How I Used Manus AI Agents to Build a Live Website for My Design-History Collection

In today’s post, I’m excited to introduce you to Manus, an AI agent platform that goes far beyond the instant chat responses you’re used to with ChatGPT. Rather than simply answering a prompt, Manus works autonomously—researching, coding, and even replaying its own workflow—to build real, shareable outputs over the course of hours. I recently put Manus to the test by challenging it to create a live website showcasing some of my most prized design-history artifacts. Here’s what happened.

What Are AI Agents—and Why Manus?

Traditional AI chatbots generate text in response to your immediate query. AI agents, by contrast, act on your behalf: they take multi-step challenges, navigate the web to gather information, write and refine code, and deliver finished products you can actually use.

Manus is one of the most user-friendly AI-agent platforms I’ve tried:

  • Agent Mode lets you watch a “replay” of every action the AI takes—just like seeing someone at a keyboard.

  • Image Analysis & Research tools allow it to interpret photos you upload and then dig deeper online.

  • Iterative Collaboration means you can feed it new instructions or fix problems days later without ever touching the code yourself.

Case Study: Building a Design-History Showcase Site

1. Defining the Challenge

I set Manus a clear, multi-layered task:

“Create a live website that showcases my design-history collection—complete with research, artifact details, and downloadable citations.”

The collection included:

  • Frank Lloyd Wright signed autobiography

  • Fröbel blocks blog post I’d written

  • Buckminster Fuller signed book

  • Arthur Jacobs lamp-design sketches

  • Xiao Feng Shang pottery vase

  • A bonus Monona Terrace master-plan booklet

2. Feeding Manus Your Materials

In a single Manus chat window, I:

  1. Uploaded four artifact images

  2. Shared links to existing blog posts and eBay listings

  3. Listed items requiring artist-validation or deeper provenance research

3. Watching the Agent at Work

Over the next 1–2 hours, Manus:

  • Analyzed each image to identify title, creator, and era

  • Crawled niche Facebook groups, museum archives, and academic sites to validate details

  • Generated code for a clean, responsive website template

  • Populated pages with artifact descriptions, historical significance, and “Further Reading” citations

  • Replayed its entire workflow in “Agent Computer” mode so I could audit every click and line of code

By the time I returned, Manus had delivered a polished site—complete with custom branding in Wright’s favorite shade of “Taliesin red,” downloadable research PDFs, and a to-do list it had checked off as it went.

Key Takeaways & Best Practices

  1. Start with a Tricky Challenge
    The more unusual your ask, the better you’ll see the value of an AI agent. I picked obscure design artifacts that required real detective work.

  2. Supply Rich Inputs
    Provide both images and links. Manus excels when it can cross-reference multiple sources.

  3. Be Patient
    Unlike a chat bot, an agent may take hours. Use that time to develop your next prompt or collect more resources.

  4. Iterate Continuously
    Even days later, you can drop in new items or ask the agent to fix a layout. No coding needed on your part.

Getting Started with Manus

  1. Sign Up & Invite
    ▶️ Try Manus for free with my invite link—no credit card required to get started.

  2. Explore Agent Modes
    – Replay View: Watch step-by-step
    – Research Logs: See every website and group it visits

  3. Ask a Bold Question
    Whether you need a website, a marketing deck, or a data-analysis script, challenge your agent to do more than just “chat.”

Build a Website and Research with AI Agent Help – Manus Demo Wrap Up

AI agents like Manus represent a new frontier where you can delegate complex, multi-step projects to a digital collaborator. In my demo, Manus not only turned my basement-collection hobby into a fully functional website—complete with rich research and custom code—but also gave me full transparency into its process. If you’ve ever wished you could harness the power of an AI developer, researcher, and project manager all in one, give Manus a spin and let me know what you build!

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