Everyone’s building with Cursor. Almost no one’s doing it right. It’s not bad prompts that kill MVPs. It’s the lack of a system. Here are 7 hard lessons from building 17+ MVPs with Bolt, Cursor, and Supabase. Bookmark this if you want to ship clean, not just fast.
1/ The wrong stack will break your MVP AI doesn’t code like humans. It replicates patterns it’s seen before. So if your stack is rare or messy, it’ll hallucinate. What works for me: - Next/ React for frontend - Supabase for backend - Stripe for payments - Vercel for deploying
2/ You don’t need a full team. You need roles and structure. My builds follow 4 clear stages, all driven by AI: - Planner: Draft the PRD, user flows, and tech stack using ChatGPT - Architect: Break down features into tasks and screen logic - Builder: Load the plan into Cursor
3/ Project Rules change everything Most developers skip this. I used to too. But once I started attaching .mdc rules inside .cursor/rules/, things changed. Cursor stops guessing. Starts building.
4/ Different AI models serve different roles People ask: which model is the best? Wrong question. Here’s what I use: - Claude 3.5 Sonnet → Best for bug-fixing and logic-heavy execution - GPT-4o → Great for product planning and UI dev plans - Gemini 2.5 Pro → Reads huge
5/ Save often. Or regret it later. Cursor is powerful. But it can nuke your working code in one wrong generation. My tip? Use git from day 1. Run: git init git add . git commit -m "stable" Code broke? git log git reset --hard <commit>
6/ If you're using AI to debug, stop copy-pasting logs Use Browser MCP Now I just prompt: “Use Browser MCP to take a screenshot and gather console logs” AI sees the actual screen + errors and fixes them without me doing anything. Faster QA, smoother feedback loops, no tab
Final Thoughts The tools aren’t the problem. It’s the lack of system. You can build a real MVP solo, if you prep your docs, set rules, and use AI the right way. Vibe coding got me here. Structured coding with AI is what’s taking it to the next level.