Independent developer field guide
Edition 0012026
Stage 01 / 05

Plan

Defining requirements, scope, and technical architecture.

The planning stage is where you pin down the core problem, define what target users expect, set the initial feature boundaries, and choose your technical architecture. Before you write implementation code, weigh the trade-offs between speed, complexity, and operational maintenance so you do not over-engineer early.

Questions to answer before moving on:

  • What single problem does this web application solve for users?
  • Who is the intended audience, and what is their primary user journey?
  • Which minimal set of tools and frameworks allows launching the fastest functional prototype?
  • Which secondary features and integrations can be safely deferred to future iterations?
Payments & Billing
Gumroad E-commerce storefront and payment platform for creators to sell digital products, memberships and physical goodsPayments & Billingusage-based ↗
AI & Machine Learning
Bolt.new In-browser AI development platform for prompting, building, running and deploying full-stack web applicationsAI & Machine Learningfreemium ↗ Hugging Face Open-source community platform to build, host, share and deploy machine learning models and datasetsAI & Machine Learningfreemium ↗ Lovable AI software engineer that generates full-stack web applications from conversational natural language promptsAI & Machine Learningfreemium ↗
UI & Design Systems
v0 Generates full-stack web applications and user interfaces using generative AI promptsUI & Design Systemsfreemium ↗
Boilerplates & Starter Kits
Dirstarter Next.js directory website template with built-in payments, SEO optimization and AI MCP integrationBoilerplates & Starter Kitspaid ↗ Larafast Laravel SaaS starter kit with pre-configured authentication, Stripe payments and admin scaffoldingBoilerplates & Starter Kitsnot found ↗ MakerKit SaaS starter kits supporting Next.js, Remix, Supabase and Stripe paymentsBoilerplates & Starter Kitspaid ↗ ShipFast Next.js boilerplate with pre-built authentication, payment processing, transactional emails and UI componentsBoilerplates & Starter Kitspaid ↗ Supastarter SaaS starter kit supporting Next.js, Nuxt and TanStack Start with built-in auth and billingBoilerplates & Starter Kitspaid ↗
Marketing & SEO
Ahrefs SEO and marketing platform for search analytics, backlink research, keyword exploration and site auditsMarketing & SEOpaid ↗ Semrush Online visibility and search marketing platform for SEO, keyword research, competitor analysis and AI searchMarketing & SEOpaid ↗