A Founder's Playbook · 25 April 2026 № 01 / 13

Getting
started
coding
with AI.

How a founder ships software in 2026 — without writing most of the code.

Daliso Ngoma

Founder & MD
African Technopreneurs
daliso.com

P.S.

Built with Claude Design, and friends.

FIG. A

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

01 — Who is this02 / 13

Studio Ghibli–styled · AI-generated

Who is this

Hi, I'm Daliso.

Software engineer turned founder. I started African Technopreneurs in 2017 — an XR and immersive-tech business serving the African market. My background is in software engineering. I still ship code today.

The difference is: I don't write most of it anymore.

African Technopreneurs (Pty) Ltd

Founder & Managing Director · Est. 2017

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

03 — Three artefacts, all AI03 / 13

Three artefacts

Three things you've already seen.
None made the traditional way.

01 / The SiteVanilla HTML/CSS/JS

Scaffolded
by ChatGPT.

daliso.com

Daliso Ngoma.

WorkWritingContact

Scaffolded in conversations with ChatGPT. Source code is public on GitHub.

github.com/DJNgoma/daliso-website

02 / The LogoMade by ChatGPT

Iterated in
an afternoon.

Iterated from rough idea to a final mark in an afternoon. No designer involved.

Cost: a few prompts.

03 / The PortraitStudio Ghibli–styled

From a single
reference photo.

Generated from a reference photo. Fed back to AI as the basis for the brand.

A few minutes. Done.

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

04 — Exhibit A04 / 13

Exhibit A

A native iOS app.
thedevilsaidictionary.com

Available on the App Store since 1 April 2026 — appropriately, on April Fools' Day.

10+

iOS apps published with AI assistance

100

downloads this month alone — modest, but real

1 Apr

Release date — yes, deliberately

Distribution beats demos. Ship something real — even if only a hundred people see it.

The Devil's AI DictionaryEST. 2026

the devil's ai dictionary

Prompt

noun.The new keyboard.

Ship

verb.The forgotten step.

Founder

noun.A person with too many tabs.

Scan

thedevilsaidictionary.com

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

05 — Why now05 / 13

Why now

Three things changed
in the last eighteen months.

Capability.

LLMs got good enough to write production code, not just snippets.

Tooling.

Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, v0, Lovable. The IDE-grade tools matured.

Cost.

A weekend project that would have cost R50,000 in agency fees is now ~R200 in API spend.

The gap between "I have an idea" and "it's live" has collapsed.

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

06 — The mindset shift06 / 13

The mindset shift

From writing code
to describing intent.

The old way

Code-first.

Learn syntax.
Read docs.
Type every line yourself.
Get stuck. Search Stack Overflow.

The new way

Intent-first.

Describe what you want.
Review what comes back.
Direct the next iteration.
Ship. Get stuck less often.

You're not coding. You're directing.
The cursor is your second brain.

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

07 — The toolkit07 / 13

The toolkit

Four categories.
Pick one from each.

Four steps.
Loop the middle two.

Describe.

Plain English. Add an example you like.

→

Generate.

Let AI draft. First try is rarely the last.

→

Iterate.

Review. Ask follow-ups. Refine.

↻

Ship.

Deploy to a real URL. Tell someone.

Loop 02 ↔ 03 Until it's right. Then ship.

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

09 — Prompting that works09 / 13

Prompting that works

Five things that change everything.

Be specific.

"Make a personal site" → "single-page site, hero, three featured items, dark-mode toggle, mobile-first."

Show examples.

Paste a site you like. Ask AI to inspect the pattern, then adapt it.

Ask the AI to ask you questions first.

Most ambiguity surfaces in those questions — before any code is written.

Share errors verbatim.

Don't paraphrase failures. Paste the exact stack trace or error message.

Make it tell you what it's about to do.

Catch wrong assumptions before they hit your code.

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

10 — Start this weekend10 / 13

Start this weekend

Build a personal site.
Live by tomorrow night.

PickWhat to feature

Three things, one CTA.

A name.
Three things you've done.
One call to action.

BuildPick a stack

Beginners / Coders.

Lovable — no code.
Codex + Claude Code — agents.
GitHub + Cloudflare Pages.

ShipBy Sunday night

One link, sent.

A live URL.
Sent to one friend.
First post in your blog.

Don't pick something complicated. Pick something you'll actually finish.

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

11 — What to watch for11 / 13

What to watch for

Five ways this goes wrong.

01 / Confidence

Synthetic confidence.

AI is wrong, confidently. Read what it gives you before you trust it.

02 / Versioning

No version control.

Use git, even on solo projects. AI breaks things — you'll want the undo.

03 / Hallucination

Invented libraries.

AI sometimes fabricates packages that don't exist. Verify before you install.

04 / Testing

No local testing.

"Looks right" isn't shipped. Run it. Click every link. Open it on your phone.

05 / Scope

Feature drift.

AI loves adding things. Hold the line on scope. Ship the small version first — every time.

Daliso NgomaCoding with AI25 Apr 2026

12 — Bonus · For coders12 / 13

Bonus · For coders

Make your site
agent-readable.

Agents now browse the web on behalf of users. Five small files turn your domain into something a model can actually understand. One commit, ship it once.

/llms.txt

# Daliso Ngoma
> Founder, African Technopreneurs.

## Pages
- [About](/about): bio
- [Writing](/writing): essays
- [Work](/work): shipped projects

A plain-text site map. The format LLMs already prefer.

robots.txt

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
Sitemap: /sitemap.xml

Opt in by name. Default-deny crawlers you don't want.

<head> · JSON-LD

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Daliso Ngoma",
  "url": "https://daliso.com"
}
</script>

Structured data. Tell agents what the page is, not what it looks like.

92/100

Agent-readiness score

daliso.com

Check yours

isitagentready.com

Also worth shipping: /feed.json · /sitemap.xml · OpenGraph + Twitter cards.

Take it from here № 13 / 13

Pick one weekend.
Pick one project.
Just prompt.

Scan

daliso.com

Sitedaliso.com

Emailinfo@africantechno.com

Sourcegithub.com/
DJNgoma

— Daliso Ngoma Thanks for listening. Now go ship.

Gettingstartedcodingwith AI.

Hi, I'm Daliso.

Three things you've already seen.None made the traditional way.

Scaffoldedby ChatGPT.

Iterated inan afternoon.

From a singlereference photo.

A native iOS app.thedevilsaidictionary.com

the devil's ai dictionary

Three things changedin the last eighteen months.

Capability.

Tooling.

Cost.

From writing codeto describing intent.

Code-first.

Intent-first.

Four categories.Pick one from each.

Four steps.Loop the middle two.

Describe.

Generate.

Iterate.

Ship.

Five things that change everything.

Be specific.

Show examples.

Ask the AI to ask you questions first.

Share errors verbatim.

Make it tell you what it's about to do.

Build a personal site.Live by tomorrow night.

Three things, one CTA.

Beginners / Coders.

One link, sent.

Five ways this goes wrong.

Synthetic confidence.

No version control.

Invented libraries.

No local testing.

Feature drift.

Make your siteagent-readable.

Getting
started
coding
with AI.

Three things you've already seen.
None made the traditional way.

Scaffolded
by ChatGPT.

Iterated in
an afternoon.

From a single
reference photo.

A native iOS app.
thedevilsaidictionary.com

Three things changed
in the last eighteen months.

From writing code
to describing intent.

Four categories.
Pick one from each.

Four steps.
Loop the middle two.

Build a personal site.
Live by tomorrow night.

Make your site
agent-readable.