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The Non-Technical PM's
Guide to Building With Cursor

Zevi Arnovitz
PM at Meta; previously Wix; zero technical background
JAN 18 2026
The Proof

You Don't Need to Code
to Build With Cursor

PM LEVERAGE
"If you're non-technical like me, code is terrifying, but AI just makes it so much possible."
  • Zero technical background. Did music in high school
  • Saw a video of people building apps with AI, came home from Japan and opened Bolt
  • StudyMate, a study app for students, is his weekend project
  • Now Cursor with Claude Code inside it, Composer for speed, Gemini for UI
Framework

The /command Workflow

ISSUEPLAN.MDPEER REVIEW
2 days
to localize StudyMate
90 min
no domain to site live
3
agents running at once
  • /create issue: capture the idea straight into Linear mid-build, without losing flow
  • /exploration phase: Claude reads the codebase and asks clarifying questions first
  • /create plan: output is a markdown file with a TLDR, critical decisions and tracked tasks
  • Then: execute, /review, /peer review, and update the docs
Why the plan comes firstBolt and Lovable were "super eager to write code." Skipping straight to code is what gave him his gnarliest bugs.
What Actually Works

Taking This Into a Real Company

  • First: make the codebase AI native, markdown files that tell agents how each area works
  • Best for PMs: contained UI projects. Build it, open the PR, let a dev do the final finishes
  • Not for PMs: heavy database migrations or any big project
  • The real difference: every tool runs the same models. What changes is the harness
Constant postmortems

When Claude gets something wrong he asks what in its prompt or tooling caused it, then updates that so it cannot recur.

/learning opportunity

A saved prompt that tells Claude to explain the current work with the 80/20 rule. He runs it whenever something is over his head.

Playbook

How to Start

  • Begin in a ChatGPT or Claude project. Beautiful UI, simple, no code on screen
  • Prompt it as your CTO: it owns how things get built, and tell it not to be a people pleaser
  • Graduate to Bolt or Lovable, then Cursor in light mode, then a terminal and full dark mode
  • Move gradually. He calls it exposure therapy, because code is the scariest thing to look at
Best time to be a juniorYes, the junior roles are drying up. Also: when else in history could you leave school and build a startup on your own?
Contrarian

What He Pushes Back On

✗You're outsourcing your thinkingINSTEAD →✓ Strong disagree. The PM job was never about having the right answers. It is getting users the right solution as fast as possible.
✗It is all AI slopINSTEAD →✓ Slop is human error. Own your outputs. Saying "sorry, that was built by AI" in a product review is your mistake.
✗Your craft will atrophyINSTEAD →✓ For a junior it does the opposite. On his own product he gets reps on strategy and messaging he never got at work.
✗Be a 10X PMINSTEAD →✓ His first product review at Wix failed badly. Nobody expected a 10X PM. They expected a 10X learner.
Based on Zevi Arnovitz's episode on Lenny's Podcast. All ideas on this page are from the episode.Watch on YouTubeFollow @ArnovitzZevi on X
GO DEEPER IN THE EPISODE
04:48 Zevi’s background and journey into AI07:41 Overview of Zevi’s AI workflow14:41 Screenshare: Exploring Zevi’s workflow in detail17:18 Building a feature live: StudyMate app30:52 Executing the plan with Cursor38:32 Using multiple AI models for code review40:40 Personifying AI models43:37 Peer review process45:40 The importance of postmortems51:05 Integrating AI in large companies53:42 How AI has impacted the PM role57:02 How to improve AI outputs58:15 AI-assisted job interviews01:02:57 Failure corner01:06:20 Lightning round and final thoughts
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