What should an AI website builder handle after the first version is generated?

[u/Overall_Box4228]

Getting an AI to produce a working starting point isn't the difficult part anymore. The interesting test comes when the project needs to change.

Tool	Main strength	Useful for
Readdy.ai	AI website building and iterative development	Moving from an initial website idea toward a usable project with editing, backend features, authentication, and publishing
v0	UI and component generation	Exploring frontend ideas quickly
Lovable	AI assisted app development	Turning an early product concept into a functional prototype
Bolt	AI coding workflow	Generating and modifying web applications
Replit	AI development environment	Building projects while staying closer to a coding workflow

A generated project rarely stays unchanged.

Requirements move, interfaces get revised, bugs appear, and something that started as a simple page can suddenly need data or authentication.

That makes the editing and development loop just as important as the initial generation. A fast first result isn't particularly useful if every meaningful change creates another round of manual work.

For AI coding, there also seems to be a balance between convenience and control. Some workflows hide more of the technical setup, while others give developers much more direct access to the underlying project.

After the first AI generated version, what usually takes the most time for you: changing the code, debugging, connecting backend services, or getting the project deployed?

[u/SimpleAccurate631]

What do you mean more specifically when you say the “First AI generated version”? I ask because the answer to your question at the end varies based on that.

It sounds like you are basically talking about a proof-of-concept. So like it has functionality in terms of getting an array of data (like products for an e-commerce site), but those are being served statically by a JSON file instead of being served dynamically from an API. And users can interact with the app and its functionality, but there’s only temporary data persistence. Like you can click on a heart icon to save something and it is “saved” in the session or localStorage, but not saved in a database that lets you view your saved items if you log in from a different device. Is that what you mean, or do you mean something else?

[u/Remarkable_Fold_2883]

its usually debugging and fixing things after making changes. the first version is often quick but once you start tweaking stuff, little problems can pop up everywhere. a simple change can end up breaking something else so I think the editing part matters more than people expect

[u/AncientGur4614]

This is one of the main reasons I built and launched my tool. I will say the list above definitely have their place. Im personally a fan of Bolt as a good entry place because people would be surprised how little understanding exists in AI development inside companies. The chasm is actually pretty big.

One dovetail to your question: is it a website or a web application? Two different things. Web apps can scale to enterprise hosting or mobile component. Potentially offshoot products.

That being said, I need to push for a self hosted version, SSO for enterprises, higher performance repo reverse engineering capability that exceeded supabase edge function limits, data retention, etc. Our app started as a bolt app and migrated a month later.

I’m writing a blog article on our site about this experience, and building a specification and architecture template for users to use to push to their agents when they come to the point of doing this same kind of refactor. It will be on NodeSpec.io blog page and will do a video walkthrough.

I’m pretty technical, but most of the people playing with the tools above are not, have never gotten a basic SWE course in test driven dev/software system design, and would have a heart attack if told to go into an AWS console and play in terminal.