A Guide to Independent Full-Stack Development Driven by LLM Applications

Table of Contents

AI-Project - This article is part of a series.

Part 0: This Article

This is an independent full-stack development journey, driven by the goal of building an LLM application. It covers various issues encountered during development.

It’s also the introductory article—article zero—of the “AI Engineering” series, serving both as an index to the series and a summary of personal insights.

Introduction
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Nowadays, we’ve become accustomed to effortlessly interacting with AI chat assistants like Doubao, Kimi, and DeepSeek. It seems like creating something similar ourselves shouldn’t be too difficult, right?

That innocent thought was exactly where my dream began 😢. Sounds silly, I know, but that’s genuinely how I felt. And from there began a long, challenging development journey.

If you’ve ever had a similar idea, the following content might help you 🤗.

After countless late nights, I have to admit: building an LLM application is a massive endeavor, especially for an independent developer. Choosing independent development or assembling a small team means stepping onto a path filled with challenges. There are no “senior mentors” guiding your technical choices; you have to explore everything on your own.

But, that’s exactly the joy of independent development—you have complete control over your product and get to witness every incremental improvement.

You might wonder: “What if my product doesn’t perform well?” “What if I hit a development roadblock?” “If nobody uses it, wouldn’t my effort go to waste?” 🤔

Admittedly, independent development demands significant investment, and these worries are inevitable, even universal, among independent developers.

However, if you’ve genuinely committed yourself to independent development, regardless of the outcome, you’ll certainly gain something valuable. If you succeed, congratulations 🥳—your hard work has paid off. If you fail or give up, I understand your frustration, disappointment, even anger.

But no one finds happiness or success by completely dismissing their past experiences. Momentarily set aside the pain, and move forward to your next adventure.

In life, there are no wasted steps; every step counts 🫡.