IntelliCoach Courses
Building a Course Platform
at the Speed of Thought
A platform I manage entirely through AI — where a new product goes from vision to live in a day. This is my journey of building it, shared openly.
What
This is my public roadmap — tracking a real experiment where I'm building an entire course platform with AI, sharing every step openly.
Why
I want to build something remarkable. The journey matters as much as the outcome — I'm sharing openly, starting a conversation, figuring out what nobody has figured out yet.
Who
I'm Maik Frank — German, living in Singapore for 20 years. Leadership coach, father of four, with a background in IT, HR, and risk. 2,000+ coaching hours and an eternal experimenter.
A letter to you, the reader.
Something shifted in the last few weeks. In February 2026, a handful of AI tools crossed a threshold. They became so capable that things I had only dreamed about suddenly became possible. Not in theory — in practice. Let me tell you what I mean. If...
Build Log
What happened each day — the decisions, the surprises, the learnings.
There is a feeling every professional meets sooner or later. You look at something that matters, and you realise you do not have the expertise to judge whether it is actually good. Someone hands you a finished piece of work. It looks beautiful on the surface. And a quiet voice in the back of your head asks: "How would I even know if this was right?"
When I started my own company in 2015, the thing that kept me up at night was accounting. I had studied accounting in university years earlier, but not at the level I needed for a real business. I knew two things about myself at the time. I was going to outsource the bookkeeping to some degree, and I was not going to outsource the judgement. If someone else handles your books, you need to know enough to tell whether they are doing a good job. Not enough to do it yourself. Enough to ask the right questions.
So I spent some evenings on accountingcoach.com, brushing up on the basics. Cash flow. Balance sheets. How expenses are classified. What a good audit trail looks like. Nothing fancy. Just enough to hand my books to a specialist and still know, a year later, whether I had been well served.
How I Did It
I finished the security foundation the platform needs before it can welcome its first real user: an authentication system built on Better Auth with magic-link default and optional passkey upgrade, a dedicated PostgreSQL database on an internal Docker network, encrypted backups streamed to an off-site NAS over a private Tailscale tunnel, SOPS-managed secrets with no hardcoded fallbacks, and a written security document targeting OWASP ASVS Level 2. Today I admitted out loud that I cannot independently verify how secure any of this actually is, and I asked publicly for help finding affordable, realistic ways for a small business to check its own work.
Lesson learned:
Know where your expertise ends, and take smart trust seriously at the edge. Smart trust is neither blind faith nor constant control. It is deliberate trust, calibrated to the stakes and the credibility of the people and tools involved. For anything that really matters, get a second opinion. The honest question "what am I missing?" is the cheapest security control a small business can ever afford.
The Roadmap
Eight phases from first idea to Version 1.0. Here's the plan.
Making It Feel Like IntelliCoach
Brand identity, multilingual support, installable as an app on your phone.
Earning Your Trust
GDPR compliance, privacy policies, security hardening.
Your Personal Learning Space
User accounts, purchase history, personal dashboard.
Products That Keep Getting Better
Free previews, version history, lifetime updates, testimonials.
Staying Connected
Email marketing, update notifications, contact and support.
Running the Show
Admin portal for managing products, users, and content.
Real Courses, Real Learning
Full LMS with modules, lessons, quizzes, and progress tracking.
Your AI Coaching Companion
AI coaches per product, community comments, intelligent support.
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
— My dad, probably quoting someone else