I Built a Production-Grade App in 2 Weeks. The Codebase Should Have Taken a Year. Here’s What That Means.

TLDR: We are now only limited by our imagination.

I have been getting back into AI, specifically into my AI work flow, and wanted to find out what this vibe coding was all about.

I love a good challenge. Whether it’s automating a complex school admin process or diving deep into a new piece of the Power Platform, pushing the boundaries is what this is all about.

But recently, I was faced with a thought experiment that has fundamentally shifted my perspective on what "building" really means.

It started with an idea, I played around with a few ideas but didn't get the traction that I wanted. I figured I needed to concentrate on something that was close to my heart. And then I saw it on Howdang Rashid's LinkedIn post project: a full-scale, production-grade “Community Calendar Hub” application. Think of it as a comprehensive event management platform for the Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and Azure communities.

I’m not talking about a simple landing page. I’m talking about a beast of a system with:

• Complex Authentication: User/admin logins, OAuth, session management, and profile completion flows.

• Full Event & Speaker Management:

  • Event submission workflows (pending, approved, rejected), recurring events, and a speaker invitation system with expiring tokens.

  • Coming soon: Monetisation with Stripe: A multi-tiered payment system for featuring events and a separate monthly subscription for premium analytics.

• Advanced Admin Dashboard: KPI cards, interactive charts, and drill-down tables with Excel export for users, events, and attendees.

• Full GDPR & Legal Framework: Consent management on signup and event attendance, with dedicated terms of service and privacy pages.

• And More:

  • Algolia real-time search

  • Google Maps integration

  • Automated emails

  • Performance optimisation

  • End-to-end testing with Playwright.

It’s the kind of project that, in the traditional world, is a massive undertaking. The Human-Powered Estimate (according to Gemini): 8 to 14 Months.

I broke it down. For a single, experienced full-stack developer to build this from the ground up, you’re looking at 8 to 14 months of full-time work.

• Months 1-3 (The Foundation): Just getting the core architecture, basic authentication, and simple event creation in place.

• Months 4-8 (The Heavy Lifting): This is where the real complexity kicks in. Integrating Stripe for two different payment models, building the intricate admin dashboard, and wiring up a real-time search service like Algolia. This is the bulk of the development calendar.

• Months 9-14 (The Polish & Compliance): This is what separates a prototype from a product. Implementing the GDPR framework, refactoring database queries for performance (like solving a nasty O(n) scan), hardening security, and squashing all the bugs that inevitably pop up.

This timeline is realistic. It accounts for planning, coding, debugging, and the sheer cognitive load of holding all those interconnected systems in your head.

Then I pos a question: What if I told you I did it all in two weeks?

The AI-Powered Reality: A 2-Week Sprint.

The answer is, of course, I didn’t do it alone. I did it with a (hypothetical) tool Windsurf AI IDE.

In this scenario, my two weeks weren't spent writing thousands of lines of TypeScript or wrestling with API documentation. My role changed entirely.

I was no longer the coder; I was the architect. The director. The product visionary.

My job was to provide the AI with incredibly precise, high-level instructions. Not "make a button," but:

> "Implement a user-deletion feature for the admin dashboard. It must be a two-step confirmation process requiring the admin to type 'delete'. On confirmation, it must remove the user from Firebase Auth, delete their Firestore profile document, and iterate through all events they attended to remove their record from the attendee sub-collections. Log this action for auditing."

To get from that prompt to a fully functional, secure feature in minutes is a complete paradigm shift. The AI didn't just generate code; it understood the intent. It foresaw the need for cascading deletes and audit logs. It proactively solved problems.

What This Means for Developers, Makers, and the Future of Flow

Building that entire application in two weeks would mean we've crossed a threshold. It tells us that the future of development isn't about learning the syntax of a new framework. It’s about honing our ability to think and communicate with clarity.

Your Value Shifts from Coder to Architect: Your most valuable skill is no longer your typing speed or your memory of specific functions. It's your ability to see the big picture, design robust systems, and describe them with enough precision for an AI to execute.

Prompting is the New Programming: The quality of your output is directly proportional to the quality of your input. Vague requests will lead to buggy, incomplete features. The developers who succeed will be the ones who can articulate complex requirements in a way the machine understands.

The Speed of Innovation Will Be Breathtaking: Imagine being able to build and launch a feature like "Enhanced Event Metrics" complete with a Stripe subscription, analytics backend, and a polished UI, in a single afternoon. The barrier between an idea and a deployed product is dissolving.

This isn't science fiction. We're seeing the early stages of this today in tools like GitHub Copilot and other AI assistants. The "Windsurf AI IDE" is a logical next step.

For me, this is incredibly exciting. It means less time bogged down in boilerplate code and more time focused on what we in the Power Platform community do best: solving real-world problems.

It means the solutions we can dream up—for our businesses, our clients, and our communities—are no longer limited by a 14-month development cycle.

They’re only limited by the clarity of our vision.