PathStep
For people who have never opened a terminal and would like to keep it that way

Your idea is 4% of an app.
PathStep does the annoying 96% .

You don't need another AI that spits out 40 files and a panic attack. You need someone to tell you which builder to use, exactly what to type into it, and what to do on Tuesday. PathStep is that someone. It is patient, thorough, and mildly insufferable.

Turn my idea into a plan See the 7 steps
No code. Ever. We checked.
9 AI builders, pre-configured by us
We take 0% of your sales

Project 01

Dog Walk Guilt Tracker

DAY 9
Path progress4 of 7
  • Say what it does in one sentence
  • Builder chosen: Lovable
  • 3

    Paste Prompt Pack #2

    Takes 11 minutes. Do it now.

  • 4 Connect Stripe (we walk you through it)
SHIP DATE Oct 14 — no extensions

You opened the builder and closed it.

I saw that. It's been 26 minutes.

Idea→ Sanity check→ Builder pick→ Prompt pack→ Build sprints→ Boring legal bits→ Money

The Path Machine

Type the dumb idea. Get the whole plan.

No signup, no card, no "book a call." Write it like you'd say it out loud at 11pm.

Try:

The honest bit

AI will happily build you
an app you never publish.

That's the trap. The building part got easy. Everything around it — deciding what to make, choosing a tool, knowing when it's finished, domains, payments, privacy policies, screenshots, store forms, telling actual humans it exists — got exactly as hard as it always was.

So people build three half-apps and quit. PathStep exists because a checklist with a bad attitude beats infinite possibility every single time.

Show me the checklist

0%

of AI-built side projects are never published

PathStep user survey, 2,140 respondents

0%

of people on the Path finish and publish

Measured across 3,109 completed projects

0

median time from idea to first paying customer

Working roughly 40 minutes a day

$0M

earned by PathStep users so far

We take none of it. Genuinely none.

The Path

Seven steps. In order. No skipping.

Each step unlocks the next one only when you tick it off. Yes, that's on purpose. Yes, people have complained. Those people shipped.

1

The Reality Check

We make you describe your idea in one sentence with no "and also." Then we ask who pays for it and why. Most ideas get smaller here. Smaller ideas ship.

Day 1
25 min
2

We Pick Your Builder

You don't get to agonise over this for four days. Answer nine questions, get one recommendation from the builders we've set up ourselves, with the account, plan and settings you actually need.

Day 1
15 min
3

The Prompt Pack

Copy-paste prompts written for your specific builder and your specific idea, in the right order. Including the unglamorous ones: empty states, error messages, and "stop redesigning the homepage."

Days 2–3
2 hrs
4

Build Sprints (with nagging)

Five 40-minute sessions with a defined finish line each. If you go quiet, PathStep gets in touch. Then it gets in touch again. This is the part people describe as "genuinely irritating" and "the only reason it exists."

Days 4–10
40 min/day
5

Make It Not Look AI-Made

Kill the purple gradient. Pick two real fonts. Write button labels that sound human. We give you a 22-point polish list and a before/after screenshot check so you can see the difference.

Days 11–13
90 min
6

The Boring Mandatory Bits

Domain, payments, terms, privacy policy, refund email template, app icon at nine sizes, store description that isn't a wall of adjectives. We fill in the forms with you, field by field.

Days 14–17
3 hrs
7

Ship It And Charge Money

Publish, price it, and tell 40 specific people — we help you write the message. Then the launch-week plan: what to post, where, and what to do when nobody buys on day one. Because nobody buys on day one.

Days 18–21
Payday

Supported builders

We set each one up by hand.

Every builder here has its own prompt packs, its own gotchas doc, and its own publishing walkthrough, written by a human who used it for a month and got annoyed at the same things you will.

Currently supported

0

Using something we haven't set up yet? Tell us which one — we add roughly one a month, and the noisiest requests win.

The rest of it

The AI builds the app.
We do everything else.

This is the unsexy list that decides whether you have a product or a folder.

Getting paid

Stripe or app-store payments set up click by click, with the tax questions answered in plain English and a pricing sanity check so you don't charge $2.

Legal you can't skip

Terms, privacy policy, cookie notice and refund policy generated from what your app actually collects — not a template that mentions a warehouse you don't own.

Icons, screenshots, store page

Every asset at every size the stores demand, plus a screenshot layout that doesn't look like a photo of your laptop at midnight.

Domain & hosting

Name shortlist, availability check, purchase, DNS connected. The step where most people quietly give up takes eleven minutes with us reading it out.

Your launch week

A day-by-day plan: the 40 people to message, the three places to post, and the exact words, because "check out my app!" has never worked for anyone.

The nagging

Escalating reminders tuned to how flaky you've been. Adjustable from "gentle" to "disappointed parent." Most people settle on disappointed parent.

Nag engine v3

It knows when you're pretending to work.

Step 3 has been "almost done" since Sunday.

PathStep · just now

Nag intensity

Chosen by 68% of users. Chosen again by 91% after their first missed week.

Magnificent idiots, published

Real people. Real apps. Real refund emails.

"I asked the AI for an app and it gave me forty files and a small panic attack. PathStep told me which one to open, then told me to stop reading and go to bed. That's the product. That's the whole product."
Portrait of Marnie Vogel

Marnie Vogel

Walkies Guilt · 412 sales

"Day nine it messaged me: 'You've renamed this app four times and built nothing.' I closed the laptop out of spite. Then I opened it and built the thing. Made $6,200 last quarter out of pure spite."
Portrait of Dev Okonkwo

Dev Okonkwo

ShiftSwap for nurses · $6.2k/qtr

"I'm 61 and I retired from plumbing. I now sell an app that tells contractors which pipe fitting they need. My grandson thinks I'm a wizard. I followed a numbered list."
Portrait of Chuck Lindqvist

Chuck Lindqvist

FitFinder Pro · 1,880 downloads

"The legal step alone was worth it. I had no idea I needed a privacy policy until PathStep asked me nine questions and then just… made one. Three weeks later a school district bought 40 seats and their lawyer actually read it."
Portrait of Priya Raman

Priya Raman

Readaloud Tracker · 40-seat district deal

"Slightly annoying is underselling it. It once sent me a notification that just said 'well?'. Shipped in 24 days. Would be nagged again."
Portrait of Tomasz Bąk

Tomasz Bąk

Setlist Buddy · 96 subscribers

Pricing

Cheaper than the three courses you already bought.

Cancel any time, from a button, in two clicks, without emailing anybody.

Tourist

For "I'm just looking."

$0 forever

  • The full 7-step Path, read-only
  • Builder recommendation quiz
  • One starter Prompt Pack
  • Zero nagging (you'll be fine, honestly)
Start free
Most people

Stumbler

For actually finishing the thing.

$19 /month

  • Unlimited projects on the full Path
  • Prompt Packs for all 9 builders
  • The Nag Engine, all three intensities
  • Legal doc generator + store asset kit
  • Wednesday group unstuck call
Get on the Path

Shipper

For "just publish it for me, please."

$79 /month

  • Everything in Stumbler
  • A human reviews your app before launch
  • We sit on a call while you submit to the stores
  • Rejection rescue: we fix it and resubmit with you
  • Launch week done with you, day by day
Ship with help

Builder subscriptions (Lovable, Bolt, etc.) are paid to them, not us. We'll tell you the cheapest plan that works — usually free to $20/month.

Questions

Things people ask before they commit.

Anything missing? Ask us at the bottom of this page and a human answers within a day.

No. If you can copy text from one box and paste it into another box, you have every skill required. The builders write the code. We tell you what to ask for and, more importantly, what to stop asking for.

No videos, no modules, no 47-minute intro about the founder's journey. PathStep is a live checklist tied to your actual project that locks the next step until you finish this one, then hassles you about it. It's a course the way a personal trainer is a fitness book.

It probably is, a bit. Step 1 exists to shrink it into something a stranger would pay $5 for. We won't pretend a bad idea is good — but we'd rather you publish a small, honest thing than spend nine months on a masterpiece nobody sees.

Zero percent. Your Stripe account is yours, your app store account is yours, your customers are yours. We charge a subscription and that's the entire business model. If you cancel, you keep everything.

Whichever one fits your idea, budget and patience level — from the nine we've set up ourselves. We're not paid by any of them to say nice things, which is why our notes on each are refreshingly rude.

Three intensities, adjustable at any time, with a hard cap of two notifications a day and a full snooze for holidays. It never texts your friends. It suggested that feature itself and we said no.

Every step has an "I'm stuck" button that shows the three things that usually break there, with the exact fix prompt. If those don't work it opens the Wednesday unstuck call queue, where a real person shares your screen and sorts it out.

Step 0

Start the Path. It's free until it isn't.

Give us an email and one sentence about your idea. You'll get your builder recommendation and Step 1 within a minute, and your first nag on Thursday.

No card. No spam. Unsubscribing takes one click and we won't sulk about it.

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