Field Manuals · For people who build

The stuff nobody sits you down and explains.

You leave Second Bell training with a working tool. These plain-English guides cover what comes next — where to put your app on the internet, which builder to start in, and which editor and AI agent are worth paying for. No jargon left unexplained.

Five build guides + a legal reference · a 2026 snapshot · written for first-time builders
THE SERIES

Read them in order, or jump to the one you need.

They're designed to hand off to each other: prototype an idea, graduate to a real editor, then put it online. Start anywhere.

01 Where to start

Which builder should you start in?

A tour of the big AI app builders — Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Base44 — what each is best at, and the question most people forget: how hard is it to get your code out later?

  • Pick a platform in 10 seconds
  • Beginner-friendliness, side by side
  • Lock-in & code portability, ranked
Read the guide 02 Where you build

Editors, AI agents & what to pay

VS Code, Cursor, Antigravity — and the agents inside them: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini. Three stacked decisions, untangled, plus the part that actually costs money.

  • Editor vs. agent vs. plan
  • Where the $20 plans run out
  • Why to mostly avoid pay-per-use
Read the guide 03 How to ship

How to actually ship the apps you build

Getting a coded app out of your editor and onto the internet — where to host it, how to store data, how to lock it behind a login, and how to share files with the right people.

  • The five layers of a live app
  • Hosting, databases & auth, picked for you
  • Files behind a login, done right
Read the guide 04 The whole toolkit

Tools every agentic developer should know

The small set of trusted services that carry the weight underneath a vibe-coded app — build, save, ship, store, grow. Which tool to reach for at each stage, with a companion map of the whole journey.

  • The toolkit, in the order you need it
  • Three copy-paste starter stacks
  • A one-page visual map, idea → shipped
Read the guide 06 The safety net

Automated testing for vibe coders

How to trust code you didn't write. Lint, TypeScript, and tests that click through your app, robot reviewers on every commit, and how to make your AI prove its work before it says “done.”

  • The ladder of checks, cheapest first
  • Playwright, headed vs. headless
  • Make Claude Code & Codex self-check
Read the guide
A note on the numbers

Pricing and free tiers across every tool here move fast — treat the figures as a 2026 snapshot and confirm on each platform's own site before you commit a real project. The shapes and the trade-offs hold up far longer than the dollar amounts.

THE REFERENCE SHELF

And one to keep within reach.

Not a step in the build path — the manual you pull down the day your shipped tool meets real users. Every builder ends up needing it.

05 When it meets real users

Student data & the law

FERPA, COPPA, GDPR, and the state student-privacy wave — what each law protects, when it applies to your tool, and how to design so most of them never do.

  • The 60-second map of five laws
  • The builder's privacy checklist
  • Teachers: getting a tool approved at school
Read the guide
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