I Cold-Called 50 Contractors Before I Wrote a Line of Code. The AI Was the Easy Part.
The author discusses the challenges faced while developing an AI-based estimating tool for contractors. Initial prototypes provided unreliable pricing, prompting the author to conduct interviews with contractors to understand their pain points. This feedback led to a more comprehensive solution that addresses various aspects of the contracting business beyond just estimating.
- ▪The initial AI prototype generated confident but fictional pricing figures.
- ▪Cold-calling contractors revealed that estimating was their biggest frustration.
- ▪The final product evolved to include features like payment collection and scheduling, not just estimating.
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| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/p_a1da0c47a9c7f6/i-cold-called-50-contractors-before-i-wrote-a-line-of-code-the-ai-was-the-easy-part-1flk |
| Publication time | Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:05:54 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-03T14:12:09.529Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-03T14:12:09.529Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 8YMeiq3B3xcR |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3961785) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } P_A Posted on Jun 3 I Cold-Called 50 Contractors Before I Wrote a Line of Code. The AI Was the Easy Part. #ai #nextjs #saas #buildinpublic I built the first version in an afternoon. Throw a job description at an LLM. Ask for a price. Render the number. It was useless. And the reason it was useless is the whole point of this post. The afternoon prototype that lied with confidence The naive build demos beautifully.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
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