Building Caydev.com: How AI-Assisted Development Changed Everything

A few months ago, we set out to rebuild the Caydev website from scratch. We wanted something modern, fast, and uniquely ours, complete with time-aware theming that shifts throughout the day and a sleek blog powered by a headless CMS. Here's the thing: we built the entire site in a fraction of the time it would have taken just a year ago. And we're not talking about cutting corners or using cookie-cutter templates. We're talking about a fully custom Next.js 15 application with dynamic theming, Contentful integration, custom WebGL backgrounds, and a contact form powered by the Resend API.

How? AI-assisted development tools like Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub, and seamless deployment with Vercel. Let me walk you through what we built, how these tools changed our workflow, and what this means for anyone thinking about building on the web, whether you're a seasoned developer or someone who's never written a line of code.

The Website: More Than Meets the Eye

Before we dive into the AI magic, let's talk about what we actually built. On the surface, caydev.com looks like a clean, professional site. But underneath, there's some genuinely cool stuff happening:

Time-Aware Theming

Our site literally changes throughout the day. Visit at sunrise, and you'll see soft dawn colors and a sunrise video background. Come back at noon, and it's bright and energetic. Dusk brings warm oranges and purples. Night mode? Dark, sophisticated, with a starry sky. This wasn't just about aesthetics; it was about creating an experience that feels alive. We built a custom theming system that calculates the current time of day based on your location and adjusts colors, backgrounds, and even video content accordingly.

Headless CMS with Contentful

We wanted our blog to be easy to manage without touching code. So we integrated Contentful, a headless CMS that lets us write, edit, and publish blog posts through a clean interface. The content gets pulled into our Next.js app at build time, giving us lightning-fast page loads with static generation.

Smart Contact Forms

Our contact form isn't just sending emails to a generic inbox. It's powered by Resend, a modern email API that gives us delivery tracking, beautiful templates, and the reliability we need for business communications.

WebGL Backgrounds

Those video backgrounds? They're not just static files, they're carefully optimized for performance and swap seamlessly based on the time theme. It's the kind of polish that makes the site feel premium.

The AI Revolution: How We Built It

Now here's where it gets interesting. Every feature I just described would have taken weeks (if not months) to build the traditional way. With AI-assisted development, we cut that down dramatically. Here's how:

Claude Code: (this thing is amazing)

Think of Claude Code as having a senior developer sitting next to you, ready to help at any moment. Need to set up a complex Contentful integration? Claude Code walks you through it, writes the parsing functions, and even handles error cases you might have missed. The best part? It understands context. Tell it "I want to add time-aware theming to the hero section," and it doesn't just spit out generic code, it looks at your existing components, understands your architecture, and writes code that fits seamlessly into your project. For our time-theming system, Claude Code helped us:

Calculate solar positions for accurate dawn/day/dusk/night transitions
Create a React context provider to share the theme across components
Build CSS custom properties that update dynamically
Handle client-side hydration without janky flashes

Cursor: (this looks complicated, but it's crazy powerful)

Cursor is like VS Code, but with AI baked into every part of the experience. Hit Cmd+K, describe what you want, and watch it write the code. The magic is in how well it understands your entire codebase. We used Cursor heavily for:

Refactoring: "Make this component responsive" - boom, mobile-first Tailwind classes added everywhere
API Integration: "Set up the Resend email handler" - complete API route with error handling and TypeScript types
Component Generation: "Create a blog post card with image, title, excerpt, and author" - fully styled, accessible component ready to go

The real power is in the back-and-forth. Cursor doesn't just generate code once, it iterates with you. "Actually, make the images fill the container" gives an instant update.

GitHub: (It's about time to learn to use this)

GitHub is the industry-leading code repository application, and rightfully so. Once you are fully invested, using GitHub to manage your codebase is the only way forward. It makes it super easy to manage the versioning for the code and have an easily accessible repo to then deploy to any web host. The best part is GitHub has a CLI (command line interface), which basically means tools like Claude can access it, run commands, and manipulate the repo. That means the AI assistant can basically run all operations in GitHub for you, which is a huge time saver.

Vercel: (Deployment That Just Works)

Vercel is so seamless it feels like magic. Push to GitHub, and your site is live. Environment variables, preview deployments for every PR, automatic optimization, it all just works. For us, this meant we could iterate fast. Test a new feature, push it, see it live in seconds. No Docker containers to manage, no server configs, no DevOps headaches.

What This Means for Us

Here's the part that really matters: This technology isn't just for big tech companies or experienced developers. It's democratizing web development in a way we've never seen before. Ideas, projects, and dreams we had before now feel accessible. We now feel empowered to build whatever we can dream of.

For Businesses

The cost of custom software just dropped. What used to require a team of developers can now be done by one or two people with AI assistance. That doesn't mean cheap or low-quality, it means you can afford to build exactly what you need, not settle for what's affordable.

The New Era of Web Development

We're at an inflection point. The barrier to entry for building on the web has never been lower, but the ceiling for what you can create has never been higher. A decade ago, building a dynamic website required deep knowledge of servers, databases, and complex frameworks. Five years ago, you needed to master React, understand build tools, and juggle a dozen npm packages. Today? You need curiosity, some basic understanding, and the right AI tools. But here's what hasn't changed: you still need to understand what you're building and why. AI tools are incredible at the "how," but the "what" and "why" still come from you. They're collaborators, not replacements. The vision, the creativity, the problem-solving, that's all human.

What We Learned

Building caydev.com taught us a few things:

Start with the vision, let AI handle the details. We knew we wanted time-aware theming. Claude Code figured out the solar calculations and implementation.
Iteration is faster than perfection. With AI tools, you can try ideas quickly. Don't like it? Undo and try something else. This changed how we approach design and development.
Documentation matters less than conversation. Instead of reading through Contentful docs for hours, we just asked Claude Code to explain it and write the integration code. Same result, fraction of the time.
The tools are good, but you're still in charge. AI suggestions aren't always perfect. You need to review, test, and refine. But that's way faster than writing from scratch.

The Bottom Line

We rebuilt our website in record time, with features that would have been ambitious even with a full team. We did it with AI-assisted development tools that anyone can access. This isn't the future, it's right now. The question isn't whether AI will change web development. It's whether you're ready to leverage it. Welcome to the new era. We're excited to be building in it, and we hope you are too.

Want to see what we built? You're already here. Refresh the page at different times of day to see the theming in action. Or reach out to us to chat about your next project.