How To Build Your First App with AI (Claude + Lovable)

I built a full SaaS product in one session — YouTube API, AI title generation, and Slack alerts, all on Lovable.

This is a complete walkthrough of building a real product from scratch using Lovable. Not a landing page, not a to-do app — an actual tool with API integrations, a database, AI features, and automated alerts. The product is a YouTube competitor tracker that detects outlier videos, ranks channels on a leaderboard, generates titles using AI, and sends Slack notifications. I walk through every step: planning with plan mode, connecting external APIs, storing secrets, iterating on feedback, and adding AI directly into the app. I left in the bugs and the back-and-forth because that's how building actually works.

What's covered:

- Going from idea to working product in a single Lovable session
- Using plan mode to structure a complex build before writing code
- Setting up a real database with six tables (profiles, competitors, videos, snapshots, outliers)
- Connecting the YouTube Data API v3 — full walkthrough from Google Cloud Console to API key
- Storing API keys securely using Lovable secrets
- Building multi-tenant support — switching between creators, clients, or channels
- Adding outlier detection with configurable thresholds per profile
- Iterating on the UI mid-build — grid views, dashboard stats, filtering
- Adding AI directly into the app for title generation (Gemini Flash vs Gemini 3 Pro)
- Wiring up Slack webhook alerts for automated daily notifications
- When to restart vs iterate — tips for getting better output from Lovable
- What a mature version looks like (VC Brand Index — 107 channels, 41k videos tracked daily)

Timestamps:
0:00 - What we're building
1:08 - Full build plan (two phases)
6:56 - Prompting Lovable with plan mode
9:50 - Comparing two initial builds
10:43 - Adding YouTube API integration
12:52 - How to get a YouTube API key
14:36 - First look at the live build
15:01 - Adding a profile and competitors
16:00 - Competitor data and outlier detection
17:57 - VC Brand Index — what a mature version looks like
20:01 - Iterating on the build (grid view, dashboard fixes)
22:01 - Testing the improvements
25:07 - Phase 2: Adding AI into the app
27:07 - Generating titles with Lovable AI
29:49 - Wiring up Slack webhook alerts
32:52 - Switching AI models (Gemini 3 Pro)
37:00 - Testing the Slack integration
39:52 - Full recap and what's next

Links:

Lovable: https://lovable.dev/?via=sheldonbishop
Wispr Flow: https://ref.wisprflow.ai/sheldon-bishop
Tella: https://refer.tella.com/sheldon-bishop
My newsletter: https://zerotoone.co
Brew Atlas: https://brewatlas.co

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Видео How To Build Your First App with AI (Claude + Lovable) канала Sheldon Bishop