# Alchemy AI — Full Site Content Reference > alchemy-ai.dev | Owner: Billy Williams, Stacked Alchemist LLC | Updated: April 2026 --- ## ABOUT THIS SITE Alchemy AI is a free AI education platform. Everything is free. No paywall, no course to sell, no email list required, no affiliate links, no sponsored rankings. The only ask is an optional Ko-fi donation if the content helped you. Built by Billy Williams — self-taught developer, overnight security guard, founder of Stacked Alchemist LLC out of Mesa, Arizona. Married to Joanne. SNHU student. Building a portfolio of apps to fund a bigger mission: Vault, a free private AI journaling platform for people carrying pain they have nowhere to put. The philosophy: Hack the planet. Information wants to be free. Corporate-grade resources should be accessible to everyone. --- ## THE CLAUDE.MD WORKFLOW The centerpiece of this site. A CLAUDE.md file is a plain text Markdown document placed in the root of every project. Claude Code reads it at the start of every session. It acts as a persistent briefing document — Claude always knows the project context without re-explaining everything. Without it: every new conversation starts from zero. With it: Claude picks up exactly where you left off, every time. The file contains: project vision, tech stack, target users, core features, out of scope items, third-party services, build steps, testing instructions, and notes for Claude. If a CLAUDE.md file gets too large, split it into numbered files: CLAUDE1.md (overview), CLAUDE2.md (current build phase), CLAUDE3.md (future phases and backlog). --- ## THE MULTI-AI WORKFLOW Claude is the primary build tool. ChatGPT is the debugger. Perplexity handles research. When Claude gets stuck in a circular error loop: screenshot the error, paste it into ChatGPT free, get the probable cause and fix, bring the fix back to Claude Code. This combination covers the entire build cycle. Token management: use free ChatGPT or a second free Claude account for planning and structuring. Save Claude Pro or Max tokens for actual building in VS Code. --- ## AI TOOLS COVERED ### Conversational AI **Claude (Anthropic)** — Best-in-class coding quality. 200K token context. CLAUDE.md workflow. 80.8% SWE-bench score via Claude Code. Pro $20/month, Max $100/month. **ChatGPT (OpenAI)** — Massive ecosystem, best brand recognition. GPT-4o, DALL-E image gen, memory feature. Plus $20/month, Pro $200/month. Quality has declined since GPT-4. Silent model routing to cheaper models is a documented issue. **Gemini (Google)** — 1 million token context window. Deeply integrated with Google Workspace. Advanced $19.99/month. Best for teams in the Google ecosystem. **Grok (xAI)** — Real-time X data access. Fewer content restrictions than competitors. X Premium+ $16/month. Tied to Elon Musk and X platform. **Perplexity** — Best real-time search-grounded AI. Cites sources. Excellent for research. Pro $20/month. Not a coding tool. **DeepSeek** — Open source. Runs locally. Best price-to-performance for API users. Chinese-built — data sovereignty concerns for US businesses. **Meta AI (Llama)** — Fully open source models. Free via Meta social apps. Self-hosting requires 48GB+ VRAM. Privacy concerns if used through Meta apps. **Pi (Inflection AI)** — Most human-feeling AI. Built for personal conversation, emotional support, thinking things through. Completely free. Not a build tool. ### AI-Native IDEs **Cursor** — Best multi-file editing. 42-45% suggestion acceptance rate. SWE-bench 48%. Pro $20/month, Ultra $200/month. $2B ARR. **Windsurf (Codeium/Cognition AI)** — Deep codebase context via Cascade AI. Flat pricing $15/month Pro. Acquired by Cognition AI (Devin team) December 2025. **Trae (ByteDance)** — Completely free in early access. Includes Claude and GPT-4o. ByteDance ownership is a data sovereignty concern. ### IDE Extensions **Claude Code (Anthropic)** — 80.8% SWE-bench Verified. Highest score of any commercial coding tool. Reads CLAUDE.md. Terminal-based. Included in Claude Max $100/month. **GitHub Copilot (Microsoft)** — Most widely adopted. Works in VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim. IP indemnity on business plans. March 2026: PR ads controversy, token counting bug with 181-hour lockouts. **Cline (Open Source)** — VS Code extension. Bring your own API key. $2-5/month real cost. Full model freedom including local models via Ollama. **Aider (Open Source)** — Terminal-based pair programmer. SWE-bench 42%. For developers comfortable in CLI. Not beginner-friendly. **Roo Code (Open Source)** — Strong frontend benchmarks. Outperforms Windsurf on frontend evaluations. Bring your own API key. **Amazon Q Developer** — Built for AWS environments. Free via AWS Free Tier, Pro $19/month. Best value only if you're on AWS. **Amp / Cody (Sourcegraph)** — Deep codebase indexing. Cody Free and Pro discontinued July 2025, users migrated to Amp. ### Browser-Based Builders **Lovable** — 35-minute average to working demo. Two-way GitHub sync. $25/month Pro. April 2025 VibeScamming security vulnerability. $300M+ ARR. **Bolt.new (StackBlitz)** — 28-minute average to prototype. Open source engine. Code quality rated 6/10. $25/month Pro. **Replit** — Real-time multiplayer collaboration. Cloud-native. Best for education. $25/month Core. Agent usage adds $40-50/app in practice. **v0 (Vercel)** — Highest code quality among browser builders (9/10). Exports clean standard React. Part of Vercel Pro $20/month. **Base44** — Full code ownership. Growing Lovable alternative. Early stage, smaller community. --- ## UNIVERSAL AI TOOL PAIN POINTS 1. Context degradation in long sessions — every tool forgets details over time 2. Rate limits and billing surprises — budget 1.5x to 2x the advertised price 3. Hallucinated dependencies — AI suggests packages that don't exist or are deprecated 4. Quality regressions without notice — models get updated silently 5. The prototype-to-production gap — AI takes you to prototype fast, production is still manual work 6. Vendor lock-in — the more integrated with one platform, the harder to leave 7. Security — AI-generated code is not security-reviewed by default --- ## PROMPTING TECHNIQUES Zero Shot: ask with no examples. One Shot: give one example before asking. Few Shot: give multiple examples — more examples always equals better output. Role prompting: "Act as [Role] and [Task] in [Format]" Chained prompts: break big tasks into sequential steps Tree of Thought: ask Claude to think through multiple approaches before picking one Feedback loop: "Review this and improve it" Best prompt starters: "Act as [role] and [task]" / "Explain [topic] like I am 10" / "Compare [X] vs [Y] in table" / "Create step-by-step plan for [goal]" / "Debug this code and explain the fix" Pro tips: use Projects to keep context per topic, upload reference files as project knowledge, use /compact in Claude Code to save context, CLAUDE.md is project memory that persists, use XML tags to structure complex prompts. --- ## MCP (MODEL CONTEXT PROTOCOL) MCP lets AI agents connect to external tools and services in real time. Without MCP, Claude only knows what you tell it. With MCP, Claude can interact with your real tools: read Google Drive files, draft Gmail emails, create calendar events, send Slack messages, query databases, interact with GitHub repos. Available connectors: Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, GitHub, Figma, Asana, PostgreSQL, Brave Search, custom MCP servers. Works in Claude.ai desktop and Claude Code. No API keys required for most connectors — authenticate once via Claude settings under Integrations. --- ## GEO (GENERATIVE ENGINE OPTIMIZATION) SEO for the AI era. How to make your site visible to AI crawlers — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Perplexity — not just Google. Four pillars: 1. AI Crawler Accessibility: add llms.txt and llms-full.txt to your site root 2. Schema Markup: JSON-LD structured data so AI can parse what your site is 3. AI Citability: write content with clear authoritative statements, unique data points, clean conclusions 4. SSR (Server-Side Rendering): critical pages must render flat HTML for crawlers — client-side JavaScript hides content from bots Target keywords: "how to use Claude to build an app", "Claude vs ChatGPT for coding", "free AI education", "CLAUDE.md tutorial", "GEO optimization" --- ## SECURITY AND REDUNDANCY Core principle: you will get hacked if someone wants it bad enough. Anonymous took down the NYSE three times in one day. The question is not whether something goes wrong — it is how fast you recover and how much you lose. Billy's redundancy stack: - Code: GitHub (everything backed up, always, non-negotiable) - Data: Firebase (not on local machine, not dependent on one vendor) - Deployment: Vercel (redeploys from GitHub in minutes) - AI layer: Anthropic API sits on top of infrastructure, not inside it — swap providers with one config change Cautionary tale: a company with 60+ accounts had their entire operation inside one AI vendor's ecosystem. When the vendor banned them, everything went dark. The appeal process was a Google Form. Do not build your business inside a single vendor. Build on top of them. --- ## LEARNING RESOURCES Free resources: - freeCodeCamp — completely free, project-based, legitimate for beginners - The Odin Project — free, open source, full stack web dev curriculum - Anthropic free courses at anthropic.skilljar.com: Claude 101, Claude Code in Action, API Fundamentals, Prompt Engineering, Real World Prompting, Tool Use with Claude, MCP Servers, AI Fluency for Students Paid platforms: - Udemy: never pay full price — wait for sales, courses drop to $10-20 - LinkedIn Learning: ~$25/month, good for professional development - Coursera: AWS certifications, Google certifications, scales to full degrees Certifications worth pursuing: AWS Cloud Practitioner, Google Associate Cloud Engineer, CompTIA A+, CompTIA Security+, Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Key message: you don't need to understand every line of code. You need to understand what it does and why. AI can generate your own technical documentation so you can explain your stack to anyone. --- ## SKILLS DIRECTORY (skills.sh) Reusable capabilities you install into Claude Code and other AI agents with one command. Top skills by category: Marketing: copywriting (71K installs), seo-audit (81K), marketing-psychology (52K) Design: frontend-design (311K), ui-ux-pro-max (122K), sleek-design-mobile-apps (55K) Firebase: firebase-basics (26K), firebase-auth-basics (26K), firebase-hosting-basics (25K) Dev Workflow: systematic-debugging (64K), brainstorming (111K), skill-creator (155K) Install: npx skills add owner/repo/skill-name --- ## CONTACT AND LINKS Site: https://alchemy-ai.dev Owner: Billy Williams — Stacked Alchemist LLC Social: @StackAlchemist Company portfolio: https://stackedalchemist.dev Support: https://ko-fi.com/stackedalchemist All content is free. No paywall. No affiliate links. No sponsored rankings.