How We’re Using AI to Ship Product Faster at Shiftwell

When you’re building a startup product, speed can feel like your biggest enemy.
We’ve been there.

But over the past few months, we’ve learned how to make AI a true ally and it’s been game-changing for how we build, ship, and improve Shiftwell.

Here’s a peek into how we’re using tools like Cursor, ChatGPT, and Claude to work smarter, faster, and more confidently.

ChatGPT: Research, Requirements, and Idea Partner

We use ChatGPT constantly, but not just to draft emails or brainstorm.

Here’s where it’s been most useful:

• Clarifying requirements → When we have a feature idea, we’ll use ChatGPT to help outline the user story, edge cases, or flow.
• Doing fast research → Need to understand a tricky concept or compare options? ChatGPT gives a fast summary so we’re not stuck reading 20 blog posts.
• Testing prompt strategies → We play around with different ways to phrase prompts, and we’ve learned that clear, specific context always gets better outputs.

Tip: When working on product requirements, break things into small, focused prompts. Asking “How should we redesign onboarding?” is too vague. Asking “What are the key steps to improve activation for first-time users in a SaaS tool?” gives you way more actionable results.

Cursor: Our Dev Supercharger

Cursor has been one of the biggest accelerators for us.
As a non-dev founder team, being able to review, edit, and even generate code directly in the IDE has been huge.

Here’s what we use Cursor for:

• Building new features → Small enhancements, UI tweaks, even adding warnings and validation checks. We can now do much more on our own.
• Fixing bugs → We drop error messages or failing code into Cursor, and it helps suggest solutions or even edits.
• Improving existing code → We ask Cursor to optimize functions, clean up logic, or explain confusing sections.

Tip: Work in small, well-defined chunks. Cursor (and AI in general) performs best when you break a big problem into focused pieces and not when you throw the entire repo at it.

Claude: Iterating and Refining Code

Claude has been great for reviewing longer sections of code or generating drafts when we’re tackling something more complex.

We’ve learned that:

• Writing clear, structured prompts matters. A good prompt includes:
  • What we’re trying to achieve
  • What the current code does (or where it’s failing)
  • Any relevant context or constraints
  • Any screenshots
• Iteration is normal. For bigger features, we often go back and forth several times, refining prompts, adjusting inputs, and tightening the scope.

Tip: If you feel like you’re stuck in a loop, stop and rewrite your requirements. Vague prompts lead to vague outputs. Precise prompts lead to actionable results.

Our AI + Shipping Best Practices

Here’s what’s helped us work faster (without breaking things):

• Break it small. Whether you’re asking for code help or product ideas, keep prompts tightly focused.
• Test everything. AI can help draft, but you still need to deploy updates and manually test to make sure things work as expected.
• Keep learning. AI tools evolve quickly. Stay curious, explore new plugins or approaches, and don’t be afraid to experiment.
• Be specific. Clear, detailed prompts = better, faster results.

Why This Matters

For us, using AI isn’t about cutting corners or replacing people.
It’s about unlocking speed and creativity we didn’t have before, especially as a lean, scrappy team.

With the right tools and the right mindset, we’ve been able to ship more, test faster, and focus on building the product we want to see in the world.

So if you’re a founder wondering if AI can really help you move faster:
Yes, it can.
Just remember: it’s not magic.
It’s leverage.
Use it well, and you’ll be amazed at what you can build.