How This Site Was Built
A collaboration between humans and an AI coding agent
💡 Why This Site Exists
I wanted to show my mom what exe.dev and the Shelley coding agent could do. What better way than to build something useful for her book club?
The Unique Women's Book Club meets the third Thursday of every month at 2:30 PM at Aqus Café in Petaluma, California. The group selects books six months at a time, and the website displays the upcoming reading list, meeting details, and links to find each book at the library or Copperfield's Books.
The result: a real website for a real book club, built entirely through conversation with an AI assistant.
👥 The Team
This website was created by me (David Jones) and my mom (Anne Jones) with the help of Shelley, an AI coding agent running on exe.dev.
Shelley is an AI assistant that can build websites through natural conversation. You describe what you want in plain English, and Shelley writes the code to make it happen.
💡 The Original Prompt
It all started with a single message. I described what I wanted, and Shelley got to work:
"I'd like to make 5 different creative landing page concepts for my mom's book club that meets the third Thursday of the month at 2:30pm at a local coffee shop called Aqus in Petaluma, California. They select books 6 months at a time. Here are the book titles:
February 19 - CAMERA GIRL by Carl S Anthony – several available at the library. Biography of early Jacqueline Kennedy
March 19 - EMMA by Jane Austen. 250th anniversary celebration this year. Many available on free apps. Young woman tries to be matchmaker
April 16 - AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY by Doris Kearns Goodwin – 22 available from library. History of her marriage written after her husband died
May 21 - THE ROSE CODE by Kate Quinn – not available at the library yet – fictional account of code breakers in England in WWII
June 18 - THE OFFING by Benjamin Meyers"
From this single prompt, Shelley created 5 complete website designs to choose from, each with a different visual style and personality.
🎨 Choosing the Design
My mom and I reviewed all 5 concepts together and selected this warm, coffee-shop-inspired design. It captures the cozy atmosphere of Aqus Café where the book club meets.
The design features warm brown and cream colors, coffee cup motifs, and easy-to-read typography. Inviting and friendly, just like the book club itself.
🎯 Using a Design Skill
To ensure the site looked polished and professional, we used a special "frontend design skill" that guides Shelley to create distinctive, high-quality designs.
This skill encourages bold aesthetic choices: thoughtful typography, cohesive color themes, subtle animations, and atmospheric details like the paper texture overlay you see on this site. The goal is to avoid generic, cookie-cutter designs and instead create something memorable and appropriate for the context.
For this book club site, that meant warm coffee-shop colors, literary fonts like Caveat and Crimson Text, and cozy decorative touches like the coffee cup motifs and gentle animations.
🔧 Refining the Design
After choosing the initial design, I continued the conversation with Shelley to fine-tune the details. Here are some of the follow-up requests:
"Can we add a hero background image with a semi-transparent overlay that is the color of the current background on the website?"
→ This added the beautiful photo of Aqus Café you see at the top of the homepage.
"It's hard to make out the text ‘Petaluma, California’ on the background image."
→ Shelley added a stylish pill-shaped background behind the tagline to make it easier to read.
"Can we link to the actual book page on Copperfield's website like copperfieldsbooks.com/book/9781982141875 for Camera Girl?"
→ Now each book links directly to its page at Copperfield's Books, the local independent bookstore.
💻 What is exe.dev?
exe.dev is a service that gives you your own computer in the cloud. Think of it like having a second computer that's always on and always connected to the internet, even when your laptop is closed or turned off.
What makes exe.dev special:
- Instant setup. Create a new computer with a single command. No complicated configuration.
- Already on the internet. Your projects are immediately accessible via a web address you can share with anyone.
- Secure by default. Only you can access your computer unless you choose to share it.
- Shelley included. Every exe.dev computer comes with Shelley, an AI coding agent you can talk to right in your web browser.
The idea behind exe.dev is simple: developers (and now anyone!) sometimes need a computer on the internet to build things. exe.dev makes that as easy as possible, so you can focus on what you're creating rather than wrestling with technical setup.
✨ The Result
This entire website, from initial concept to the final polished design, was created through a series of natural conversations. No traditional programming was required. I simply described what I wanted, and Shelley handled all the technical implementation.
It's a wonderful example of how AI tools can help people bring their creative ideas to life, making web development accessible to everyone.
The site is hosted on GitHub Pages and will be updated as the book club selects new books for future months.
The finished site at uwbookclub.com