How I Built a 36,000 Template Document Platform as a College Student Using AI
I am a Mechanical Engineering student at LSU, and I run an accessibility installation business called WMK Speciality Services. I built DraftMyForms as a side project that turned into something much bigger than I expected. Here is the story of how it happened, the tech stack behind it, and what I learned building a SaaS product with AI as my development partner.
The Problem I Wanted to Solve
Running my own business, I constantly needed professional documents like invoices, contracts, and pay stubs. Every tool I found was either too expensive for a college student, locked features behind paywalls, or made simple documents way more complicated than they needed to be. I wanted something that was free, fast, and actually produced clean documents I could send to clients.
Why I Chose Claude AI as My Dev Partner
I am not a software engineer by training. I know enough code to be dangerous, but building a full production web application from scratch was beyond what I could do alone. I started experimenting with Claude from Anthropic and quickly realized it could do more than answer questions. It could write entire features, debug complex issues, and help me architect a real product. Claude became my co-developer. I would describe what I wanted, and together we would build it piece by piece.
The Tech Stack
DraftMyForms runs on a modern serverless stack that keeps costs low and performance high. The frontend is plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript deployed on Vercel. The backend uses Vercel serverless functions for the API layer. Supabase handles the database and authentication. Stripe processes payments for the Pro tier. Resend manages transactional emails. And the Anthropic API powers the AI editor that helps users customize their documents.
Growing to 36,000+ Templates
One of the biggest challenges was building a template library large enough to be useful across industries. I used a programmatic approach to generate templates for every combination of document type and industry. Invoices for restaurants, contracts for construction, NDAs for tech companies, and thousands more. Each template is designed to be immediately usable while being fully customizable in the AI-powered editor.
The Reddit Post That Changed Everything
I shared DraftMyForms on r/ClaudeAI as an example of what you can build with Claude as your development partner. The post hit 3,900 views in just 2 hours. People were genuinely interested in the product and the story behind it. It validated that there was real demand for a simple, free document creation tool, and it brought our first wave of users to the platform.
What I Learned
Building DraftMyForms taught me that you do not need a computer science degree or a team of developers to launch a real product. With the right AI tools and a willingness to learn, a single person can build and ship software that solves real problems. The hardest parts were not the code itself but the decisions around what to build, how to structure the data, and how to make the user experience feel effortless.
What is Next
DraftMyForms is still growing. I am working on improving the AI editor, adding more template categories, and building features that make document management easier for small businesses and freelancers. If you have not tried it yet, head over to draftmyforms.com and create your first document for free. And if you want to browse the full library, check out our template collection.