How To Build Your First App with AI - Lesson 1
Let AI Build Your First App (No Experience Needed)📅 2025-10-27
Transcript
[00:00] Let's build out a real application by vibe coding the entire thing in Google AI Studio. Now, here's the best part of the series you just found yourself on. I'm a real software engineer. And what that means for you is I can combine the world of vibe coders and real world development knowledge and make it extremely easy to understand. To put simply, my objective of this series is I'm going to build out an application episode by episode as if you've never coded in your entire life. and the application we'll work on together in this series will be thumbo, but the steps and processes you'll see you can
[00:31] quite literally apply to any application, any idea. Therefore, this is the most cookie cutter series you'll find on this topic. Let's jump in. Welcome back, y'all. Today's video has been a highly requested series. This is going to get its own playlist, so make sure to check it out in the description down below. It's going to be called something like Google AI Studio Vibe Coding. In addition, right off the bat, make sure to leave a like. Also, hit that like button if you're here early. We got to push this out because this is going to be a groundbreaking playlist. And I'm not over exaggerating here because here's the missing puzzle piece that's not currently in the content
[01:01] space. There are really intelligent engineers that know how to program. These individuals are already working for Google. They're already working for X. They're already working for Facebook. So, they're not going to take the time out of their day to create a whole series like this. And then the other side of the coin is that people making content on this topic have no development experience and are quite literally just doing it for the views, doing it for the clicks. Oh, new AI coding tool and they don't even know what the heck it is. So, you're in good hands here in this series. And some of you all be like, Corbin, what's your experience? I've been coding since I was 12. This stuff comes very easy to me. So
[01:32] therefore, I'm going to dumb it down extremely to the I'm gonna dumb it down so dumb that people that are very very well-versed in the programming world are going to get pissed off at me because they're going to be like, "Well, Corbin, technically GitHub." No, no, no. Make it simple. We're vibe coding. Let's build an application that goes to a secure.com URL that we can make money on or we can get impressions on or we can just share to our mom and be like, "Look at this cool thing I built." All right, let's do it. So, episode one here is going to be the tech stack. This is me and you. You got the cowboy hat on. Oh yeah, Texas.
[02:04] And what a tech stack is just think about like the materials to build a house. And we're going to jump into that in today's video. The next episode's going to be app UI and app value. What does that mean, Corbin? That means quite literally you're watching this on YouTube or you're watching this on X. You hit that little like button. That's user interface. That's just fundamentally the little front end. That's what we call it as well. App value. What does your app provide as value? The app value we're doing in this series is going to be the ability to upload any image and create really cool thumbnails in a chat-like interface. If you've watched my other videos, you know exactly what I'm talking about. My earlier Google AI Studio videos from
[02:34] this week. What is your app value? What is essentially the thing you're doing in your software that someone's willing to pay for or do some type of premium service for? Eg. Hulu. Like why am I subscribed to Hulu? Because I want to watch TV series that are cool to me. The next episode will be on signup. How do we create a secure way for users to actually sign up of your platform? Whether that is on Google, Microsoft, email, and password, everything like this. After this, the next layup will be database. How do we create a database that's going to store the user's information and everything relevant to
[03:04] the user? Database is fundamentally important for you to understand. And don't over complicate it, y'all. Do you know what an Excel sheet is? Do you know what a CSV is? Yeah, think of a database like that. It's just where we store specific text data and it has little pathways. And don't worry, I'll make that make more sense as we get going here, but just think of it like a CSV sheet. Oh, we got user one. What's user one's email? Emailgmail.com. Next in the series will be functions. How do we actually do a cloud function? What is a cloud function, Corbin? A function that runs in a server in
[03:34] somewhere in Nebraska in Google's huge server plants. We offload functions to Google Cloud, AWS. We do this so that we don't have to build the servers in-house. I don't know if y'all saw AWS and what happened to them like last week. A lot of big companies just went down. But don't worry about that part, okay? Where's the vibe in here? So, we'll go GCP. But Amazon, if you want a whole series dedicated to you, hit me up on the DMs, my email. Following this, we'll do storage. Now, storage could be PDF files, image files.
[04:06] For our specific context, we're going to be leveraging storage here so that we can store the users's past thumbnails they created on our platform. Maybe this isn't relevant to you, but this could be a cool episode for your context in the future. Now, one thing I could think of right off the bat why this could be relevant to you is if in your platform, you have the ability for the user to upload a new profile image. Like here, my ex functionally they use a storage block here in order for me to upload my profile image. Corbin, Corbin Brown, check me out in the description. Next, we'll go over getting paid. How do we get paid here, Corbin? What is the ways to monetize? It isn't as simple as just
[04:36] a subscriptionbased services. There's actually alternative ways you can make money in your app. Some of y'all are going to like that episode, and some of y'all are just genuinely here to vibe code and just build something for a friend. I get it. There there's a huge spectrum here, y'all. I know for sure a lot of you might just be here because you're like, Corbin, I always wanted to code or I always wanted to build out software or always had a software idea. That's why I'm making this series. It's for everyone that's had that extreme barrier of entry into this topic. And trust me, I know how developers work. I know how those little developing firms work. Like, oh yeah, we'll we'll build
[05:07] that out for you. Uh, can you give us 30 grand? Yeah, you don't have to pay that anymore. You you literally don't have to pay that anymore. Like, if those development firms haven't changed their pricing by now, oh, get ready. Get ready. And then finally, live app, which is cheers in German. Let's jump into episode one here, which is tech stack. So, I'm going to be pointing you to a bunch of different resources here found on this channel. Been doing this for three years, yo. If you just found me now, hello, I'm Corbin. Text stack is going to be fundamentally important as this is how we're going to build the house. In other words, build the app. One thing I want to point out as well is that the word
[05:39] app, website, software, these are interchangeable. It's kind of an ubiquitous term when I say app. I think in the early days of development when I was coding for iOS apps, apps kind of meant mobile, but the term has become more generalized. Therefore, when you hear me kind of jump around and say app, software, website, it all means the same thing. Don't over complicate it. Let's do it. Techst. You want to build an e-commerce business. You want to sell on FBA, Amazon. How do we do that? Oh, we need to find a manufacturer for the product. Then we need to find a
[06:10] fulfillment center within the state so we can ship within x amount of days. Like those are the functional steps to creating an e-commerce business. But how do we do a software business, y'all? I told y'all we're getting viby. Look at my little drawing here. And and this is why I told y'all as well. People that have a development background, they're just going to get triggered cuz you're like, "Oh, Corbin. Oh, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He's calling GitHub insurance." Let me just explain this, okay? Because some of y'all just be getting aggressive for no reason. Who's going to build the house? Who's going to build the app? Let me just real quickly add a body here. My bad. Google AI Studio. Those are some
[06:41] long legs. Nice. Functionally, who's going to build the app for us is going to be Google AI Studio and Cursor AI. Google AI Studio, we do all the work within the cloud. Eg on the website, right? You're on the website, Google AI Studio/builder, whatever they call it. We're building. We're building. Cursor AI comes into play here due to the fact that we're going to need to download this code locally and work with it there for other types of services we want in our app. What are you saying, Corbin? The ability for a user to sign up, we're going to have to do this within Cursor AI. the
[07:11] ability for the user to upload a thumbnail. We're gonna do this cursor AI, but this isn't going to be your 2018 type of a tutorial where I'm sitting there looking at a code file, just typing it out. Hey guys, look at line eight. No, no, no. Everything I'm doing in this tutorial is going to be completely prompts and completely vibe coding because we can do it now. Therefore, with cursor AI, the builder, we're going to then connect this to GitHub. And the reason I'm calling GitHub insurance here is that if you're ever building a house or you own a car or you have a house and you don't have
[07:42] housing insurance, you need that, right? Because if your house gets absolutely destroyed, you're going to want to be able to get that money to rebuild that house. How does GitHub work as insurance for this context for your app? GitHub has a ton of functionality. There's a ton of use cases. You've probably heard the thing like version control. If you haven't, then version control. But the idea behind GitHub is that you have app v1. We're building our app, App V1, version one. You've heard of this before. You play Call of Duty, you know, when they release a new patch, patch 6.01, you know the situation. When you
[08:12] go to app v2, and you completely drop the ball, you completely break your code, everything is destroyed, it's a fire, it's a mess, it's a fire, you have the ability to roll back to Appv using something like GitHub, using something like version control. GitHub has a ton of other benefits. And therefore, for you to effectively watch along in this series, I'm going to show you a video that if you're serious about this, you need to watch cuz you need to understand
[08:43] GitHub. It's a non-negotiable tool in this development flow. I'll leave this in the description down below. It's called Master GitHub from Beginner to Expert in 46 Minutes. I compressed a ton of information in 46 minutes, y'all. And one fundamentally important thing that you learn in this series is how to do something called an SSH key setup. I know that sounds extremely confusing. I know half of y'all are like maybe I want to click off right now. Trust me y'all, it's easy once you do it. What developers like to do or what tutorials you've heard in the past like to do whether because they didn't know what they were talking about or because they
[09:15] just like over complicating things is essentially an SSH key tells GitHub here which is where we store our code in the cloud. What does that mean Corbin? You know when you have a folder and it's and there's a PDF inside it and you put it into Google Drive. Think of GitHub as your Google Drive for your code. So you can roll back push up to the cloud. But the idea here is watch this video as I provide an entire Google doc resource here. And this entire Google doc resource here shows you how to set up this SSH key which essentially is very fundamental for you to do real development here through the Vibe. This
[09:46] is 46 minutes long. I know that's a lot of time, y'all, but genuinely, it's gonna be the best GitHub tutorial you ever watch, and you'll never have to watch another one again. And the reason why is because I know for sure when vibe coding before, you put in a prompt, and you're like, "That's a good prompt. That's a good prompt." And then the AI model goes down in a complete different side rabbit hole, completely messes up your codebase, completely destroys your app, and you're just sitting there like, "Well, that's extremely frustrating." And then you have to talk back and forth with the AI, then you get in loops with the AI. GitHub roll back roll back I
[10:20] don't want to do this go back to v1 of the app v 1.5 v 1 1.2 etc. So that's how we're going to build it. We're going to use Google AI studio and cursor. And then on top of that we're going to use GitHub for version control and everything else I described in that 46-minute video. Next is the materials. So if we were building a house, do we need brick? What kind of wood do we need? Is there permits we need to get building software? What is our front end? What is our back end? Don't over complicate it, y'all. All a front end means is the website that you visually
[10:50] see. It's everything that a user's experience is on an application on YouTube on GitHub. Like this is all UI user experience front end. When it comes to building a front end, there's different languages we can use. The way you think of languages and code is essentially you want to opt for a language that has been well tested by a developer community. Lucky for you, we already got one chosen out for you, which is React and TypeScript. React is a JavaScript library. What are you saying, Corbin? JavaScript library is
[11:21] just a language within code. One that you're familiar with as well as Python. Just think of it like human language. English, German, Japanese, Korean, different languages. The robots need to talk too. And for the robots to talk, they need their language. So, one thing you're noticing is that what is vibe coding? Now we're entering human language into robot language. That's the whole point of vibe coding. That's why there's like this huge bridge that just incurred. And the reason I'm so confident to do this series now is that Google AI Studio is so ahead of the game
[11:52] right now that the bridge is finally allowing basically anyone to code. So you're watching this series 6 months from now. The steps and processes you're currently watching right now can still be used because the one thing and the one puzzle piece that's missing y'all is we can vibe code. But the puzzle piece you're missing is just like the simple building blocks of developer terminology and understanding it at a foundational level. Eg like beginner level. Once you understand beginner level, everything else is done, man. Everything. Our front
[12:23] end, React and TypeScript. Look at that. Nice little hammer. Nice little TypeScript hammer. What is our backend? Don't over complicate it. Yo, what is a backend? Backend is everything that happens in the cloud. That server room in Nebraska. Shout out to Nebraska. But the idea a backend is going to be where we run different logic. So for example, user comes to your platform, your app. Hey, I want to change my profile image. I click upload. I upload an image. When the image is being uploaded, this is handled
[12:53] by the backend. A server in Nebraska is just going off. It's firing it. It's firing it. What language are we going to be using? Python. Why are we opting for Python? One, because it just seems like everyone loves Python. But two, because a lot of AI platforms are pretty native with Python. What does native mean, Corbin? Native means that you know the best way to I know I know the best way to explain this. This is actually very easy to explain. Why is it that Macs have very powerful hardware, but it can't play video games? That's because that the code to make those video games
[13:24] are only made and ported for PC. Therefore, it runs better on an Intel chip because of the fact that it is native to PC. The code is read better by the machine by the PC. You could have a Mac with 128 gigs of RAM, an absolute monster Mac. You try to play CS:GO, it's going to lag. Even if you do cloud gaming, even if you do all these different like little boot camps, like it's going to lag. It's going to be horrible. How do I know? Because, man, I
[13:55] used to love CS GO. I used to play that all the I can't play anymore after they remove the the unilateral ability for me to play on Mac. I can't play CSGO. I would have opted you. You already know I would have. Idea here though is that Python is native and a lot of big platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic, they use Python and code. There's other reasons for you to use Python as well. But you need to know is that if you have the intentions to build an app that is integrated with AI, like the value point has something to do with artificial intelligence, you are inclined to use Python. If you're developing a video
[14:26] game and you're vibe coding a video game, that's a different story. That's a different tech stack. Shout out to Rust, though. Use Rust. So, this is the language, but we need the language to actually be spoken. And therefore, we're going to use Firebase and GCP. These are both Google products. Part of the reason why I'm using GCP and Firebase is due to the fact that all the way over here, we're using Google AI Studio. Therefore, longterm in this series, you're going to be able to vibe code your way a year from now and have probably a way cleaner integration between the three platforms. But your first question might be, why is your GCP and why is your Firebase? Why
[14:57] isn't it just one? What Google did essentially is make Firebase for builders like you and me to have an easier experience building with their entire suite. Everything I can do in Firebase, for example, user signup, I could in theory do in GCP, but it's just way easier doing it in Firebase. So why even go through the pain of GCP? So where does GCP come into play? Google Cloud. It comes into play with more administration type of situation. So what do I mean by that? I mean that Firebase over here is going to be your
[15:27] nice little beautiful Firebase app. I love it. I can host my website. I can sign up a user. I can store their data. GCP is administration where AM principles come into play. What is an AM principle, Corbin? Essentially what this allows us to do is more securityoriented stuff and more of the architecture of a software. This gets a little bit more confusing. I'm not going to lie to you. This is definitely a little bit more confusing. But don't worry, you have me. So, I'm going to show you how to set this up correctly so that these two can be absolute lovers. They just love each
[15:57] other. So, you know, they're going to, you know, have a really great relationship. # couple goals. So, that's the materials. The materials are simply we're going to use an open- source framework like React and TypeScript. What do you mean open source, Corbin? I mean that essentially this is just free code that you can use. You have no strings attached. This is very weird in the software world. If you're coming from a different industry and you hear the word free, there's usually strings attached and there's usually a little bit of a gut feeling like, huh, I know you said it's free, but like what do they gain from it? Like what's their
[16:29] benefit? Us developers are such nerds that sometimes money is even in the thing. Let me say that again. Us developers are such nerds that sometimes it really isn't just about the money. Sometimes, genuinely, it's just free. It's just open source. It's a weird concept to get around. I get it. You're a capitalist. You're a capitalist. I get it. I get it. Don't worry. I like my money, too. I I love it. But it's like this very interesting thing. I mean, let me know in other industries that this even exists because a lot of times this stuff is just like there's strings attached. But yes, genuinely in software
[17:02] there is free stuff that has extreme value and it's just free. Yeah, granted, of course, if it's free. Eg. What's an example of this? Corbin, uh, DeepSeek, they just wild it out. They they allowed you to download AI model that's as powerful as GBT5 locally on your computer. Granted, you needed insane hardware. Why would they do something like that? Why would DeepC do this? A ton of free exposure, a ton of free views, a ton of free impressions. Yeah, that obviously translates to stuff further down the road that could equate to money, but the actual underlying thing is free. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I
[17:32] get it. You're going to you're all going to throw in the comments, "Well, nothing in life's truly free, Corbin." Okay, maybe you're right. All right. idea though it's a weird thing of software to get your head around if you're coming from a different industry but yes open source is real so no strings attached here no strings attached here obviously definitely strings attached here and here due the fact that it's a pay-per-use basis and in order for your thing to even run you got to pay just a real quick like TLDDR like Corbin how much does it cost to run a software it is dirt cheap as you get bigger and you scale yeah it's going to cost you money but if you provide enough value for the
[18:03] return rate you'll be fine why do you think some of these software companies are getting insane evaluations when either they're negative in income or they're pre-revenue. Like why are they getting 10x? Why are they getting 50x? Like what's happening, Corbin? It's because software is probably one of the most cost effective businesses to run. It's insane the kind of margins you can make on software. 90% profit. That's not unheard of. And maybe that's partly why the reason some of y'all are watching this, which actually led perfectly to the next part of this video. Income. The bank. The bank. The bank. The bank.
[18:33] How do we make money? Corbin, stop yapping. How do we make money? My bad. All right. My bad. You got a couple different options here. And there's more than what you see behind me. I put PayPal and Stripe here. I'm going to use Stripe in this series. I put PayPal here as well because of the fact that I know some of y'all that are international maybe don't have access to Stripe. What's crazy is I'm pretty sure y'all were able to effectively not worry about Stripe and use another service called Lemon Squeezy. But the issue with that is I'm pretty sure Stripe bought Lemon Squeezy. So, it's a little bit of a gray area, but PayPal, Lemon Squeezy, these
[19:04] are going to be your ways to integrate a payment processor. Integrating a payment processor is kind of painful in the sense of that it's just a non-negotiable amount of percent that you have to give up when creating a software. Stripe, I believe, is like 2.9% plus 30 cents in every transaction. That doesn't sound like a lot, but imagine you are selling a subscription for like two bucks. You know, that 30 cents eats at it. You know, this is like a pretty big hit on margins when it comes to software. Now granted, I mean, this sounds a little bit like woe is me if your software is making 90% profit, but it's just part of
[19:34] the game. So, PayPal, Stripe. The other one over here is like Google Ads, uh, if you're creating much more of like a a free service, but maybe there's ads on the left and right. A good example of this would be like Stock Twits. Stock Twits, I'm pretty sure you could pay to have ads removed. So, maybe that's your model where an individual goes to your website and then the ads are there. You're making impressions on that. But if the individual pays for like some type of monthly recurring revenue, then the ads go away. So there's there's another monetization model there as well. But there you go. This is episode one. This is the tech stack. This is how
[20:05] we're going to build it. The next part of this series is going to be app and UI and app value. This is when we're going to jump over to Google Studio here and build out the application. Now to be real with you, what's going to occur here is we're going to build out essentially all of the user interface, all the pages, everything with Google Studio and the app value. My app value will be the thumbnail editing. I'm not sure what your app value is, but what I can tell you is that Google's ecosystem when it comes to APIs and all of its different abilities is very, very vast. And what they're showing here is not all of it. If you just type in like Google
[20:36] Cloud APIs, there's a ton of stuff, y'all. Um, one very popular one is like YouTube's API. So, if you're building an app that's like a YouTube focused app for data and stuff, there's a whole API for that. You'd be surprised. Google owns a lot more than you think. Or maybe you're like, Corbin, I already knew they own a lot. They own a lot. quite literally the platform you're watching this on. If you're watching on YouTube, they own us. I'm owned. So, that'll be the next part. So, make sure to subscribe here. Make sure you stay tuned. Make sure you check out that playlist as you can quite literally just bookmark it on your little Chrome browser. Maybe you're using Safari, maybe using Internet Explorer. Whatever
[21:06] you're using, you can click it and be like, "Did Corbin post today on this series?" And then you'll be like, "Oh, he did post." All right, sweet. Let me hit the like. Let me hit the hype. Let's keep going here. Last little shout outs here. Make sure you're follow me on X as well. I do a lot of cool little mini posts here where I show like new features, which I don't know if you knew, but right now we can literally draw on the front end to get changes. It's kind of insane, y'all. And for the most part, if you comment something on YouTube, I'll respond. But if it's very in-depth, like you have a really in-depth question,
[21:37] check out the school community here, completely free. Join it. Throw a post up here. This is the Reddit of all Reddits when it comes to AI builders. That just about does it, y'all. who's ready to vibe code their way to their first app. Literally don't even have to care what the code says. Let me just talk to it. Corbin, I got you. We're talking to it. But as you already know with these style of videos, I'll see you in the next. Is this series going to be the only series you can find on YouTube that actually shows you how to do a full production app that's completely viodated because the fact that the person that's creating the series has done a ton of apps in their past and they've been coding since 12 type of series. You got the cowboy hat on. Oh
[22:07] yeah, Texas.