The stack.

Every experiment in the lab runs on the same handful of tools, wired together the same way: no build steps, no servers to babysit, nothing that can't be understood in an afternoon. Here's the whole bench — and how a single five-star review travels across it.

How it fits together
approve by text · YES web apps & forms apps talk to the bench sms-send · sms-inbound new 5★ reviews in draft · classify approved posts out PEOPLE FRONT DOORS THE BENCH IN & OUT Your phone one text: YES Your browser the little apps Twilio SMS in & out · (802) number Netlify sites · forms · deploys dns: GoDaddy Supabase the bench everything sits on postgres db auth file storage edge functions Google business profile where reviews live Claude anthropic api the lab's ai brain Buffer publishes the posts facebook · google
FOLLOW THE DASHES: A 5★ REVIEW ENTERS AT GOOGLE → THE BENCH DESIGNS A POST → TWILIO TEXTS YOUR PHONE → "YES" → BUFFER PUBLISHES IT.
The tools, in plain language

Netlify

Hosting · the storefront

Serves every site and app in the lab — including this one. Deploys are literally drag a folder onto a page. It also catches form submissions (like the SMS enrollment form) without any server code.

Supabase

Backend · the bench

One service that provides the database (Postgres), sign-ins, file storage, and edge functions — small programs that run in the cloud on demand. Every experiment keeps its own isolated schema on the same bench.

Twilio

Messaging · the voice

Owns the lab's phone number — a Vermont (802) line — and moves every text: approval requests out, YES / NO / STOP replies back in. Registered on the carriers' A2P rails so messages arrive reliably and consent rules are honored.

Claude · Anthropic

AI · the brain (and the builder)

Does double duty. Inside the experiments, it drafts captions, classifies replies, and picks the best pull-quote from a review. Outside them, it's the tool this whole lab gets built with — including this very page.

Google Business Profile

Input · where reviews live

The source of truth for customer reviews. The lab watches it through Google's official API, so the moment a five-star review lands, the machinery downstream wakes up.

Buffer

Output · the publisher

Once a post gets the YES, Buffer carries it the last mile — publishing to Facebook and the Google profile on schedule, so nothing needs to be posted by hand.

GoDaddy

Domain · the address

Holds lawtonlabs.ai and points it at Netlify. The least glamorous tool on the bench, and the one everything else depends on to be findable.

OneDrive

Source · the notebook

Every experiment's files live in one synced folder tree — the site, the functions, the notes. No build systems, no ceremony: the folder is the source of truth, and deploying is dragging it to Netlify.

Why this stack

Everything is a single HTML file. No frameworks, no bundlers, no build step. Any page in the lab can be opened, read, and understood top to bottom — which is the whole point of a lab.

Cheap enough to never think about. The entire bench runs on free tiers and a few dollars a month — so experiments never die of overhead, and there's never a reason not to try something.