Remember when building a website meant hiring a developer, waiting six weeks and paying for the privilege? These days you type “make me a booking app” into a chat window, grab a coffee, and by the time the milk's frothed you've got something that looks suspiciously like software.
Welcome to the age of DIY development, or “vibe coding”. It's thrilling. It's democratising. It's also a maze, and there's a Minotaur in there somewhere. Being safe, secure and legal to put in front of customers is the hard part, and that's where the Minotaur lives.
Back in 2009 I wrote a magazine column about what happens when you click a mouse once. Processors, coding instructions, chips, routers, servers, payment gateways, bank computers… all to buy one thing in one click. The click feels effortless. The machinery behind it is anything but.
Seventeen years on, AI will happily write the code for your click. It won't necessarily tell you about everything that click is connected to.
Like your domain name: who registered it, who controls it and when it expires. Your hosting and whether anyone is patching the server, backing up your data or updating the software that runs it. The SSL certificate keeping your customers' details private. The forms quietly collecting personal information you may be legally responsible for. The payment gateway, the CRM, the email platform, the analytics, each with its own login, and its own unique way of going awry at 4.59pm on a Friday.
And now there's a whole new world to master. Tokens. Usage tiers. Subscriptions that multiply like rabbits. That clever little app you knocked up might be costing you more in AI credits than you might even make from it.
Then there's security. The same AI that writes your code is writing code for the bad guys too, and they're getting very good at finding the holes. A weekend project that takes credit cards can quickly become a privacy and security responsibility you may be legally accountable for.
I've been saying a version of this for decades. The web turned every business into a publishing company. Suddenly the local plumber was expected to run a newsroom and TV channel. Now AI is turning every business into a software developer and marketing strategist. Fully fledged digital marcomms and technology department, anyone? Most businesses never signed up for that.
There's a line you might not want to cross, and it's worth knowing where it is. Talk to us before your project:
On one side of that line you're dabbling and feeling empowered. On the other, you're running something your business depends on, and you want someone in your corner who knows the whole maze, not just the eye-candy-lined corridor you happen to be standing in.
Someone who checks the security, protects your domain and data, and keeps the integrations talking to each other. Someone who might ask the awkward question: does this dabbling serve your strategy, or is it all a distraction?
That's what we've done at Cyrius for over 30 years, through dial-up, dot-com, social media, mobile and now AI. The tools change every five minutes. The need for a trusted guide hasn't changed at all.
Because the real danger isn't that AI will build something bad. It's that you'll spend six months as an unpaid junior developer in your own business, when you could have been doing the thing you're really good at.
Leave the Minotaur wrangling to us.
Building something with AI, or about to? Have a quick, no-obligation chat with us before it goes live. We'll tell you what's fine to keep playing with, what needs attention, and where the Minotaur might be hiding.
Book a call or phone 02 9877 5544.
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