Blog
Engineering notes from building an AI website builder.
- June 2026 · 7 min read
How to get your site cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity (AEO in practice)
A practical, priority-ordered playbook for Answer Engine Optimization: extractable content, technical eligibility, external mentions, and measuring your citation share.
Read post - June 2026 · 6 min read
The best AI website builder with built-in SEO and deployment
What to look for in an AI website builder when you need the site to deploy, have a backend, and stay findable in Google and AI answers — not just generate code.
Read post - November 2025 · 10 min read
Notes on prompt engineering for an AI Design Studio
The 43-rule system prompt, anti-prompt-injection via nonce delimiters, strict JSON convert flow, and a doctype bookend check that quietly saved a Friday demo.
Read post - November 2025 · 8 min read
Why we chose crypto-first billing (and what broke first)
Stripe-first billing excludes a huge slice of the global builder market. We bet on NOWPayments + xRocket. Architecture, webhook security, and the bug that ate a Tuesday.
Read post - November 2025 · 9 min read
Building a multi-tenant sandbox routing layer for an AI website builder
Every project lives at <slug>.octopus-lab.app. The Vercel Sandbox URL underneath rotates every few minutes. Here is how the edge middleware, slug cache, and R2 fallback hide that churn from users.
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Topics we'll cover
A preview of the first few posts. Some are half-written, some are still scar tissue. None are linked yet because they don't exist yet — that's the honest version.
- 01Self-hosting vs Vercel: cost math for an AI SaaS
The spreadsheet version. Real numbers for sandboxes, edge functions, Postgres, R2 egress, and the LLM bill — and where the break-even line actually sits.
Draft - 02How we got SOC2-style controls in 4 days as a solo founder
Not the certificate. The controls. Logging, access reviews, backup tests, encryption-at-rest checklists — what was worth doing pre-launch and what was theater.
Draft