Your App, Live Tonight
One prompt turns your Pocketcorp into an app host. Bring your half-finished repo or just an idea — it ships on your own domain, with HTTPS, before you go to bed.
You have an app idea — or a half-finished repo — and every hosting tutorial wants you to learn nginx, certificates, and process managers first. Skip all of it. Your Pocketcorp already has a public IP and an agent with its hands on the machine. Paste one prompt, answer two questions (which app? which domain?), and watch it go live. From then on, shipping a change is a chat message.
Claude Code is already installed on your Pocketcorp, in the same workspace the browser VS Code tab shows. It reads your repo, picks the right install commands, and treats deployment as part of the coding session — not a separate ceremony.
Start Here: One Prompt
Copy this prompt and send it to the agent on your Pocketcorp. It sets up everything in this guide and reports back when it’s done. The steps below explain what your agent is doing — and how to check its work.
Set up this server to host web apps, then deploy my first one.
1. Install nginx and certbot (apt install nginx certbot
python3-certbot-nginx) and create ~/apps as the home for all
apps.
2. Ask me one question: do I have an existing app to deploy (I will
give you a git URL or upload the folder), or do we build a new
one together? If we build new, ask me what it should do and who
uses it, then scaffold it — keep the stack simple.
3. Run the app as a systemd service bound to 127.0.0.1 on a free
port. Never expose the app port directly.
4. Put nginx in front of it on my domain: <your-domain.com> — a
server block proxying to the app port, HTTPS via certbot
--nginx. Tell me this server’s IP so I can set the DNS A record
first. Always run `nginx -t` before reloading.
5. Initialize a git repo for the app and commit after every change.
6. Prove it works: fetch https://<your-domain.com> and show me the
HTTP status and what the page says. If anything fails, fix it and
try again before reporting back.The Stack
What the prompt actually builds
While you watch (VS Code tab, or the terminal), the agent lays down the pattern every well-run server uses — one it will reuse for every app you add later:
~/apps/<your-app>/ # code, its own git repo
/etc/systemd/system/<your-app>.service # starts on boot, restarts on crash
# /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com — the only door to the internet
server {
server_name yourdomain.com;
location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8100; }
}
# HTTPS + redirect: certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.comThe app itself binds 127.0.0.1 — a port the internet cannot reach. nginx is the single public entrance and holds the certificate certbot issued. One door is easy to guard; twelve are not.
No app yet? Describe one
The prompt asks whether you brought an app. If you didn’t, describe who uses it and what they do — and be selfish. A tool built for exactly one person is the best software there is:
Build me a personal fitness tracker. Log a workout from my phone in under 10 seconds: exercise, weight, reps. Show weekly volume per muscle group.
Live at https://fit.yourdomain.com — big thumb-sized buttons for your last five exercises, a new entry is two taps and a number. Weekly volume is a bar chart, this week vs last. All data is one SQLite file at ~/apps/fit/data.db. Log a real workout and tell me what annoys you.
Judge the app on the device you’ll really use. A gym tracker gets used one-handed between sets, not full-screen at a desk — open the live URL on your phone and let your complaints write the next message.
Shipping a change = sending a message
Logging is fast. But I do supersets — let me log two exercises as one set.
Done — long-press an exercise to pair it. Paired sets show linked in the history and count toward both muscle groups. Committed as 8e4d21; say “revert” if you hate it.
Every change is a git commit, so “undo yesterday” is a command, not a hope. And because the agent works in the same folder your VS Code tab shows, you can watch the code change live — or dive in and edit it yourself. It’s your code, on your machine.
Then connect it to your assistant
Here’s what no rented app-builder gives you: your app lives next to your agent. Add an MCP interface (one FastAPI mount) and the app becomes something your assistant can read — from any chat app, anywhere:
What did I spend on subscriptions this quarter, and which one am I not using?
Your account manager reports €142/month across 9 subscriptions. The unused one is the stock-photo service — last download in March. Want me to draft the cancellation email?
The how-to lives in “Extend It With MCP”. And if the app turns out good enough that strangers want it, “Charge for Your MCP Server” turns it into income.
What you end up with
Your app on your domain with HTTPS, surviving reboots, versioned in git — and iterated by chat. The next app costs you one sentence, because the server is already set up.
