Build a Feature End-to-End

This is the capstone exercise. Everything you've learned in the course — setting up a development environment, understanding web fundamentals, building real projects, working with AI tools, reviewing code — comes together here.

You'll choose a feature, plan it, build it with AI, review and refine the code, and deploy it live. This is the end-to-end workflow that represents what your actual work will look like going forward. Not a step-by-step tutorial, but a real creative process where you make decisions, direct AI, and ship something.

The steps in this exercise are intentionally more open-ended than anything you've done before. That's the point. You have an idea, you figure out how to build it, and you use the tools and skills at your disposal, adjusting the process and tools to the task. There is no single process or workflow that is optimal for every scenario.

Below you will find some high-level practices that I have personally found useful when working with AI on design. Treat them as inspiration and use them critically. These are not strict rules, but broad suggestions that might help in some scenarios and prove ineffective in others.

Plan first

Describe what you want to build before you start building. Write down what it does, how it should look, how it should behave. Create or find visual references: a sketch, a screenshot of a similar feature, or a Figma mockup. Then use your AI tool's planning features to generate an implementation plan. Review the plan before any code is written. Adjust if the approach doesn't feel right.

Build in small steps

Work through the plan one prompt at a time. Review each change. Course correction is so much easier when you do it regularly. Commit after each meaningful chunk. If you get stuck, use the debugging skills from earlier in the course — read the error, check the terminal and browser console, use DevTools.

Refine with your designer's eye

Once the feature works functionally, look at it as a designer. Is the spacing right? Are the colors consistent? Does the interaction feel natural? Give AI precise, specific feedback to fix what's off. This refinement loop — building something functional and then polishing it visually — is where your design skills add the most value.

Don't worry about making it perfect. The goal is to complete the full cycle — from idea to live URL — and to feel what that process is like. You'll get faster and more confident with every feature you build after this.