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Ship an AI-assisted product on a 5 EUR/mo VPS.

From a fresh VPS to a product in production - direct-to-prod, SQLite, nginx + Cloudflare, and Claude Code on the box. Opinionated, lived-in guides. This is the path this site took; no one else documents the whole chain end to end.

~6 EUR/mo all in zero paid services direct-to-prod

Start here

One decision, one cost picture. Everything else follows from this.

  1. Stack A & B 30 min to decide · ~5 EUR/mo

    Choose your stack: VPS vs Cloudflare serverless

    Two setups to ship in 2026. Stack A = a VPS you own. Stack B = Cloudflare serverless. Pick A to understand and own everything; pick B to never think about a server.

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  2. Stack A read 5 min · ~6 EUR/mo

    Run your entire product for 5 EUR/month

    A production AI-assisted product runs for ~6 EUR/mo all in - VPS + domain, zero paid services. The real bill, what you don't pay for, and what you give up.

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Stack A - ship on a VPS

The path this site took, in order. Each step builds on the previous one.

  1. 1
    Stack A 30 min · ~5 EUR/mo

    VPS from scratch: SSH, firewall, Node, tmux

    Order a VPS, disable root + passwords, add your SSH key, open only 22/80/443, install fail2ban, Node 22 and tmux. A 30-minute job you do once.

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  2. 2
    Stack A 15 min · your AI plan

    Claude Code on the VPS: code from anywhere

    Install the AI agent on the box that serves traffic, run it in tmux, and SSH in from any device. Your laptop becomes a window onto the VPS.

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  3. 3
    Stack A 20 min setup · 0

    Direct-to-prod: git, systemd, deploy + rollback

    No CI, no staging. A deploy is git pull + build + systemctl restart. Rollback is git checkout + build + restart. systemd keeps the app up. This is how this site ships.

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  4. 4
    Stack A & B 15 min setup · 0

    SQLite in production: it's enough

    One file, zero services, zero network. WAL mode, sqlite3 .backup, and a thin D1-compatible adapter so the same code runs on Cloudflare and the VPS.

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  5. 5
    Stack A 30 min · ~10 EUR/yr (domain)

    Domain, DNS, Cloudflare proxy, TLS, and the HTML-cache trap

    Buy a domain, point it at Cloudflare (orange cloud), terminate TLS at nginx with an origin cert, and never let Cloudflare cache HTML. Plus the one caching bug that breaks a whole site.

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Stack B - serverless on Cloudflare

The alternative branch: no server to run, one command to deploy.

  1. Stack B 45 min · 0 EUR to start (free tier)

    Stack B: Cloudflare Pages, Workers and D1 from zero to deployed

    No server to patch, no systemd units, generous free tier, one command to deploy. Pages + Workers + D1 with wrangler, end to end.

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Whatever your stack

Applies to both paths - do these once your product exists.

  1. Stack A & B 15 min · 0

    GitHub for the vibe coder: repo, gh CLI, what never gets committed

    A repo, the gh CLI, and a .gitignore that actually protects you. What to commit, what never to commit, and how to recover if a secret slips through.

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  2. Stack A & B 20 min setup, then 10 min/week · 0

    Google Search Console, sitemaps, and getting indexed from day 1

    Verify your domain in Search Console, submit a real sitemap, request indexing on your top pages, and know which 3 reports to check weekly. Nothing here needs a marketing budget.

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