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I Built an App. Now What?
A Field Guide for the Non-Engineer Who Built Something Real — and Hit the Wall
You built an app with AI. Nobody told you what comes next. This is the field guide across that wall — decisions, security, legal, launch — in plain language, for non-engineers.
You described an app to an AI. It built it. And for one glorious week, you were a wizard.
Then the questions started. Where does this thing actually live? Is anyone's data safe? What's a database, an environment variable, an SSL certificate — and why are they suddenly my problem? The tools made the first 80% feel like magic. Nobody warned you about the other 20%: the decisions, the security, the legal pages, and everything standing between "it works on my screen" and "it's live, and safe, for strangers on the internet."
This is the field guide for that gap.
Written by someone who hit every wall in it personally — not a computer scientist, but a builder who shipped — I Built an App. Now What? takes you from stuck prototype to launched product in plain language, with no assumed jargon and no shame. You'll learn to think like the architect of your own software (and to direct your AI like one), to make the handful of decisions that actually matter, to lock down your app before someone walks through the open door, which legal pages you genuinely need, and exactly how to go live.
It won't make you a software engineer. It'll do something more useful: get your real app safely into the world — and turn "now what?" from a moment of dread into the best question a builder ever gets to ask.
If you built something with AI and don't know what comes next, start here.
What's inside
- Working with AI as the architect, not the passenger
- Setting up to really work: IDE, terminal, Git, running the app on your machine
- The decisions nobody warned you about: backend, database, where logic lives, the data model
- Making it safe: logins, secrets and API keys, an open database, the unprotected text box
- The legal layer: GDPR in plain terms, the documents every app needs, licences
- Going live: hosting, development vs production, domains and the padlock
- Testing, error states and knowing when it breaks
- Going mobile, the app-store gauntlet, the surprise bill and scaling
- A prompt library, decision cheat-sheets, a glossary and a tool directory
Who it's for
For founders, designers, product people, hobbyists, career changers and new developers who have a working prototype but need help getting it safely into the world. You do not need a technical background, but you do need a willingness to understand a little. It also applies if you are learning to code without AI.
Who it isn't for
Not for senior engineers shipping inside a team, readers looking for a get-rich-quick pitch, or anyone seeking deep computer-science theory. This is a practical field guide, not a coding course.
About the author
Valentin Kirilov runs a small software studio in Sofia, where he builds apps and websites the way this book describes — by directing AI, and lately a whole team of AI agents, rather than writing every line by hand. His projects aren’t toys: a sprawling personal-finance app that began with receipts and grew into budgets, shared real-time shopping, inventory tracking, and splitting a restaurant bill across several families at once; and a parenting app that bundles ten different trackers into one. He hit every wall in these pages building them, and wrote this book for the person he used to be — someone holding a working demo and no idea what came next.
If you’ve built something and gotten stuck at the wall, he’d genuinely like to hear about it — vivanheltprodjekts.com.
Formats and prices
- Gumroad · EPUB + PDF · 275 pages · DRM-free · $12