Botster.io

Zero-code business tools for data retrieval, monitoring and automation.

Founder

Freelancer → agency owner → SaaS founder.

Now running Botster.io → an all-in-one tool that helps digital businesses extract, monitor, and weaponize web data.

Posting SaaS learnings, automation tricks, technical deep dives.

If you’re building anything online - you’ll probably find something useful here.

If you're looking to automate your business - text me, DMs are open.

I’ve been vibe coding for months now.

Here are the 4 most impressive things AI helped me ship:

1 – Rails resurrection
Upgraded a legacy project from Rails 5 → 7 without it imploding. Fixed dependencies, migrations, config hell.

2 – Full server migration
Code + DB + users moved from Ubuntu 16 → 22 across servers in a single day. With backups, restores, DNS cutover.

3 – API service MVP
From idea → working product in a week: Rails frontend + docs, FastAPI backend with endpoints, key issuing, rate limiting, user auth, tiered plans.

4 – Enterprise dashboard
Built a web intelligence platform for a big client. Daily competitor scraping, notifications, data history. Runs on autopilot. Pays really well.

Were there errors and crashes? Sure. Did I have to think? Of course. (Or at least know what to prompt.) Did my 15-year coding background help? You bet. 

BUT 

I barely touched the code in any of these projects, which is crazy. 

No team. No standups. Just me, coffee, and AI.

Denis Gramm

Founder @ Botster | B2B Web Scraping & Workflow Automation, saving teams 100s of hours. Book a call with me today.

$200 a month for Claude Code is hands down my favorite expense and my best investment.

Too good to be true.

If they raised it to $1,000, I’d still pay.

Meanwhile… I see people on Reddit debating if $25 for an AI assistant is “worth it.”

Are you kidding me?

One proper prompt saves you HOURS if not days.

This is the cheapest leverage you’ll ever get in your life.

Denis Grammakov

My experience with AI coding has been great because I keep my stack as SIMPLE as possible.

For me, it’s Rails or Django with vanilla everything.

Few dependencies. 

Any framework I use has to be at least 2 years old so there’s plenty of documentation, StackOverflow answers and examples for AI to pull from.

Example: I stick to Rails 7 instead of 8. I tried both - the difference is huge. AI just performs better with a well-documented, mature version.

Same with Tailwind - the class names are self-explanatory, so AI has zero trouble understanding context.

If you want AI to code well for you, pick tools it can actually reason about.

Old, boring tech ships faster.

Quick call with a digital agency owner.

He wants to regularly extract businesses within a 20-50~ mile radius. Huge area. Different every time. 

Right after the call I (vibe)code a tool that:

– Pulls all zip codes in a given radius (open-source geocoding lib)
– Mixes them with keywords like 90210 restaurant
– Scrapes Google Maps results into CSV
– Mails the file to him

He subscribed instantly. Spent $70 so far!

And I have a feeling he’s gonna be with me for a long time!

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I tested GPT-5 on both work and non-work tasks. Within a day it was clear it’s way worse than the alternatives:

- Takes forever to think
- Rarely solves the problem. 
- Ask for a clarification? More endless "thinking"
- Tries again blindly... and STILL FAILS.

Out of three coding tasks, it successfully completed only one - and only after I literally pointed to the exact spot in the code.

PhD level? Really?

"For a small retainer, we will give you UNLIMITED feature requests."

The client thought I was kidding during our call.

Sounds insane? Not when you learn how fast we can build things now.

Clients don't realize, but they aren’t that creative.

They happily take the deal, thinking they will make me work for them 24/7, but they run out of ideas WAY before I run out of ways to deliver.

I’m already spending under 2 hours per week per new company on average. Once they stop requesting stuff, the income is 100% passive.

This flips the whole “scope creep” problem on its head. I WANT them to ask for more. AI knocks it out in minutes.

So yes... I overpromise. 

And then I overdeliver.

One-shotted a full server migration on an old Rails project: Ubuntu 16 → 22 to support Rails 7, using Claude Code.

Mind. Blown. (Again)

Opus wrote the migration plan.
o3 went through it and made tweaks.
I played arbiter between two genius coders.

Then I went full YOLO and let the machine run the 800-line task list.

Under 2 hours later (plus DNS propagation) — done.

My job:
- Make sure it’s not doing anything insane
- Tell it what to document as it goes
- Reset context before it runs out to avoid auto-compact
- Drink coffee and watch a pro work

15 years coding like a normal human - I still can’t get used to this.

Every time it feels like a miracle.

Got my first LinkedIn "service request" for web scraping today:

“I saw your page and would love to work with you… pls provide a quote.”

I didn’t even know LinkedIn users could send these. 

This is literally my first one.

No cold calls, 
No begging anyone for a "quick call" 
No spamming

Content + proof of work >>> cold DMs every time.

Don’t try to become my "friend".

If you’ve got something to sell - SELL IT.

I keep seeing people recommending this "working LinkedIn tactic":

Send a connection request.
Spend days liking, reacting, and commenting on the prospect’s posts.
Gain their "trust"
Then, eventually, slide into the DMs.

"Hey! I've been following your journey for a while..." 🤮

What a joke.
Everyone knows what you’re doing.
It’s fake. It’s slow. It’s pathetic.

If your product is good, you don’t need to play pen-friend with me.

Get to the point, respect my time, and tell me why I should care.

If it solves my problem - I will respond. If it doesn't - you move to the next one. 

It's THAT easy.

Starting a business relationship with an obvious lie is the worst sales strategy imaginable.

Had another vibe coding "wow" moment

Big enterprise client (I built them a competitor-scraping dashboard only with AI, no manual coding) asks me for a new feature.

Normally I’d plan, architect it, burn 3–4 hours of my life for implementation.
They’re on a fixed subscription ($1500/mo), so adding “extras” isn’t even profitable.

But now I have AI.
So I told them: UNLIMITED features.

They asked for a date picker to jump between scrapes.
I said “cool,” tasked Claude and then went to cook dinner.

8 minutes later ('yolo' mode) I come back to:

- Fully working date picker.
- Seamlessly integrated into the UI.
- Optimized for performance (indexes + counter-cache after I asked)

Delivered. Zero pain.

Yes, adding a datepicker is not that impressive, but 8 minutes from a request all the way to production... come on. 

This feels like cheating.

The outlook for traditional devs and freelancers is darker than people think.

Short term (2025–2027):

AI + citizen devs will automate 50–60% of routine coding.

That’s 10–14M junior/middle devs directly hit as businesses realize they don’t need to hire for basic stuff anymore.

Freelance market? Expect it to shrink 40–50%.

Long term (2027–2030):

We’re talking 70–80% of routine code written by AI.

That’s 13–19 MILLION devs replaced out of the projected 30–45M by 2030, especially in SMBs that never had big budgets for teams anyway.

Only upside? 

Demand for senior/AI-native devs goes +30% (Gartner/BLS projections).

What to do?

Get a job while you can. Two, even better.
Hold on to it.
Build cross skills.
Save up.
Make a plan, try to get out.

I’ve spent WEEKS looking for a Cursor alternative for writing and planning.

And I finally found it.

It’s called… Cursor.

Yep. 

I don’t use it exclusively to write my code now.
I use it to design strategy and plan tactics.

Inside Cursor, I've built a second brain:

- A full six months of strategy already mapped out.
- Folders for growth, outreach, pricing, YouTube, LinkedIn.
- Checkpoints, pivots, and implementation steps.
- Even YouTube hooks and CTAs

It organizes my files into a readable structure

When I’m out of inspiration, I just TAB — Cursor fills the gaps and keeps me moving.

The killer feature: 

It can write code to pull data straight from my analytics and scraping tools for real-time insights and research. Bend strategy based on that. 

Notion can’t do that. Google Docs can’t do that.

Even if you don’t write code, you can use Cursor to build the operating system of your business.

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