three years of no-code client work taught me the landing page ai is the easy part. maintenance is where projects actually die

writing this in lowercase because that's just how i type, sorry in advance.

been doing no-code and ai-assisted builds for clients for about three years now. the thing nobody tells you when you start: shipping is the easy 20%. i can stand up a landing page ai project in an afternoon and it looks done.

it is not done. it's the start of a maintenance bill.

what actually kills these projects is month four. a platform changes something. an integration silently stops firing. a client edits one field and breaks a flow. and now it's yours forever, because you're the only one who understands the thing you built.

i'm allergic to the hype cycle now. every "i built this in a weekend" post is missing the invisible part where you keep it alive. so when i quote work these days i price the maintenance in from the start, and i say no to builds i can't commit to babysitting.

built fast, died slow, learned the hard way. for the other client-work people here: how do you charge for the boring upkeep nobody sees?