The past two years have been a whirlwind. AI models now create images, videos, and even code faster than humans. I felt both amazed… and scared. If AI could do my job, what would be left for me?
Instead of waiting for the wave to wash over me, I decided to build something of my own. Video tools were too costly, so I started with images — the foundation of video — and began working on photor.ai, an AI-powered image generation and editing tool.
No design skills. No frontend experience. No budget.
1.V0 for the product page
2.Cursor for both frontend & backend code
3.GitHub for source control
4.Cloudflare Pages for hosting frontend
5.A tiny cloud server for the backend
It wasn’t smooth:
1.Broke deployments at 2 a.m. more than once
2.Rebuilt features from scratch when early versions failed
3.Hit API rate limits just hours before launch
There was a night I nearly quit. I told myself, “Maybe I’m not cut out for this. I’m just a CRUD dev.”
The next morning, I decided to keep going anyway. One bug at a time, one feature at a time, one tiny improvement at a time. Slowly, photor.ai came to life.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: you don’t need to be a “full-stack rockstar” to launch something in the AI era. Curiosity and persistence matter more than credentials.
If you’ve been hesitating, start now. Even if it’s messy, even if it’s small — the best way to understand this new era is to create in it.