I Built a Full SaaS Product With an AI Agent — Here’s What Actually Happened

I’m a non-technical founder (well, semi-technical — I can read code, but writing it from scratch isn’t my thing).

A few weeks ago, I launched Belink, a free link-in-bio tool that competes with Linktree.

The entire thing was built using Manus, an AI agent that writes code, deploys it, and manages your project end-to-end.

I want to share what the experience was actually like — the good, the surprising, and the stuff nobody talks about.

What Belink Is

Belink is a link-in-bio platform.

Users can:

• Sign up and claim a username
• Customize their page with themes
• Add links
• Embed YouTube videos
• Share their page anywhere

There’s a free tier and a Pro plan ($5/month) with Stripe billing.

The stack:

• Next.js (Pages Router)
• PostgreSQL (Neon)
• Drizzle ORM
• tRPC
• Tailwind CSS
• Vercel deployment

I didn’t write any of that. Manus did.😁

How I Actually Work With Manus

It’s not “type a prompt and get a finished app.”

It’s more like having a senior developer on call 24/7 who works insanely fast.

My workflow looks like this:

1. I describe what I want in plain English (“Add email verification to signup using Resend”)
2. Manus reads the codebase, understands the architecture, writes the code, runs migrations, and pushes to GitHub
3. Vercel auto-deploys
4. I test it, find issues, and report them
5. Manus fixes things in minutes

The back-and-forth is where the magic happens.

I’m not writing specs or PRs. I’m literally chatting like I would with a coworker:

• “The favicon should be circular on the profile page.”
• “Block signups from disposable email domains.”

What Surprised Me

Speed

Features that would take freelancers days were getting shipped in 10–15 minutes.

In one afternoon, I added:

• IP-based rate limiting
• Disposable email blocking
• Admin pagination
• Dynamic OG images

Context Retention

Manus remembers the entire project.

I don’t have to re-explain:

• Database schema
• File structure
• Existing architecture

It already understands how everything connects.

It Handles the Boring Stuff

Database migrations.

Cache-busting query strings.

CORS issues.

Meta tags.

All the tedious engineering work that normally slows projects down just gets handled.

It Catches Things I Miss

I noticed spammers were still bypassing my email blocking system.

Manus analyzed the database and figured out they were abusing Indonesian free subdomains like:

• .my.id
• .web.id

It then blocked those TLD patterns automatically.

That kind of investigative debugging honestly surprised me.

The Honest Downsides

You Still Need Product Taste

Manus builds what you ask for.

If your product decisions are bad, you’ll simply get a very well-built bad product.

The “what to build” part is still completely your responsibility.

Debugging Requires Good Communication

Sometimes a feature doesn’t work as expected.

You need to explain problems clearly.

“It’s broken” doesn’t help.

“Users can still register more than 3 accounts from the same domain” gets results.

You Become the QA Team

Since you’re not writing the code yourself, you need to test everything manually.

I constantly use the product myself to find edge cases.

The Numbers

• Time from zero to launch: ~2 weeks
• Total features shipped: 50+
• Monthly cost: Manus subscription + Vercel/Neon free tiers
• Lines of code I personally wrote: 0

Would I Recommend This Approach?

If you’re a solo founder with strong product sense but limited engineering skills — absolutely.

It’s the closest thing to having a technical co-founder without giving up equity.

If you’re already a developer, it’s still incredibly useful as a force multiplier.

Think of it like pair programming with someone who:

• Never gets tired
• Never complains
• Types at 500 WPM

The key mindset shift:

You’re not “prompting AI.”

You’re managing a developer.

Give clear requirements.

Test the output.

Iterate fast.

That’s it.

Belink is live at belink.to if you want to check it out.

Happy to answer questions about the workflow.