PromptLoop Studio - Day 1 Dev Log

Overall: Day 1 is done. Feels good to get the absolute bare bones live and runnable. As a solo founder, the goal was just to get past the blank page and build the core foundational pieces that everything else will sit on. Authentication, check. A basic private workspace, check. The visual canvas where the magic will happen, check. It's ugly as sin right now, but it works.

Infra:

Got the entire infra stack provisioned and hooked up: Vercel for the frontend, Render for the Node.js/Express backend and the PostgreSQL database (managed via Neon, connected to Render). The absolute priority was user accounts and private workspaces for future usage tracking and billing (yawn, I know, but essential). Clerk is handling the managed authentication (signup, login, profile) and it was incredibly smooth to integrate – definitely a win opting for a managed service here to avoid that rabbit hole on Day 1. This infrastructure forms the spine; everything else connects to this user -> workspace -> data structure.

UI:

The biggest visual piece tackled was the core canvas using React Flow. This is where users will visually build their AI workflows. On Day 1, I got the drag-and-drop functionality working, allowing users to add basic 'Input', 'Prompt', and 'Output' nodes. Crucially, connecting these nodes via edges is also functional. Right now, it's just a visual representation – no actual data processing happens yet – but getting the interaction patterns and the flow logic laid out is a massive step. It proves the core visual builder concept is physically implementable within a day.

Wins:

The biggest win is simply getting the absolute core foundations in place. Auth is sorted, providing a secure base for users and future features. The visual canvas is operational at a basic level, which is the defining feature of PromptLoop Studio – enabling anyone to build AI workflows without code. Getting the basic node types and connections working confirms the feasibility of the core interaction model. This wasn't just wiring things together; it required thinking about the user journey and how nodes represent steps in a workflow. It's raw, but it's real progress towards bridging the gap between prompt engineering and automation for non-developers.

Missed:

Nothing specifically missed against the Day 1 goal. The goal was deliberately constrained to just these foundational pieces.

Onwards to Day 2!