How to build a website with AI: brief, build, check, publish

What kind of website are you building?

Decide this before you open any tool, because it picks the route. A five-page site for a business needs very different things from a store or an app with logins.

This page is about the first two kinds, and about the build-and-publish process that every kind shares. If you want a comparison of the builders themselves, read the best AI website builder page. For turning a web app into something people pay for, see how to make money from an app.

Should you use an AI website builder or a coding agent?

Both write the site from a description. They differ in who holds the controls.

• AI builder (such as Lovable). You describe the site in a chat, the tool generates it, shows a live preview and hosts it. Lovable’s publishing documentation describes publishing from the project chat and connecting custom domains. This is the quickest path to a link you can share. The cost is that you work inside the platform’s limits and rules.
• Coding agent (such as Claude Code or Cursor). The agent writes the files on your computer; you run the site locally and choose where to host it. You own the code and can move it anywhere. It asks more of you: a terminal, a code editor and a willingness to read errors. The Claude Code guide walks through it.
• Template plus AI help. Start from a ready-made template in a site builder and use AI only to write text and make small changes. This is the lowest-risk route for a plain brochure site.

A reasonable rule: if nobody will ever need a feature the platform does not offer, use the builder. If you expect to grow the site into something more, or you want to avoid being locked in, use a coding agent from the start.

What goes in the brief?

The biggest difference in results comes from the brief, not the tool. A vague prompt such as “make a modern website for my business” produces a generic template with invented text. A specific brief produces something you can use. Write down the answers to these first.

1. Who is the site for? One type of visitor, in a sentence.
2. What should they do? One main action: call, book, buy, sign up. Everything on the page should lead to it.
3. Which pages? For a first version, three to five is plenty: home, what you offer, about, contact. Add more only if a real visitor needs them.
4. What text do you already have? Your real services, prices, hours and a short story. Paste them in.
5. What should it feel like? Name two or three sites you like, and the colors and fonts if you have them.
6. What must be true? Works on a phone, loads fast, readable text size, contact form that sends to your email.

Build a [3-page] website for [business or project name].

Visitor: [one sentence describing who comes and what they want].
Main action: [call / book / sign up / buy]. Put it above the fold on every page.

Pages:
1. Home: [headline, three-sentence intro, three offers, one call to action]
2. [Services]: [list]
3. Contact: [form with name, email, message; sends to the address I give you]

Use only the text I provide below. Where text is missing, leave a visible placeholder in square brackets. Do not invent testimonials, prices, numbers or team members.

Design: [two or three words, e.g. plain, high contrast, one accent color]. Mobile first. Large readable text. Every image has alt text. Each page has a unique title and meta description.

My text:
[paste]

When you finish, list what you did not build and what you assumed.

The line about not inventing testimonials matters. AI tools fill gaps with plausible fiction, and fake reviews on a real site are a legal and trust problem.

How do you build it step by step?

1. Generate the first version from the brief. Expect to change a lot of it.
2. Open it on your phone before anything else. Most visitors will.
3. Change one thing per message. “Make the hero text shorter and move the button up” works. A list of ten changes in one message often breaks something else.
4. Replace placeholders with your own words. Read every sentence aloud. If it sounds like nobody in particular wrote it, rewrite it.
5. Add the form and test it. Send yourself a message and check that it arrives in your inbox, not in spam.
6. Ask the tool to explain what it built if you use a coding agent: which files hold the text, which hold the style, and how to publish. Keep that answer.

If you are experimenting rather than building for a client, treat the first version as a draft you can throw away. Describing the site and iterating on it is what people call vibe coding a website, and what vibe coding is explains the method and its limits.

What should you check before publishing?

AI-generated sites look finished before they are. Go through this list.

For search, Google’s SEO starter guide covers titles, snippets and how Google finds pages. Add the site to Search Console once it is live so you can see what Google has indexed.

Where should you host it?

A builder like Lovable hosts the site for you. If you built it with a coding agent, you pick a host. Free tiers exist, but they come with terms that matter for a business site. As of October 2026, from the providers’ own pages:

Read the current terms yourself, since they change. The guide to hosting a website for free goes through the options and trade-offs, and how to make an app for free covers the wider costs.

A domain name is separate from hosting. You buy it from a registrar for a yearly fee, then point it at your host following the host’s instructions. Pick a name that is easy to say aloud, and buy it in your own account so no one else controls it.

What happens after the site is live?

• Look at it weekly for a month. Read your form messages and check that the site still loads.
• Add analytics that matches your legal setting, so you know which pages people read.
• Keep the source and the prompts. Save your brief and the final text in a document. If the tool changes or breaks, you can rebuild.
• Update with small, tested steps. Re-running a big prompt on a live site can overwrite things you fixed by hand.
• Back up the code if you use a coding agent, with version control such as git, so you can undo a bad change.

If the site is the front of an idea you are testing, a landing page with an email form is the lightest version. Landing page ideas shows layouts for that. If you have an idea but no plan to build it, you can post it on the board instead, free and with no account.

What goes wrong most often?

• Generic text. The site reads like every other. Fix it with your real details and a clear point of view.
• Too many pages. Each page you add needs content and care. Start with the minimum.
• No next step. A visitor finishes reading and has nothing to click. Give every page one action.
• Trusting the preview. A page that looks right in the builder can break on a phone or in another browser.
• Hosting terms ignored. Putting a commercial site on a personal-use plan risks it being suspended.
• Secrets in the code. Keep API keys and passwords out of files that get published.