Accounts to set up

1. GitHub - set up your project
2. v0 - great for building the frontend, not as great for converting to a Farcaster mini app
3. Cursor - great for building the backend and converting to a Farcaster mini app
   • free plan for 2 weeks, $20/month after that
4. Vercel - publish your project
5. Farcaster - publish your Farcaster mini app
6. [optional] Neon - set up a database if you need to store data for your app e.g. user scores on a game leaderboard. There are a lot of free database options, Neon is integrated with Vercel so makes it easy
7. [optional] Claude Code - found this to be the best AI tool for backend, used as an extension within Cursor but not as friendly of a chat interface
   • free for basics, $20/month for using directly in Cursor
8. [optional] ngrok - test your mini app locally on Farcaster (you can test changes without publishing)
9. [optional] Neynar - if you need to pull Farcaster network data like a user’s casts
   • free account for basics

Steps

1. Set up GitHub project repository

   • give your project a name
   • choose public or private for your code depending on your preference

   

2. Describe what you want built on v0

   • feel free to be broad and you can always update specifics later

   • v0 will walk you through its plan and why it’s doing something so it’s a great opportunity to learn too!

   • you can make updates through the chat interface on the left navigation once v0 starts building

     

3. Once you feel good about the frontend in v0, you can move the code over to Cursor to continue with backend changes

   • make sure to download Cursor’s desktop app. I toggle on all the sections in the top right on the navigation bar so that you can organize everything well. Left is going to be where your project files/code show up, bottom is Terminal, and right is a friendly chat interface

   

   • select “clone repo” and paste your GitHub URL into Cursor (shared mine as an example below) so everything gets synced up. If you already set up your GitHub project on your computer then just select “open project”

     

     

   • on v0 go to the top right download code section so you can see the command you need to run to move your code into Cursor

   • copy paste this npx command into the right hand chat interface of Cursor. It will walk you through the steps including installing necessary programs that your computer might be missing (could be a lot if this is your first time doing anything with code). If you ever get confused by these steps, you can always ask Cursor to clarify!

     

4. Once your GitHub folder and v0 code are synced up, you can try publishing the code to Vercel to test that everything works properly (it’s great to test first before making a bunch of backend changes which makes the code more complicated). You can just write in the chat interface on the right “commit and deploy” whenever you want to publish your new changes. Follow all instructions that Cursor gives including getting Vercel linked up

   • if you run into issues with deployment, you can always share the Vercel bugs you’re encountering. You’ll be able to see the issues that Vercel runs into while deploying your app (go to the “deployments” tab on Vercel to check). Just copy paste any errors into Cursor and it should walk through them itself. This is where you’ll need to be patient sometimes!

     

   • If you’re really stuck with deployment issues try 1) asking Cursor to think harder about the issue since it’s running into circles 2) share the output/thinking from Cursor into Claude (preference) or chatgpt and ask it to help resolve. Sometimes asking a second AI tool will give a better perspective

   • [optional] If you find that Cursor is just really not great, then I would add Claude Code as an extension (I use this by default since I’ve found it’s typically better but you can only interact with it in Terminal and it costs $) using the command

   npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
   

5. Once you get your web app to publish to Vercel correctly, tell Cursor to make any additional backend changes you want

   • Cursor should tell you already but if not, ask it to set up a localhost so that you can preview your changes. It will set one up and you can visit the URL (e.g. http://localhost:3000/) so that you can preview your changes live (this is your local dev environment)
   • [optional] you can use Neynar docs if you want to pull in Farcaster network data like a user’s casts https://docs.neynar.com/