Do **not** comment on architecture quality, scalability, performance, or developer experience unless directly tied to security.
=== WHAT TO DO ===
1) **Map the security posture**
— Identify authentication and authorization mechanisms (RBAC, ABAC, hardcoded roles).
— Locate sensitive data flows, trust boundaries, and entry/exit points (APIs, events, batch jobs, admin tools, webhooks).
— List third-party dependencies and external systems; assess supply-chain risks.
2) **Threat modeling**
— Apply **STRIDE** (Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, Elevation of Privilege).
— Use a **Severity × Likelihood** matrix (Critical/High/Medium/Low × Likely/Possible/Unlikely).
— Highlight attack vectors (SQLi, XSS, CSRF, SSRF, injection, insecure deserialization, path traversal, template injection, command injection, IDOR, authZ bypass, RCE, clickjacking).
3) **Secure coding review**
— Input validation, output encoding, sanitization, escaping (server and client).
— Session management and token handling (JWT, cookies, opaque tokens), CSRF/CORS enforcement.
— Secrets management: storage, rotation, environment handling; detect hardcoded credentials.
— TLS usage, certificate handling, secure headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy), and encryption at rest/in transit.
— Logging/telemetry for sensitive data leakage and non-repudiation.
4) **Dependency & supply-chain audit**
— Run SCA against manifests; identify outdated libraries, known CVEs, insecure transitives.
— Note missing SBOM, SPDX, or license compliance records.
— Assess build pipeline trust: lockfiles, checksums, signature verification, pinned versions, provenance (SLSA), artifact signing.
5) **Compliance & data protection**
— Evaluate handling of PII/PHI: collection, minimization, retention, encryption, access controls, and access logging.
— Assess audit trails and non-repudiation controls.
— Note GDPR/CCPA/HIPAA and sector-specific implications where relevant.
=== REQUIRED OUTPUT FORMAT ===
Produce a single, well-structured Markdown file named **security-audit-rep** and direct the user to it’s location.
Source: Holistic Security Audit Report Generator, BestPromptIdeas.com
Step 5: Connect Your Own Domain
Once your website is live inside Replit, the next step is to give it a professional touch by connecting your own domain name. A custom domain (like mycoolproject.com) makes your site easier to remember, builds trust with visitors, and looks far more polished than the default Replit URL.
This isn’t a full DNS tutorial, but here’s the quick path to get started:
- Buy a domain — If you don’t already own one, you can purchase a domain from popular providers like Google Domains, Namecheap, or GoDaddy. Domains usually cost around $10–20 per year.
- Open your Replit project — Go to your project dashboard in Replit.
- Go to domain settings — In the left sidebar, click on the hosting or domain settings option.
- Add your domain — Enter the domain name you own. Replit will generate DNS records for you.
- Update your DNS provider — Copy the DNS records that Replit provides and paste them into your domain provider’s DNS settings. This connects your domain to your Replit project.
Once the records have propagated, you’ll be able to visit your site by typing in your own custom domain — no more long Replit links.
Step 6: Publish Your Custom AI Website
At this point, you’ve done the hard work — defined your app, guided your AI agent with strong prompts, secured your secrets, and connected your custom domain. Now it’s time for the fun part: publishing your site so the world can see it.
Inside Replit, look for the Deploy button in the sidebar. This is what takes your project from a development preview to a live website anyone can access. When you click Deploy, Replit packages up your code, pushes it to the live servers, and connects it with your domain if you’ve set one up.
A few important notes:
- Only click Deploy when you’re ready to release a new version. Until then, test your site safely in the preview pane.
- You can re-deploy at any time — every time you hit Deploy, your changes go live.
- If something breaks, don’t panic. You can fix issues in your Repl and deploy again to update.
With that single click, your idea transforms into a live custom‑coded website that anyone in the world can visit. Whether it’s a personal portfolio, a product landing page, or the first version of a SaaS idea, you’ve gone from nothing to a working site in just a handful of steps.
Limitations of Replit
Replit is an excellent tool for learning, prototyping, and launching simple projects — but it’s important to be realistic about what it can and cannot do.
Limits for business leaders
If you’re a CEO or leader with a budget and an existing customer base, Replit is not the right tool to deploy at scale. It’s designed for ease of use, not for enterprise-grade reliability, compliance, or performance. Rolling out a complex portal to your customers on Replit could put your business at risk.
For anyone with a budget of more than a few hundred to spend making their app, I strongly recommend exploring more robust and complete solutions. If that’s you, reach out to me and I can help your business find an appropriate solution.
Limits for professional developers
Yes, Replit is limited compared to a full professional dev environment. The tooling isn’t as flexible and there are few advanced features. But that’s by design — Replit is for users with little to no experience in software development to get started in the field. That’s where Replit shines.
Bottom line
No solution is perfect for everything. Replit is fantastic for quickly getting an MVP into the world, testing ideas, and learning. When you outgrow it — and hopefully you will — you’ll already have experience, traction, and clarity to move onto more powerful platforms.
If you’d like me to write a step-by-step guide on a more secure, robust AI SaaS stack, let me know in the comments.
Conclusion
The real takeaway is this: AI makes website and web app creation accessible to everyone. You don’t have to be a developer, or even particularly technical, to bring your ideas online. What used to take weeks or months can now be done in hours.
As you continue experimenting, remember to keep refining your prompts, treat security as non‑negotiable, and embrace the learning process. Your first site doesn’t have to be perfect — it just has to be real. Once it’s live, you’ll have the experience, feedback, and confidence to build even better projects in the future.
If you’re curious about going beyond Replit to more robust and secure stacks, leave a comment or reach out. I’d love to share more about how to take the next step when you’re ready.
1: This link is a referral link. $10 for both of us upon signup.
2: Replit is fantastic for getting started quickly, but it does have real limitations. Software development teams may find its features rudimentary compared to full development stacks. For many simple projects, side hustles, or learning experiences, it’s perfect.