My Workflow for Building Full-Stack Apps with AI Assistance

I’ve refined my AI-assisted development workflow over the past year and I’m shipping features roughly 3x faster than before. Here’s the actual process.

Planning phase (Claude):
– I describe the feature in plain English
– Ask Claude to create a technical spec with database schema, API endpoints, and component structure
– Review and iterate on the spec before writing any code

Backend development (Cursor + Claude):
– Start with the database migration
– Use Cursor’s chat to generate API route handlers referencing existing code patterns
– Ask it to write tests as I go (it’s actually good at this)

Frontend development (Cursor + GPT-4o):
– Generate React components with Tailwind styling
– GPT-4o is better at UI code than Claude in my experience
– Use AI to handle the boring parts (form validation, error states, loading states)

Debugging (Claude):
– Paste the error + relevant code context
– Claude catches bugs faster than any other model I’ve tried

Code review (AI + human):
– Run AI review first to catch obvious issues
– Then human review for architecture and business logic

The key: Use different models for different tasks. No single AI is best at everything.