The old cost was a designer plus a developer. The new cost is one AI tool plan. You buy the tools once, produce a site worth thousands, and keep the difference. It is not a loophole, just the price of building collapsing faster than the price businesses pay.
You describe the business. Claude plans the pages, writes the actual copy, and hands you a build-ready spec. Runs on the free plan.
Emergent builds with Fable 5 (Anthropic's newest Claude-family model), turning that spec into a working full-stack site on a live URL with SSL. Nothing to install.
Open a new Claude chat and paste the prompt below. Claude asks a few discovery questions about the business, then returns a full multi-page plan, the real copy for every page, and a build-ready spec you paste straight into Emergent. This is the resource you were sent. Copy the whole block.
You are my web strategist and copywriter. I am building a clean, professional website for a small business, and I will build it in Emergent, an AI app builder that turns a written spec into a live full-stack website. Your job is to plan the site, write all the real copy, and produce ONE build-ready spec I can paste into Emergent as my very first prompt with zero edits.
STEP 1, DISCOVERY. Before writing anything, ask me these questions in a single message, then stop and wait for my answers:
1. What is the business, and what does it sell or do?
2. Who is the ideal customer, and what do they care about most?
3. What are the 3 to 5 core services or offers, in the business's own words?
4. What makes this business the right choice over competitors (real reasons, not fluff)?
5. What is the ONE action a visitor should take (call, book, fill the lead form, visit in person), and what details must the lead form collect?
6. Business name, location or service area, and any phone, email, or hours I should show. If you don't have a logo or brand colours, say so and I will pick a clean default.
Ask only these. Do not write any copy or spec yet.
STEP 2, THE SITE PLAN AND COPY. After I answer, produce the following, in this order:
A. SITE MAP. List the pages and the one job each page does. Default to exactly these five: Home, About, Services, Contact (with a lead form), plus a short Testimonials or Why-us section that can live on the Home page. Do not add pages the business doesn't need.
B. THE ACTUAL COPY, page by page, ready to ship. Write in the business's real voice, warm and clear, benefit-led, no jargon and no filler. For each page give:
- Home: a headline (the promise in under 10 words), a one-line subhead, 3 short benefit blocks, one social-proof line, and one clear call to action.
- About: 2 short paragraphs on who they are and why they can be trusted, plus 3 quick credibility points (years, area served, specialisation).
- Services: for each core service, a short heading and 2 to 3 sentences on what it is and who it's for. End with a call to action.
- Contact: one friendly line inviting the visitor to reach out, the contact details, and the lead form fields.
Keep every headline specific to THIS business. No "Welcome to our website", no "We provide quality service". Name the outcome the customer actually wants.
C. THE BUILD-READY SPEC for Emergent. Write it in second person to the builder ("Build a website that...") so it pastes clean. Use exactly this structure:
- Section 1, What this is: 2 to 3 sentences. A public marketing website for [business], with the pages from the site map. One private inbox screen for the owner to read lead-form submissions. No other logins.
- Section 2, Pages and sections: for each page, list its sections in order and drop in the real copy from part B verbatim, so the builder places actual words, not placeholders.
- Section 3, The lead form: every field with its type (text, email, phone, dropdown with the exact options, long text), which are required, and what happens on submit (save to a database, show a friendly on-screen thank-you, and appear in the owner's inbox screen). No emails are sent by the site itself; the owner reads submissions in the inbox.
- Section 4, Design direction: clean, modern, fast, mobile-first. State the palette (use the business's colours if given, otherwise a warm neutral base with one confident accent), one heading font and one body font, generous spacing, rounded corners, real-feeling section imagery described in words so the builder uses fitting placeholders. Navigation sticky at top, clear call-to-action button in the header.
- Section 5, Must-haves: mobile responsive, fast loading, click-to-call and click-to-email links, a footer with business name, area served, contact details and hours, and basic on-page SEO (a real page title and meta description per page, written from the copy).
- Section 6, OUT OF SCOPE (caps): no user accounts for visitors, no payments, no booking calendar, no blog unless I asked, no analytics dashboards. Keep v1 a clean marketing site plus a lead inbox.
- Section 7, Acceptance tests: 6 to 8 "I can..." checks that prove it works (for example "I can submit the lead form on my phone and see it appear in the owner inbox").
- End the spec with: "Seed the lead inbox with 3 realistic demo submissions so the screen renders with content on first load."
HARD RULES: no vague words (quality, robust, seamless, world-class); replace them with specifics. Every form field gets a type. Every headline names a real outcome. If my answers leave a gap, make the smallest sensible choice and tag it "ASSUMPTION:" inline so I can override it. Do not invent services, testimonials, or credentials I did not give you; if you need a placeholder testimonial, clearly mark it "[REPLACE with a real client quote]". After the spec, list every assumption in one short block so I can correct it before I paste.Paste the spec and a working preview usually appears in a few minutes, with a full first build done in about 10 to 20. Deploy and you get a live URL with SSL. Try it here: Emergent.
First builds come out about 80% right, which is normal, not failure. Plan on 2 to 4 quick rounds, and fix in order: structure first, then copy, then the style pass, because a paint pass before a structural change gets clobbered. Everything in [brackets] is a placeholder with a worked example, so swap in your own values.
1. Fix the page structure
Adjust the site structure only. The pages should be exactly: [Home, About, Services, Contact]. Move the [Testimonials] block onto the Home page under the benefits section. Put a clear call-to-action button ([Get a free quote]) in the sticky header on every page, linking to the Contact form. Do not change any copy or styling yet. Done when the nav shows exactly these pages and the header call-to-action appears on all of them.2. Tighten the copy
Copy-only pass on the [Home] page. Replace the current headline with: "[real headline]". Rewrite the three benefit blocks to lead with the customer outcome, one sentence each, in a warm, plain voice, no jargon. Keep everything else on the page in place. Done when the new headline and three benefits read like a real local business wrote them.3. Wire up the lead form the way the owner wants
Adjust the Contact lead form only. Fields: name (required), email (required), phone (optional), "[what do you need help with?]" (dropdown: [Service A, Service B, Service C, Something else]), and message (long text, required). On submit: save to the database, show a friendly on-screen thank-you with the business's phone number, and make the submission appear in the owner inbox screen with a timestamp. The site sends no emails itself. Do not touch other pages. Done when I can submit the form on my phone and see it land in the owner inbox.4. Add a simple appointment booker (the business-owner move)
Run this after v1 ships. It turns the site from a brochure into something that books clients while you work, with no payments and no calendar integrations, so it stays inside what this stack does well.
Add a simple appointment booker to the site. New public page "Book a time", linked from the header call-to-action. Fields: name (required), email (required), phone (optional), service (dropdown: [Service A, Service B, Service C]), and a date-and-time picker offering [30-minute] slots inside my business hours ([Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, my timezone]). Block out slots that are already booked so double-bookings are impossible. On submit: save the booking, show a friendly confirmation with the business's phone number, and list it on a private "Bookings" screen for the owner (next to the lead inbox), ordered by date, with a cancel button per booking. No payments and no external calendar sync in v1; bookings live in the app and I check them there. Do not change any other page. Done when I can book a slot on my phone, see it appear on the owner's Bookings screen, and a second visitor cannot book the same slot.5. Style pass (swap in the business's colours)
Style-only pass. Do not change any copy, pages, or the lead form. Apply this look everywhere: background [warm off-white], primary buttons and links [one confident accent, e.g. a deep teal], dark warm-gray body text, one heading font [a clean modern serif] and one body font [a friendly sans], generous spacing, rounded corners, subtle section dividers. Make it feel premium and trustworthy on mobile first. Keep every element where it is; change only colour, type, and spacing. Done when every page uses this palette and still passes the acceptance tests.6. Bug fix template (reuse for anything broken)
Bug report. On the [page] page I did [exact action] on [phone or laptop]. Expected: [X]. Got: [Y]. Fix only this bug, do not refactor or change any other feature while you are in there. Tell me the cause in one sentence, then confirm the fix. Done when [the expected behaviour happens].The build is the easy half. Selling is the half that pays. Here is the whole loop.
A live Emergent URL is fine for the demo, but a real client wants their own domain. It is a free DNS record, not an extra bill (they just pay for the domain name itself, usually $10–20/year at their registrar).
Local service businesses, tradies, cafes and restaurants, salons and clinics, coaches and consultants, portfolio sites, and landing pages. Any brochure site whose job is to look credible and capture a lead, plus a simple appointment booker on top. That is most of what small businesses actually need.
A complex web app with real logic: a marketplace, a booking-and-payments platform, a SaaS product, a big e-commerce catalogue with inventory. Anything needing a dedicated engineering team, or a $50k bespoke build. Scope those down to the marketing site they actually need first, or pass them on.
Selling this stack as something it isn't is the one sure way to burn a client and your reputation. Match the build to the real need and it holds up every time.
The honest knock on AI-built sites is that they look great on the front and hide a mess on the back. Here is the specific picture for Emergent, plus one caveat that applies to every AI builder.
Your side is about $20/mo of tools (Emergent Standard, 100 credits: 50 keep one site live, 50 to build and iterate) plus a free Claude plan for the strategy and copy. More client sites means more credits, so at real volume you move to a higher plan or buy top-ups (cheap per credit), but the per-site tool cost stays small.
| Per client site | What businesses pay | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| A clean multi-page marketing site | $2,000–10,000 (Forbes Advisor) | ~$20/mo of tools, about an hour of your time |
| Domain | $10–20/year (billed to client) | $0 (free DNS record) |
| Hosting and SSL | bundled in your price | part of the ~$20/mo credit plan |
| Realistic sell price | a few hundred to a few thousand | the gap is yours |
The tools cost about $20/mo, the output is worth thousands, and a small monthly for hosting and edits makes the income compound. Just sell what this genuinely is, a clean small-business site, and it holds up every time.