Building with Claude Code: What a Non-Developer Learned About AI-Assisted Development

I'm not a developer. I have a psychology degree and I run a real estate company and a trading firm. But over the past few months, I've built and deployed a full SaaS product using Claude Code as my primary development tool. This isn't a tutorial. It's an honest account of what worked, what didn't, and what I think the implications are for people who have product ideas but not programming backgrounds. The Setup I run a Vultr VPS (Ubuntu) with a Flask backend, Nginx reverse proxy, Redis caching, and systemd services. I also have a separate stock scanning tool running on the same server with its own cron jobs and a Discord webhook integration. All of this was built through Claude Code — a command-line tool that lets you delegate coding tasks to Claude directly from your terminal. I use Claude.ai as the planning and advisory layer, and Claude Code as the execution layer. The split matters. Claude.ai is where I think through architecture decisions, debate approaches, and plan features. Clau