Build and Ship an AI SaaS in 48 Hours · 45 min · Stripe · Next.js · ngrok

Stripe Integration — Get Paid First

Wiring payments before the AI feature exists forces every later decision to be made around a real business model, not bolted on after the fact.

Hiring signal: Stripe Checkout and webhook handling done correctly -- signature verification, idempotency, real subscription state -- is a genuinely transferable skill for any SaaS product, AI-powered or not.

What you will learn

Create Stripe Checkout sessions and redirect users to pay
Handle Stripe webhooks with signature verification
Enforce the free tier limit in application logic before the AI feature exists

What You're Building

Real payments, wired before a single line of AI code exists. This is the deliberately "backwards" move this course makes on purpose: Section 4 will build the AI feature already knowing exactly how it connects to a paid tier, instead of retrofitting monetization onto something built assuming it's free.

Why payments before the fun part

Building the AI feature first tempts you to design around "what's technically interesting," not "what a paying user needs"
If you build proposal generation first and payments last, by the time you reach Stripe you've already made a dozen small decisions (how much context to include, how fast responses need to feel, what the output format is) without ever asking "does this justify $12/month?" Building payments first forces that question to be answered before the feature exists, not after you're emotionally attached to a specific implementation.

Unlock the full lesson

You've read the first 2 sections. The rest of this lesson covers Stripe Checkout: redirect, don't build a payment form, Webhooks: signature verification is not optional, What you're building today — plus a hands-on lab, quiz, and project artifact.

Create a free account to unlock Phase 0 and Phase 1 of every course — no credit card.