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The website you are on right now, along with the tools on it, was rebuilt with AI. I want to walk you through how that actually went, the good and the awkward, because there is a lot of noise about what AI can do and not much honest detail about what it is like to use it on something real.
The project we could never finish
Let me start with the confession. We had tried to rebuild this website two or three times over the years. We paid for it more than once. We never finished. The reason was always the same: it would get most of the way there, then land back on my desk with "we just need you to write the copy for all the pages," and six months later I still had not done it. It is the classic small business project everyone agrees is important and nobody ever completes.
How it actually went
This time I started on a Saturday morning, not expecting much. I fed the AI what we already had: our about-us, our values, our service list, our target client profile, and, crucially, our brand voice. I pointed it at the old site for our colours and it read the hex codes straight off it. Then pages started to appear. I was not writing HTML and I was not choosing a template. I was describing what I wanted and reviewing what came back, the same way I would work with a designer sitting next to me, except this one never got tired of me changing my mind.
What surprised me
It built the site as clean, plain HTML with no content management system and no plugins to buy, which sounds like a step backwards and somehow was not. When I made a change, I could ask it to sweep that change across every page at once. It handled the technical work that normally costs months of an SEO retainer: the metadata, the sitemap, the structured data, even the newer AI-search groundwork. And it let me build things I would never have attempted alone, a three-minute security health check, a cost estimator, a hardware replacement calculator. Tools, not just pages.
The honest limit, which is the important bit
Here is the part I want to be careful about, because it is where a lot of AI enthusiasm goes wrong. This does not make me a web developer. I could not tell you whether the code underneath is elegant, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What the AI did was let someone who knew exactly what he wanted, and what good looks like, finally get it built. I still had to know what to build, what to keep, what to throw away, and when to stop. The judgement is the job. The building is what the tool is for.
How we kept it safe
Because this is our website and our data, we worked the way we would for a client. Nothing touched the live internet until it had to. The first version ran only on my own computer as a preview. When it did go to hosting, I gave it access to do the specific job, not the keys to our DNS or our email. Read-only first, scoped access, private preview, then live. Boring discipline, but it is the difference between a clever experiment and a mess you have to clean up. We wrote more about that judgement in The Good, The Bad and The Bot.
What it means for you
If your website, or any project, has been "nearly done" for two years, AI genuinely changes the maths, but only if someone with judgement is steering it. That is the same principle we bring to helping clients with AI through AgileAI: not switching on the cleverest tool and hoping, but using it deliberately, with a clear idea of the result and firm guard-rails around what it can touch. We tried it on ourselves first. Now we help our clients do the same, safely.
Frequently asked questions
Can a small business build a website with AI?
Yes, and we did it with our own. The key is that AI does not replace the judgement about what to build, it removes the effort of building it. If you know what you want the site to say and do, and someone can tell good work from bad, AI can do the heavy lifting of producing the pages, the structure and the technical groundwork.
Did Agile IT really build its website with AI?
Yes. This website, along with a performance dashboard and interactive tools like a security health check and cost calculators, was built with an AI assistant working alongside our Managing Director. It was written as clean HTML with no content management system.
Does building a website with AI make you a web developer?
No, and we would not claim otherwise. AI let someone who knew exactly what they wanted, and what good looks like, get it built. The judgement about what to build, what to keep and what to throw away is still a human job. AI is the fast pair of hands, not the expert.
Is it safe to build a website or tools with AI?
It can be, with discipline. We worked the way we would for a client: the first version ran only as a local preview, we gave the tool access to do the specific job rather than the keys to our DNS or email, and nothing went live until it had been reviewed. Read-only first, scoped access, private preview, then publish.
What did AI do that a normal website build could not?
Two things stood out. It could sweep a single change across every page at once, and it handled the technical work that usually costs months, the metadata, sitemap, structured data and AI-search groundwork. It also let us build interactive tools, not just pages, such as a security health check and cost calculators, which would normally be a separate development project.