What "Built It Solo" Actually Means When You Work With AI
Ellen Hermance developed PlantCareAI, a personalized AI plant care advisor, after being laid off in August 2025, using AI tools to build the application largely on her own. She describes her role as both product owner and technical director, emphasizing that while AI wrote much of the code, she guided all decisions and maintained quality control. The project highlights a new model of solo development where humans direct AI as a team member rather than coding entirely from scratch.
- ▪PlantCareAI provides personalized plant care advice using live weather data and user input, with features for both free and signed-in users.
- ▪The app was built using Python/Flask, PostgreSQL via Supabase, Tailwind CSS, JavaScript, and deployed on Render with Anthropic's Claude Haiku as the primary LLM.
- ▪Hermance used Claude Code as a developer-like collaborator, reviewing all AI-generated code and making final decisions on architecture, features, and quality.
- ▪A key technical feature is the AI fallback chain: Claude Haiku is used first, then Google Gemini, followed by hardcoded responses if both fail.
- ▪The application includes email-based authentication, Stripe payments, WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance, and PWA support.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3935465) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Ellen Hermance Posted on May 17 • Originally published at ehermance.com What "Built It Solo" Actually Means When You Work With AI #ai #python #flask #webdev PlantCareAI is a weather and context-aware AI plant advisor that gives personalized care guidance based on each plant's history and live local weather data. I built it solo after getting laid off in August 2025. Here's what I actually learned about building with AI when no one else is on the team.
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