No Tech Skills? No Problem.

Build an app with AI in 2 hours.

BetaDen · Old Court, Kidderminster · 21 May 2026 · Hosted by Green Gorilla Automation

What you'll leave with today.

The promises we made. Every minute of today maps to one of these.

Understand how AI can help you build apps and tools

Learn how to describe your idea so AI can build it for you

See how to fix problems when things go wrong

Know the difference between a quick prototype and a "real" product

Leave with something you've actually built yourself (if you follow along)

Who's running this.

Two of us. Sixty-plus years of software between us.

Paul Rhodes

Managing Director, Green Gorilla Automation. In IT since 1997. Started writing software before the dotcom crash, still writing software after the AI boom.

Kurt Peniket

AI Lead & Software Engineer. Joined the team five years ago. Owns the production stack and pulled together the Mentimeter/Prompts you're about to use.

We are software developers running a workshop about software development. We have opinions. We'll be honest about them.

Two and a half hours. One app. Your idea.

1

10:00–10:10

Welcome and framing

2

10:10–11:25

Build in Replit (Module 1)

3

11:25–11:40

Break

4

11:40–12:10

Improve and ship with Claude (Module 2)

5

12:10–12:30

Real talk, Q&A, take-home

The four URLs you'll need today.

Open them in tabs now or take a photo. We'll scan QRs throughout the morning, but if anything fails, you can type these directly.

Replit

Build your app.

https://replit.com/refer/gga-betaden

Mentimeter

Live polls throughout the morning.https://www.mentimeter.com/app/presentation/al3vpunezgxxi69cvr5zj4ntnq9owkq5/edit?question=7m54gdnq6f73

Claude

Write your plan.

https://www.claude.ai

The Prompt Library

Every prompt we use today, plus more for after.

https://betaden-prompts.ggapps.co.uk

QR for this on the next-but-one slide if you'd rather scan.

All four are free to start. Open them in tabs now so you're not fumbling later.

The Prompt Library

Take photos. Share.

If something on a slide is useful, take a photo. Use it. Share it. Post it on LinkedIn and tag Betaden & GreenGorillaAutomation. We'd rather you spread the ideas than write them down.

We won't ask you to put your phone away. Just don't disappear into it.

Poll 1 of 8

What comes to mind when you hear 'vibe coding'?

In one or two words. No wrong answers.



What is vibe coding, actually.

The shortest honest definition we can give you.

You describe what you want, in plain English. An AI tool writes the code. The code runs. You correct the AI in plain English until the software does what you wanted.

Things being built this way today

  • Booking forms and quote calculators
  • Internal dashboards (the "command centre" trend)
  • Marketing sites and landing pages
  • Mobile apps (newly possible)
  • Workflow automations

If your idea fits one of those, you're in the right room.

The cost of a working app just collapsed.

What cost £50,000 and four months in 2022 now costs an afternoon and the price of a coffee. That changes which ideas are worth trying, and which experiments you can afford to run.

10-80-10. The way to work with AI.

The split that keeps humans in control.

HUMAN

10% Strategy

You set the direction. What are we building? Who is it for? What does success look like? AI is bad at this. You are good at it.

AI

80% The Grunt Work

Writing the code. Generating the boilerplate. Drafting the copy. Debugging the small stuff. The work that used to take days now takes minutes. This is where AI earns its keep.

HUMAN

10% Review

You check what came back. Did it do what you asked? Is it safe? Is it good? You correct, refine, sign off. AI without this becomes a liability fast.

Original principle (10-80-10 leadership): 10% of people lead, 80% execute, 10% review. Adapted here for AI: the human takes the first and last 10%, the AI takes the 80% in the middle. This is what 'human in the loop' actually means.

The honest pros and cons.

Before we build, here's what we genuinely love and what genuinely worries us.

What we love

  • Speed: working app in hours, not months
  • Cost: £50,000 projects done for the price of a coffee
  • Accessibility: non-coders can ship
  • Iteration: change is cheap and fast
  • Validation: test ideas before committing

What worries us

  • Security: the AI happily ships your secrets
  • Tech debt: invisible problems accumulate
  • Lock-in: hard to move off the tool that built it
  • Cost cliff: free until it isn't, watch the bills
  • Maintainability: who fixes it in 6 months?

Both lists are honest. The point of the workshop is to use the left list while respecting the right.

Pick your battles.

Where it shines, do this today

  • Prototypes and validation
  • Internal tools for your team
  • Automations and integrations
  • Simple customer-facing apps

Where it doesn't (yet)

  • Regulated industries
  • Anything safety-critical
  • High-traffic platforms
  • Anything that holds sensitive customer data unguarded

By the end of today you'll know which side your idea sits on.

Module 1 of 2

We're going to build an app, together.

You'll have your own version running on your laptop by the break (11:25).

Three sentences. That's the brief.

1

Problem

What's broken or annoying for someone?

2

Who

Whose problem is it?

3

What

What does the app do to solve it?

Looks like this when it's done.

Yoga studio booking

Problem: Customers call to book and the line is busy.

Who: Small yoga studio owner.

What: Shows free slots and takes bookings.

Handyman quote calculator

Problem: I guess at prices and undercharge.

Who: Me, the business owner.

What: Asks 5 questions, outputs a price.

Yours doesn't have to be more complicated than this.

Poll 2 of 8

Which best describes your experience with AI coding tools?

Type: multiple choice (single select)

  • I've shipped something with AI
  • I've tried but gave up
  • I've heard about it but never tried
  • I'm sceptical it works at all
Poll 3 of 8

What's one boring task in your business you'd love a small app to handle?

Type one sentence. We'll pick one to build live.

Kurt is curating three or four strong submissions live, then we'll vote on which to build together.

Poll 4 of 8

What should we build?

Three or four of your ideas, voted by the room.

Pick the one you'd most want to see built live.

This is the prompt we just used.

I am building a small app. Here is the brief:

Problem: [your sentence]
Who:     [your sentence]
What the app does: [your sentence]

Before you write any code:
1. Plan first. Describe in plain English the stack you'd
   recommend and the order you'll build things in. Wait
   for me to confirm.
2. Then build the scaffold. App skeleton, navigation,
   empty pages, working preview.
3. Show me the running app and tell me what to test
   before we add features.

Keep it simple. No login or payment for now. Mobile-
friendly from day one.

All today's prompts are in the prompt library. Scan in 30 minutes.

Your turn. 20 minutes.

01

Open Replit

Go to replit.com and sign in (or create a free account now)

02

Paste your brief into Agent

Use the three-sentence format from the previous slide

03

Talk to it like a person

If something looks wrong, just describe what's off

When (not if) it breaks.

Look at what it did, not at the code

Describe what's wrong in plain English

If it tries the wrong fix twice, stop and re-prompt from scratch

This is vibe debugging. There's a whole section of prompts for it in the library.

You'll know you've found it when 90 minutes have passed.

Vibe coding is genuinely addictive.

The first time you watch an app appear from a paragraph of English, you'll lose three hours and not notice.

Set a timer, when to stop..

This is your only warning.

Get it on the internet.

In Replit, hit Deploy. That's it. You'll get a URL you can text to anyone.

Break. 15 minutes.

Coffee, breathe, grab anyone who's stuck. We're back at 11:40.

While you're up, scan this for every prompt we've used so far.

Module 2 of 2

Replit is the builder. Claude is the architect.

For the next 30 minutes we use Claude to plan properly, fix what's broken, and make your app feel real.

Tell Claude what to build, properly.

A PRD, Product Requirements Document, is just a list of what the app is, who it's for, and what's in (and out of) version 1. Claude is remarkably good at writing them. Five minutes of planning saves an hour of fixing.

Live demo in a sec.

This is the prompt.

You are a product manager helping a small-business
owner plan their first app.

Here is their brief:
Problem: [your sentence]
Who:     [your sentence]
What it does: [your sentence]

Write a short PRD that covers:
1. One-sentence summary
2. Core features (MVP) — 3-5 features
3. Nice-to-haves (post-MVP)
4. User flow — main path step by step
5. Data model — what gets stored
6. Screens / pages
7. Success criteria
8. Out of scope

Keep each section to 3-6 lines. Plain English. Assume
the reader is a junior developer.


Full prompt in the library. Scan the QR at any time.

Watch this.

We're about to paste the same three sentences into Claude and ask it for a proper plan.

Your turn. 15 minutes.

01

Open Claude

claude.ai, free tier is fine for this exercise

02

Paste the PRD prompt with your three sentences

Read what comes back. Edit anything that feels wrong.

03

Paste the final PRD back into Replit

Ask it to update your app to match the plan.

Now think like a software engineer.

Not because you are one.

Because you don't know what you don't know, and we want to fix that.

Software developers ask questions you haven't been trained to ask: 'What happens when this fails?', 'Who else can access this?', 'How will I change this in six months?' The next few slides are the questions we'd ask of anything we built today. They're the difference between a toy and a real product.

Today's goal is education, not selling you a service. If something here sticks, it pays off the next time you build.

What separates a toy from a real product.

Seven things every real piece of software has, and most vibe-coded apps don't (yet).

1. Correct

Does it actually do what was asked?

2. Secure

Can someone break in or steal data?

3. Reliable

Does it stay up under pressure?

4. Maintainable

Can someone else change it without breaking it?

5. Affordable

Are the costs predictable as you grow?

6. Yours

Can you take it elsewhere if you need to?

7. Honest

Will it tell you the truth when something's wrong?

This is the code Replit just shipped you.

We ran an audit on the demo app we built this morning. Here's what it found.

Summary findings

100+ issues flagged across the codebase, security, dependencies, configuration, and data handling.

A representative critical finding

Exposed environment variables, unvalidated inputs, and no rate limiting on public endpoints.

This isn't a Replit problem. It's an everything-built-this-way problem. The point is to know it's there, and to know what good looks like.

When vibe coding goes wrong.

Real stories from the past six months. None of these were beginners.

EnrichLead, shut down in a week

A SaaS app built with zero hand-written code went viral on launch day. Two days later, attackers bypassed all subscriptions, maxed out API keys, and accessed the open database. The founder tried to fix it with AI, the AI broke other parts. Dead within the week.

Vibe Graveyard / Indie Hackers, March 2025

Lovable, every project before Nov 2025 exposed

A researcher made a free account and read other users' source code, database credentials, AI chat histories, and customer data, five API calls, no hacking required. The platform ($6.6bn valuation) initially called it 'intentional behaviour'.

The Register / HackerOne, March 2026

Replit, deleted the production database

SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin explicitly told Replit not to change any code. It deleted his production database anyway, then faked data to cover it up. He'd been using it for seven days and called it 'the most addictive app I've ever used'.

The Register, July 2025

These weren't done by amateurs. They were done at speed without the checks. That's the gap the next slide makes visible.

Poll 5 of 8

After hearing those stories, what's your biggest worry about building with AI?

One or two words. Say what's on your mind.

Poll 6 of 8

Looking at what we just built, which of these worries you most about putting it live?

Stay or graduate?

Stay on Replit

  • You're validating an idea
  • You and your team are the only users
  • You'd ditch it tomorrow if it broke
  • Speed matters more than stability right now

Graduate

  • Real customers depend on it
  • You handle their data
  • Downtime costs you money
  • You're past 50 active users

The graduation isn't optional. It's just a question of when.

What's a code audit?

Because half of the worries you just voted on are answered by one.

A code audit is a structured review of your application by someone who knows what to look for. Security issues, leaked credentials, fragile dependencies, missing backups, unsafe data handling, the things that don't show up in normal use but bite when something goes wrong.

It's not a code review by another developer. It's a deliberate stress-test against a known list of failure modes. The output is a prioritised list of what to fix, in what order, and how bad it'll be if you don't.

Real businesses, real vibe-coded sites.

Three sites live on the internet right now, built using exactly the techniques you've just learned. None of these are demos.

allgreen.page

Tools: Built entirely with Claude

Time: 24 hours, start to finish

Cost: £15/month hosting on Railway. Build included in the Claude subscription, zero extra cost.

What it does: A live status-page platform, branded, real-time incident updates, subscriber alerts. Shipped end-to-end in a day.

smart90.co.uk

Tools: Built in Replit, critiqued by Claude

Time: 2–3 hours for the first version, several more for the refinements

Cost: A few hundred pounds in tooling. The 80% version would have been under £100.

What it does: A 90-day planning and execution system for founders, quarterly summits, weekly AI check-ins, peer group access, Stripe payments wired in.

preciseimpact.ai

Tools: Built in Claude Code via Cursor

Time: Set up over a month; running daily ever since

Cost: Built inside the Claude subscription, no separate dev cost.

What it does: An AI team member called Steve writes two blog posts a day, curates an overnight news brief, posts to Facebook / Instagram / LinkedIn, and submits to Google Search Console, all autonomously.

Full gallery and the story behind each one: notion.so/ggapps/Website-Examples

Every prompt we used, plus more.

Bookmark this. Use it on Monday morning. We update it as we learn.

Prompts for building, debugging, writing PRDs, and graduating to production, all in one place.

Poll 7 of 8

How likely are you to keep building what we started this week?

Honest answer. 1 = very unlikely. 10 = definitely.

Poll 8 of 8

What's one question you still have?

Anything. We'll answer the top-voted ones live.

What we don't get to live, we'll cover in the follow-up email.

What we covered today.

If you remember nothing else, remember this.

1

Vibe coding = describe in English, AI writes the code, you correct it in English.

2

Most vibe-coded apps live as internal tools, not customer products.

3

The build starts with a three-sentence brief: Problem, Who, What.

4

Replit builds. Claude plans, debugs, and ships.

5

A proper PRD saves an hour of fixing every five minutes you spend on it.

6

Seven things separate a toy from a real product. Most vibe-coded apps have 0–1 of them.

7

The biggest wins are internal tools. The biggest risks are customer-facing data apps.

8

Momentum dies on Wednesday. Take your next step before then.

All the prompts, examples, and links are in the library, scan the QR on the prompt library slide.

Three things to do this week.

Momentum dies on Wednesday. Don't let it.

Finish your app.

Even if it's rough, hit Deploy. Tomorrow morning you're more likely to come back to something that already exists than to something half-built on your laptop.

Show one customer or colleague.

Their reaction in the first 30 seconds tells you what to fix next. Don't wait until it's polished.

Run the seven-criteria check on what you built.

Open your live URL. Walk through the seven from earlier — Correct, Secure, Reliable, Maintainable, Affordable, Yours, Honest. Score yourself honestly. The gaps are where the real work begins.

You walked in this morning with an idea. Don't let it die in a browser tab.

Stay in touch.

Two small asks before you go.

Leave a Google review

If today was useful — a sentence or two on Google means a lot. It tells BetaDen the workshop should run again, and it tells us we got it right.


Connect on LinkedIn

Find Paul and Green Gorilla Automation on LinkedIn.

We post real-world examples, audit findings, and small wins from clients every week.

Both take less than a minute. We notice every one.

Thanks for spending the morning with us.

And thanks to BetaDen for making this happen.

Paul Rhodes

Founder

Kurt Peniket

AI Lead & Software Engineer

paul@ggapps.co.uk · greengorillaautomation.co.uk

We're running this again on 9 June. Tell a friend.