Campaign Brain Last 3 Months

What does it actually cost to build with AI?

Real numbers from 117 days of Campaign Brain development. One operator. Claude as co-pilot. Bottom-up bill of materials, not a vendor pitch deck.

Legacy estimate
$1,283K
9.5-person team · 9 months
Actual cost
$60,800
$60,000 ops + $800 AI
Velocity
1710×
1 active days
Cost reduction
95.3%
$1,222K saved
01 / LIVE DATA

The curves don't lie.

Cumulative cost over time
LegacyAI-assisted
$0K$199K$397K$596K$795KW49W01W05W09W13NOW$499K saved
Weekly commit velocity
5,362 total
W49W01W05W09W13
With ClaudePre-Claude
Issues throughput
3,139 opened · 2,307 closed
W49W01W05W09W13
OpenedClosed283 bugs · 506 features
02 / OUTPUT

What was shipped.

16
Projects
93
Repositories
18,622
Commits
48
Sessions
Top Campaign Brain projects
cbradio-ui2s · 4,933m
cbauth1s · 4,495m
cbsearch1s · 3,847m
cbbanking1s · 3,464m
cbdc1s · 3,156m
cbloom28s · 2,447m
cbcli1s · 2,341m
cbmcp1s · 1,721m
cbmodels2s · 1,690m
Domain coverage · one person
Backend91
AI / ML75
Systems63
Security60
Data Engineering54
Frontend54
IoT / Edge44
DevOps38
03 / LEGACY MODEL

What this would cost.

Traditional team needed to ship equivalent output. US market salaries, fully loaded (1.4× base for benefits, taxes, overhead).

Required team9.5 people
2×
Full-Stack Developer
$168,000/yr
$14,000/mo
2×
Data Engineer
$189,000/yr
$15,750/mo
1
DevOps Engineer
$196,000/yr
$16,333/mo
1
Frontend Developer
$161,000/yr
$13,417/mo
Cost comparison
Legacy (low)$855K
Legacy (high)$1,710K
AI-assisted (actual)$61K
95.3%
Cost reduction
04 / TIME ECONOMICS

Where time goes.

Legacy developer day
Writing code35%
Meetings20%
Code review12%
Testing / QA15%
Admin / other18%
~3h of actual coding per 8h day
AI-assisted day
Productive output85%
Planning / review10%
Deploy / ops5%
No meetings. No standups. No context switching.
Timeline compression
Legacy timeline
Month 1Month 9
AI-assisted timeline
117 days · 1 active
1710×velocity multiplier
05 / RESEARCH

Industry benchmarks.

50–100
LOC / dev / day
35%
Time spent coding
1.5×–5×
AI productivity range
06 / BOTTOM LINE

31,242 messages. $60,800 total.

One person with Claude built what a 9.5-person team would quote $855K–$1,710K to deliver in 6–12 months. Shipped in 117 days.

View AI Pilot dashboard →
updated 6h ago