Start here

The three tiers: Prompt it, Platform it, Build it

Every way of using AI in your business — every tool, every tactic, every idea in this course — fits one of three tiers. Learn the three names now, because you’ll use them in every module: Prompt it. Platform it. Build it.

The three tiers, defined

• Tier 1 — Prompt it. Things you can do today by typing into Claude or ChatGPT — no setup, no subscription beyond the chat tool itself.
• Tier 2 — Platform it. Ready-made platforms with AI built in — you configure them, you don’t build them. More automated than a chat window, no code involved.
• Tier 3 — Build it. Custom tools you build yourself with Claude Code — you own the code, it does exactly what you want, and it’s usually free to run.

Definitions are cheap, though. The framework only clicks when you watch one real task climb all three tiers — so let’s do that now.

One task, three tiers: the ten questions every prospect asks

Nearly every service business shares this task. Prospects ask the same ten questions, over and over. What do you charge? Are you insured? How fast can you start? Do you handle situations like mine? You’ve answered each one more times than you can count — by email, by text, on the phone at dinner. Same answers, retyped forever.

Tier 1 — Prompt it: twenty minutes tonight

Tonight, you open Claude or ChatGPT and type in the ten questions along with how you actually answer them — rough, from memory, typos and all. You ask for two things: a clean, well-organized FAQ you can put on your website, and a set of short, friendly reply snippets sized for email and text.

Twenty minutes later you have both, in your voice, better organized than you’d have written them yourself. You save the snippets somewhere handy, and from now on answering an inquiry takes one paste instead of five minutes of retyping. Cost: nothing beyond the chat tool you may already pay for — the free tiers handle this fine.

Tier 2 — Platform it: it answers while you sleep

Same task, more automation. AI chat-agent platforms exist for exactly this: you sign up, and in the platform’s back-end you feed it your FAQ, your services, your prices, your hours. It hands you a small snippet of embed code; you paste that into your website — or send it to whoever runs your site — and now there’s a chat window in the corner of every page.

A prospect lands at 11pm and asks “do you do move-out cleans?” — and gets your answer, in your wording, while you’re asleep. The agent answers the tenth identical question with the same patience as the first, and collects a name and number when the prospect is ready. You didn’t write code; you filled in a settings page. Cost: typically a monthly subscription, for as long as you want the agent to exist.

Tier 3 — Build it: the agent you own

Now the version almost nobody realizes is within reach: you build the chat agent yourself, using Claude Code — an AI tool that writes real software from plain-English instructions. Your agent answers prospects’ questions your way, sits on your own site, and belongs to you.

Want it to book appointments too? Ask for that. Want hot leads flagged to your phone? Ask for that. There’s no monthly fee and no waiting on someone else’s product roadmap — you own the code, it does exactly what you want, and it costs roughly nothing to run: host it free on Vercel (a free hosting service), or run it on your own computer. The Tier-2 subscription buys you a seat at someone else’s tool; the Tier-3 build hands you the keys.

The cost logic

Each tier trades money and effort differently, and seeing the trade clearly is most of the skill:

• Tier 1 costs minutes. Free or nearly free — the only spend is the chat subscription you likely already have, and the free tiers cover a lot.
• Tier 2 costs a subscription. You’re renting automation: it works around the clock, it was ready the day you signed up, and it bills you every month it exists. Rent enough platforms and the line items quietly add up.
• Tier 3 costs an upfront build, then almost nothing. You spend a few evenings building instead of a monthly fee forever. The tool does exactly what you want — no more, no less — and every month it runs, the rent you’re not paying compounds.

Which tier, when

The rule of thumb for the whole course: start at Tier 1, and move up only when the task earns it — repetition and volume justify the climb.

A task you do once a month? A prompt is plenty. A task that happens daily and needs your fingers every time? That’s Tier-2 territory. And when a tool is core to how you work, you’ll use it for years, and the subscription version charges monthly for something a small custom tool could do — that’s a build candidate. You’ll collect several of those as the course goes on.