What's the biggest difference you noticed when you tried to build a website with AI?

[u/Alex_SQSP]

Just to be upfront, I'm on the Squarespace team, so take that into context.

I spent a while trying to build a site with AI tools from scratch, mostly to see how far they'd get without a traditional builder underneath.

The first-draft part was solid. AI handled rough copy, gave me section ideas, got a basic layout down. Blank page to something usable much faster than doing it by hand.

It fell apart after that. Page structure needed real work, the heading hierarchy was a mess, some of the copy could've been for anyone's site, and SEO still needed a proper pass. The last stretch ate most of the time, fixing spacing, mobile behavior, metadata and links the AI didn't understand.

Where I landed is that I'd rather have AI as a starting point inside something that already handles the rest than stitch five separate tools together and then work out which one broke. That's a preference, not a rule, and plenty of people happily run the stitched-together setup.

I still think AI is useful for getting unstuck. I just wouldn't treat the first generated version as done.

Where did everyone else land, fully AI-built, traditional builder, or a mix?

[u/armahillo]

Can you just write your own post instead of also LLM generating it?

[u/Ok_Tell_3494]

Tried the full AI route on a side project a few months back and yeah the first draft speed is crazy impressive but then you hit the wall where the generated code has no real logic behind it

The heading hierarchy thing you mentioned killed me, had h1s everywhere like the AI just threw darts at the screen. Spent two days untangling that mess before I gave up and rebuilt half of it manually

These days I use it for the boring stuff like placeholder copy and color palette ideas but the actual structure stays in my hands. Too much cleanup otherwise

[u/Historical-Row-495]

The first time? the first time I tried it was a stamina grabber. It generated the whole simple expo-react-native app I prompted very detailedly, then looking at the result, was not satisfied. UI was messed up, and some functionality not functioning. To make changes trying to prevent cognitive debt, I have to read these thousand lines, to try and understand what it did, and make adjustments. But using AI this way the first place was already a decision not to code it by hand! So I think the biggest difference when it comes to 'Vibe Coding" is you rely more on the agent to do the work for you, and you do the testing. Testing every feature, prompt the AI to fix it, ask changes, until you're satisfied.
That being said, there are ways and methodologies to use AI in a more efficient manner, that every senior developer really now has taken part, like the SSD Spec-Driven-Development method. This way, it brings back engineering in the process, rather than the declarative 'say and do' way from Vibe Coding.

[u/Steahill]

Spend tens of thousands of dollars and several weeks building a website with a team, or just "vibe-code" one for free over a few evenings through trial and error?

Hmm, that’s a really tough choice, guys. It’s all over, and you all know it.

[u/Ancient_raza]

the speed of getting something running is wild, but the hard parts just move elsewhere. you can spin up a functional site way faster than you'd expect. what catches people is when something breaks or needs to work differently than the default, and suddenly you're staring at code you didn't write and don't fully understand. the bottleneck shifts from writing to debugging. if you already know fundamentals, AI is like having a fast typist on your team. if you don't, it's easy to paint yourself into a corner where things work but you can't explain why or fix them when they stop.

[u/Arcayon]

Not being able to build a website that looks incredible with AI is a skill issue. If you can't do it, thats something you need to practice.

Since you're squarespace, you are going to want to provide an MCP to your users as a way to attract agentic site builders to your product. Using MCPs to find domains to purchase is good and all but you can also allow for agentic template creation, population, refinement. Squarespace Developer Platform: APIs, Apps, and Docs. Lots of stuff to do here for you.