Education series · Week

Week 2 — Planning with AI (architecture before code)

Last year I shipped a working app. Then I deleted it. Here's why.

📹 Video shipping soon

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What you'll walk away with

A scene-by-scene walkthrough of every beat in the video. Plain English. Real numbers. Real workflow.

The walkthrough

  1. Last year I shipped a working app. Then I deleted it. Here's why.
  2. Education Series · Module 2 · Planning with AI
  3. Code first → 3 rewrites · Plan first → 1 build
  4. Plan Mode = Claude tells you what it's about to do, you say yes/no, then it does it
  5. claude then Shift+Tab toggle
  6. Today's project: a customer intake form for a roofing business
  7. I want a customer intake form. Plan it before you build.
  8. What fields? · Where does data go? · Who sees it? · Mobile or desktop first?
  9. Fields: name, phone, email, address, roof age, photos, urgency, source
  10. Local SQLite. Don't pay for a cloud database I don't need.
  11. Just me, and an n8n workflow that emails me.
  12. Mobile-first. 80% of my leads click from a Facebook ad.
  13. Stack: HTML+CSS form → Netlify Function → SQLite → email via Postmark
  14. Capture · Intelligence · Orchestration · Storage · Interface
  15. Push back. Don't just accept the first plan.
  16. Direct email = no record. Function = SQLite log. Trade-off depends on whether you want analytics.
  17. DECISION 1: Storage = SQLite (chosen for analytics)
  18. DECISION 2: Notify via Postmark · DECISION 3: Mobile-first CSS · DECISION 4: No JS framework
  19. A proper CLAUDE.md file appearing in the editor
  20. OWNER · MACHINE · STACK · ARCHITECTURE · RULES · COSTS · DEPLOY
  21. mkdir -p 02_ROOFING_INTAKE/{public,functions,data,docs}
  22. Tree view of the new project
  23. Saving plan-2026-04-25.md to docs/
  24. 15 min planning · saves 8h rewrites · ROI = 32x
  25. Side-by-side: Plan Mode (slow, deliberate) vs Auto Mode (fast, risky)
  26. git add CLAUDE.md docs/plan-2026-04-25.md then commit
  27. Claude reading the new CLAUDE.md
  28. gh repo create roofing-intake --private --push
  29. You are a planning bot. Ask me 6 questions before drafting a plan.
  30. Filled CLAUDE.md · Decision log · Folder scaffold · Git history
  31. HOMEWORK: Plan ONE real project for YOUR business. Same pattern. Push the CLAUDE.md to GitHub.
  32. NEXT WEEK: Building the static site we planned today — HTML + CSS, deployed to Netlify

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← Week 1 — Setting up your AI dev environment Week 3 — Your first real website (HTML+CSS, no framework) →

— Jake Morris · Oklahoma veteran · localmodeldojo.com