SYS.BLOG
Cursor for Non-Technical Founders: A Vibe Coding Workshop
A hands-on workshop covering the full Cursor workflow: AI-driven development, local testing, Git, and deploying to Vercel — for founders and non-engineers who want real control over their projects.
I ran a workshop teaching non-technical founders and employees how to build and ship real software with Cursor. This goes beyond no-code tools like Lovable or V0 — you get an actual IDE, actual code, and actual control over your project.
What the Workshop Covers
Setting Up Cursor
Cursor is an AI-powered IDE that brings everything into one place: file browser, AI agent chat, and an integrated terminal. The workshop starts from scratch — creating a new project folder, orienting yourself in the interface, and understanding how to talk to the AI agent effectively.
AI-Driven Development
The core workflow is prompting the AI with your MVP requirements, having it generate a plan in "Plan Mode" (which thinks through the architecture before writing any code), approving that plan, and letting it build. You can switch between models mid-project — Claude for reasoning-heavy work, GPT-5 for other tasks — depending on what the problem needs.
Local Dev and Debugging
Once the server is running locally, debugging with AI is as simple as taking a screenshot of the broken UI and attaching it to the chat. For server errors, paste the terminal output and let the agent fix it. No Googling required.
Git and GitHub
The workshop covers the basics of source control using the GitHub CLI inside Cursor: initializing a repo, committing, and pushing to GitHub. You don't need to understand every Git concept to use it effectively here.
Deploying with Vercel
Import your GitHub repo into Vercel and you're live. From that point, every push to GitHub automatically deploys a new version of your site. Changes made in Cursor go live in seconds.
Why Cursor Over No-Code Tools
Tools like Lovable and V0 are great for getting something on screen fast. But they abstract away too much — when something breaks or you need a specific behavior, you're stuck. Cursor gives you the same AI-assisted speed with the full power of a real development environment underneath. You own the code, you control the stack, and you can be precise about changes in a way that point-and-click tools don't allow.
If you're a founder who needs to move fast without a full engineering team, or an operator who wants to prototype ideas without waiting on developers — this workflow is worth learning.
Leave any questions or feedback in the YouTube comments.