DRD
DRD / Cost tracker

Look what
$50 can build.

We’re building DRD in the open. Every week, we’ll show what we’ve built with $50 of our AI coding plan—and keep a running record right here.

See what we’ve built How we count it
The build ledgerBuilding in public

AI build cost recorded so far

$50

Weekly allocation
$50
Current monthly plan
$200
Updates published
01
USD · AI coding planEarlier AI learning costs are outside this total.
A cautionary tale / From our founder

The expensive part
came first.

“I wasted tens of thousands of dollars learning what AI can do and figuring out its limitations.”

— DRD’s founder

Build on what we learned the hard way.

That trial and error is part of why DRD exists. We’ve put what we’ve learned into the instructions, reusable components, automated tests, and quality gates around Droid, so you can start with the benefit of that experience.

DRD can help you avoid the costly dead ends that come with figuring all of this out yourself. You get a foundation shaped by lessons we’ve already paid to learn, with guidance and checks to help you move forward.

AI still has limits, and every project needs testing and review. Our aim is to help you spend more of your budget building something useful and less of it repeating our mistakes.

The total above records the AI plan allocation for this DRD build. The tens of thousands spent on earlier AI experimentation are outside that total.

Meet Droid
The weekly build journal

Small budget.
Real progress.

Each update pairs the work with its cost. Start with the first chapter, then follow along as DRD takes shape.

Week 01
This update
$50
Running total
$50
Recorded AI build cost

The first $50. A foundation to build on.

Our first check-in captures DRD as it stands today: a home for the product, a workspace for building apps, and the controls that make it our own. Here’s what we’ve built so far.

  • A website with its own identity

    A responsive DRD website with light and dark themes, shared Droid branding, and consistent navigation and footers across the site.

    Explore DRD

  • A workspace for building with Droid

    Project conversations and app previews, coding instructions with automated tests and quality gates, and project preferences that help the agent understand its owner.

    Meet Droid

  • Accounts, invitations, and admin

    Sign-in and account profiles, invite-only registration, and an admin view for managing registered users and creating invitation codes.

  • A proper home for project settings

    A dedicated settings page for each project, with environment variables, custom domains, and access management for the app’s users.

  • Foundations we can keep reusing

    A template gallery and component library, plus shared interface components that let new pages and features build on the same design and behavior.

    Browse templatesSee the library

  • A company story, out in the open

    News and product storytelling, an investor page, contact information, and terms, privacy, and AI disclaimer pages. Now, a public record of what it costs to build DRD.

    Invest in DRDAI disclaimer

Another week. Another chapter. We’ll add the next $50 update when there’s more work to share.

A little context for the numbers

Here’s how
we count it.

Our founder is on a $200-per-month AI coding plan and has recorded the first $50 toward building DRD. We’re using $50 as a simple weekly share of that plan for this journal.

The subscription is billed monthly. The weekly figure is our tracking convention, rather than a separate weekly bill or an exact calendar-week calculation. The running total adds only the costs in published updates.

This tracks our AI coding plan allocation. Our founder’s earlier AI experimentation, founder time, hosting, domains, other services, and taxes are outside this figure. Those costs aren’t being counted as zero.

The journal records what we’ve built at each check-in. It’s a snapshot of DRD’s progress, with the same need for review, testing, and ongoing work as the rest of our product.

Read our AI disclaimer