FAQ

What AI Tools Do You Need to Build Production Software?

Building with AI

Key Takeaways
  • You need an AI code editor (Cursor), an AI reasoning model (Claude), and a version control platform with AI features (GitHub Copilot) -- at a combined cost of approximately $105 per month.
  • This stack replaced a pre-AI operating model that cost $65,054 in contractor labor over the equivalent period, producing a 620x cost collapse in build economics.
  • The Stack Overflow 2024 Developer Survey reported that 76% of developers are using or planning to use AI tools in their development process, with AI-powered code editors and assistants leading adoption.

You need an AI code editor (Cursor), an AI reasoning model (Claude), and a version control platform with AI features (GitHub Copilot) -- at a combined cost of approximately $105 per month. This stack replaced a pre-AI operating model that cost $65,054 in contractor labor over the equivalent period, producing a 620x cost collapse in build economics.

The Stack Overflow 2024 Developer Survey reported that 76% of developers are using or planning to use AI tools in their development process, with AI-powered code editors and assistants leading adoption. But adoption alone does not determine production viability. The gap between "using AI to write code" and "shipping production systems with AI" is where most tooling discussions fall short. The critical variable is not which tools you select -- it is whether the methodology around those tools produces compounding returns.

The PRJ-02 portfolio validated a specific three-tool stack across 596,903 lines of code and 10 production systems. Cursor serves as the AI-augmented code editor, handling the primary development interface where the operator writes, reviews, and iterates on code. Claude provides the reasoning layer -- technical problem-solving, architecture decisions, debugging, and domain-specific knowledge on demand. GitHub Copilot supplies inline code completion and context-aware suggestions during active editing. Together, these tools cost roughly $105 per month.

What these tools replaced is where the economics become significant. Before the AI-assisted model, the same operator spent $65,054 across three contractors (CON-02 at $40,700, CON-03 at $21,854, and a third at $2,500) over 3,468 delegated hours. The operator directed; others built. At $105 per month in AI tooling, the per-line-of-code cost dropped to $0.06. The operator's monthly operating cost fell from a $6,312 average to approximately $825 -- with contractor spend going from a $9,046 monthly peak to $0 permanently after November 2025.

The tools themselves are necessary but not sufficient. Production software also requires standard infrastructure: hosting, domain management, payment processing (Stripe), email delivery (Klaviyo), and communication APIs (Twilio) depending on the product. These are SaaS vendor costs, not AI costs. The AI tool stack is what makes the build itself possible at this price point. The methodology layered on top -- specifically how Foundation inheritance, Scaffold deployment, and the Pendulum decision filter interact with AI tooling -- is what produces the compounding that took build times from 24 days to 5 days across the portfolio.

Related: Spoke 7 -- Cost to Build Software with AI

References

  1. Stack Overflow (2024). "Developer Survey." AI tool adoption data showing 76% of developers using or planning to use AI tools.
  2. GitHub (2023). "Copilot Research." Productivity impact analysis of AI-assisted code completion.