7 min read
14 hours ago
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A client came to me last month with a problem. They were paying a junior developer $6,500/month for feature work on their web app. Turnaround was slow, communication was painful, and bugs kept shipping to production.
They asked if I could take over.
I did and charged $60/hour.
I delivered more output in my first week than the previous developer shipped in a month.
And I did it with two AI coding agents — Claude Code and Codex.
This isn’t a story about AI replacing developers.
It’s a story about what happens when one person with the right tools outproduces a traditional setup by a wide margin.
Here’s the full breakdown: the project, the workflow, the hours, the math, and a real build so you can see exactly how it works.
The Project
The client runs a small SaaS product — a team expense tracker.
The app already existed but was half-built.
They needed:
- A complete dashboard with spending analytics
- Category-based expense filtering
- CSV export for their accountant