The stack · September 2026
What I actually use.
One person, a web studio in Boise, real clients on monthly plans. This is the whole list, what each tool is for, and what it costs me. No affiliate links.
Websites
Builds the site from a brief, a stated visual direction and one file of business facts. Every client site since June 2026 came out of it.
Styling and animation. Motion does the scroll-driven pieces: pinned hero, word-by-word fill, sticky stacking cards.
Smooth scroll, switched off for people who set reduced motion.
Checks before every launch: accessibility, overflow at seven widths, layout shift, broken images, and a score for how AI-generated the page looks.
Hosting in the client's name, never mine. They can fire me and keep everything.
Words
Drafts, rewrites, contracts, client emails. Runs with a written ban list of the phrases that read as generated.
Second opinion on anything I am about to send a client.
Images
First choice every time. A real photo of the shop beats any generated one, and we never publish AI photos of a business as if they were real.
Abstract art, figures for videos, product mockups. Never people, never storefronts.
When there are no photos yet and the owner has approved a stand-in.
Video
Motion graphics written in React: title cards, logo pops, counters, the phone mockups in the Reels.
Generated clips and figures when a shot needs something that does not exist yet.
Cuts, captions, loudness. Every finished video passes through it once.
Voice
The narration on the videos. I do not like being on camera, so the voice does the talking.
Times every spoken word so captions land on the word, not near it.
Research
Competitor scans, pricing checks, "what does this business actually sell" before a demo build.
Reads the pages I am logged into: analytics, Gumroad, Reddit, the hosting panel. Fills forms so I do not.
The boring stuff
Form submissions to email, new sale to spreadsheet, the plumbing nobody sees.
Sells the two kits below. Handles tax, delivery and refunds so I never touch a card number.
The two things I wrote down.
Buildsite is the system that makes Claude Code produce sites that do not look AI-made: twelve visual directions, the ban list, the motion recipes, the checks. After the Demo is everything that happens once a client says yes: contract, pricing sheet, handoff, first-client script.
See both kits Need a site instead?