Every solopreneur running a website in the EU faces the same annoying problem: cookie consent.
You need it. GDPR requires it. And the solutions on the market want €50-300 per month for the privilege of asking your visitors if they’re okay with Google Analytics.
For a freelancer or small business owner, that math doesn’t work. You’re not running an enterprise. You don’t need enterprise features. You just need something that works, stays compliant, and doesn’t eat into your margins.
So I built my own solution. A complete WordPress plugin called Cookie Consent Manager. Not by grinding through every line of code myself, but by combining 10+ years of web development experience with deliberate, iterative prompting in Claude Code.
The gap that shouldn’t exist
Commercial cookie consent platforms are genuinely good products. Cookiebot, OneTrust, CookieYes – they solve hard problems elegantly. But their pricing assumes you’re a mid-sized company with a marketing budget that includes a line item for compliance tooling.
If you’re running a consulting practice with a simple WordPress site, or managing 3-4 client websites as a freelancer, you’re stuck with three options:
- Pay enterprise prices for basic compliance
- Use a free plugin that may or may not actually comply with the law
- Hope nobody notices (they will – regulators are increasingly active)
What I wanted was a fourth option: professional-grade compliance without vendor lock-in or recurring costs. Something I could install once, configure properly, and trust to do its job.
What I actually built
The plugin does the following:
- Automatically scans websites weekly to discover all cookies
- Categorizes 50+ known cookies from Google, Meta, and other common services
- Displays a clean, customizable consent banner with granular controls
- Integrates with Google Consent Mode v2 (so analytics works correctly when consent is given)
- Deletes cookies automatically when users withdraw consent
- Logs consent decisions anonymously for compliance documentation
- Works with WordPress caching and CDN services out of the box
None of this is technically groundbreaking. Cookiebot does all of it and more. The difference is this plugin runs entirely on your server, costs nothing, and creates no dependency on external services.
How Claude Code changed the process
I’ve been building websites – or been part of teams building them – for over a decade. I understand how WordPress hooks work, how JavaScript interacts with cookies, how caching complicates consent management. I’m not a great developer, but I know what good code looks like and how a solution should be architected to actually work.
That combination turned out to be exactly what AI-assisted development needs.
The work wasn’t “write me a cookie consent plugin.” It was sessions like: “The consent state isn’t persisting correctly when WP Super Cache serves a cached page. The JavaScript needs to check the cookie client-side and override whatever PHP rendered.” Then reviewing the implementation, testing it, finding edge cases, and iterating.
Each Claude Code session built on the last. The AI handled the implementation details – the actual PHP functions, the JavaScript event handlers, the CSS for the banner. I handled the architecture decisions, the compliance requirements, and the quality control.
This is fundamentally different from either writing everything yourself or outsourcing to a developer who doesn’t understand your requirements. It’s closer to pair programming with someone who types very fast but needs clear direction.
The honest trade-offs
This approach has real requirements.
You need enough technical literacy to evaluate whether the code does what you asked. Not enough to write every line yourself, but enough to read it, understand the structure, and catch when something’s off. If the plugin breaks something, you need to communicate the problem precisely.
You also need domain expertise. The AI doesn’t necessarily know that cookie walls are illegal under GDPR, or that consent must be as easy to withdraw as to give, or that Google Consent Mode v2 has specific timing requirements. But with the right direction, it actually found the GDPR directives, and put together a solution into functional code.
And the iteration process is real work. The first version didn’t handle caching correctly. The second version had issues with Google Consent Mode timing. The mobile layout needed multiple passes. Each problem required understanding what was wrong, articulating it, and reviewing the fix.
This isn’t magic. It’s leverage – applied to a foundation of existing knowledge.
What this means for technical solopreneurs
If you already understand how software should work, AI-assisted development dramatically compresses the time between “I know what this needs to do” and “it’s actually doing it.”
The traditional model says you either code it yourself (slow), pay someone to code it (expensive and requires specification work anyway), or buy an existing solution (recurring costs and vendor lock-in). Claude Code opens a fourth path: you architect, specify, and review while the AI handles implementation velocity.
What made this work:
- Clear mental model. I knew how WordPress plugins are structured and how consent management should flow.
- Specific requirements. Not “make it GDPR compliant” but “ensure no cookies are set before explicit consent per Article 5(3).”
- Iterative refinement. Testing in real conditions, finding failures, communicating them precisely.
- Willingness to reject bad output. Not every generation is correct. Knowing when to push back matters.
Coming soon
Cookie Consent Manager isn’t publicly available yet. It will be released as part of a broader toolkit for WordPress-based solobusinesses – a complete foundation that handles the infrastructure work so you can focus on what you actually do.
If you’re interested in being notified when it launches, or want to see what else is possible when domain knowledge meets AI-assisted development, that’s what Freymwork is about.
Not hype. Not guru promises. Just honest exploration of what’s actually working for people building businesses without venture funding or development teams.
