• your AI CTOTHE PLAYBOOK
Playbook
  • Build path
  • Choose your tier
  • Modules
    14
  • Launch gates
    3
Research
  • Chat playground
TIER 1 · MVP3/7
x

steps done — next: scaffold the boilerplate

  1. Playbook
  3. Choose your tier
Ask the playbook

STEP 02

Choose your tier

The rule: build one tier below where your ego says. You can always move up — you cannot get back the six weeks you spent building infrastructure for users who never arrived.

THE 30-SECOND DECISION TREE

Does anyone log in?
│
├─ No ──────────────────────────────────────→  TIER 0   Validate
│
└─ Yes — are you charging money today?
   │
   ├─ No ───────────────────────────────────→  TIER 1   MVP
   │
   └─ Yes — how many kinds of user?
      │
      ├─ 1–2 kinds, simple ownership ───────→  TIER 2   SaaS
      │
      └─ 3+ kinds, or scoped permissions ───→  TIER 3   Platform
TIER 0ValidateVisitors1–3 days$0/mo

A site, not an app

A landing page that explains the product and collects emails. 100 signups means build it. Four means you just saved three months — the highest-return three days in software.

  • FrontendNext.js + Tailwind + shadcn/ui
  • FormsTally · Google Sheet · Resend
  • DeployVercel

GRADUATE WHEN

  • People are asking when they can actually use it.

$npx create-vibe-app --tier 0

TIER 1MVPSTART HERE0 → 1001–3 weeks$0–25/mo

One codebase. One deploy. One git push.

A complete, launchable product — thousands of real businesses run on exactly this stack. No separate backend, nothing you don't need at 100 users.

  • FrontendNext.js — App Router, TypeScript
  • UIshadcn/ui + Tailwind
  • BackendNext.js Route Handlers (same project)
  • DatabaseSupabase — managed Postgres
  • AuthSupabase Auth — email + Google
  • FilesSupabase Storage
  • DeployVercel

GRADUATE WHEN

  • Money is moving through it.
  • A data leak would be an incident, not an embarrassment.
  • You need work that outlives a request, or a mobile app.

$npx create-vibe-app --tier 1

TIER 2SaaS100 → 5,0001–3 months$50–300/mo

The backend moves into its own service.

People pay you, and downtime costs money. The single most important architectural decision in the guide: business logic gets its own home, and your API becomes reusable.

  • BackendNode + Express + TypeScript, own deploy
  • DB accessPrisma migrations + Kysely typed SQL
  • CachingTanStack Query — dashboards feel instant
  • StorageS3 / GCS with signed URLs
  • EmailResend or AWS SES
  • PaymentsStripe / Razorpay
  • ErrorsSentry

GRADUATE WHEN

  • Three or more kinds of user with different permissions.
  • Work must happen on a schedule with nobody watching.
  • You need push notifications to a phone.

$npx create-vibe-app --tier 2

TIER 3Platform1,000 → ∞3–12 months$300–2,000/mo

The whole playbook, applied.

The product is the business. Multiple user roles, scoped permissions, an admin console, background jobs, push + PWA, and an audit trail — the full module list, wired together and running in production.

  • RBACrequireAuth → requireRole → requireResourceAccess
  • Admin consoleOwn route group, nav and theming
  • Background jobsScheduled sync · bulk mail · reports
  • Push + PWAInstallable, no app store needed
  • ObservabilityStructured logs + audit trail
  • AI featuresOnly if core — never decoration

GRADUATE WHEN

  • This is the top. From here, you scale it — you don't rebuild it.

$npx create-vibe-app --tier 3

THREE RULES FOR MOVING BETWEEN TIERS

  1. 1. Move when a checkbox forces you — the graduation lists are the trigger. "It feels small" is not.
  2. 2. Moving up is a refactor, not a rewrite — if you followed the API-layer card from day one, it's days, not months.
  3. 3. You can be split-tier — a Tier 2 backend with a Tier 1 admin panel is completely reasonable.