From Assistant to Builder: What I Learned Shipping an AI-Assisted Project

Source: Dev.to

Building a URL shortener with Cursor, ChatGPT, AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and Cloudflare taught me more about shipping software than writing code.

Since last year, Cursor has been my go-to development assistant for daily tasks. But at the beginning of this year, just using it to generate snippets didn’t feel like enough anymore. Before asking Cursor to write a single line of code, I wanted to map out the architecture. Backend: Node.js + TypeScript Frontend: React + Vite Database: MongoDB Atlas Redirects: AWS Lambda Entry Point: AWS API Gateway DNS / CDN: Cloudflare Security: JWT + Rate Limiting Local Development: Docker The core concept was simple: the main application would manage URL creation and administration, while a serverless AWS Lambda function would handle redirect requests. Cursor generated the Lambda code without much trouble. The real challenge wasn’t the code—it was the infrastructure around it.

Future Evolutions (Moving Beyond the MVP)

Getting the first version online was the main goal, but the project didn’t stop there. Looking back, the biggest takeaway wasn’t that I built a URL shortener. https://urlshortener.it-rod.com I’d love to hear your feedback, suggestions, questions, or even criticism. If you’ve been experimenting with AI-assisted development yourself, I’d also be curious to know what you’ve learned along the way. I’m genuinely happy to finally be sharing this.