How I'd build Funeral AI
I'd reach for a Next.js frontend backed by Postgres, with Stripe for recurring billing, Twilio for SMS notifications to families, and Resend for transactional email. Auth0 handles multi-tenant login. The rough build is 220-260 hours for an MVP that handles onboarding, the core death certificate workflow, family notifications, and basic admin reporting. That's honest - it's not small, but it's bounded.
Day-by-day plan
Day 1: Provision Auth0 multi-tenant setup, Postgres schema for funeral homes, decedents, submissions, and audit logs. Day 2: Stripe integration for three tiers ($150 base, $300 pro with family portal, $500 enterprise with FMS sync).
Day 3-4: Customer onboarding flow - basic questionnaire, API key generation, team member invite. Day 5: Death certificate form builder scaffold. Start with the common fields (name, DOB, cause of death, disposition), but flag every question as state-specific so we can layer compliance later.
Week 2: Build the submission workflow - local PDF generation for states that want paper filing, API integrations for the 8-10 states with actual e-filing portals (CA, NY, TX, FL). Manual submission tracking for the rest. Week 2-3: Family notification system - SMS and email templates for notifying next of kin, collecting burial/cremation preferences. Trigger these from the admin dashboard.
Week 3-4: Admin dashboard with submission status tracker, audit log, basic analytics (submissions per month, avg time-to-completion). Week 4: Documentation, test coverage, security audit focused on SSN handling and HIPAA baseline. Week 5: Staging deployment, soft launch to 5-10 beta customers, fix the inevitable edge cases.
What's hard about this build
The death certificate compliance layer is the engineering iceberg. Each state has different forms, mandatory fields, signature requirements, and submission methods. Some states have moved to e-filing APIs. Others don't. California requires electronic filing for funeral directors but the system breaks in November every other year. New York has one portal. Texas has fifteen. Building a form engine that maps a single UX to fifty state variations without exploding into unmaintainable conditionals requires careful schema design and ongoing maintenance as states update rules.
The second hard problem is integrating with FuneralOne and FrontRunner, the incumbent FMS systems that lock in most funeral homes. We'd need tight API partnerships or reverse-engineer EDI feeds. Without that integration, funeral directors have to re-key data, which kills adoption.
Third: data sensitivity. We're handling SSNs, causes of death, and family contact information during grief moments. A breach isn't just a PR problem, it's legal liability. Auth0 helps, but we still need encryption at rest, audit logging, and compliance documentation that survives a HIPAA audit letter. That's not hard, but it's non-negotiable and it takes time.
What's fast because of AI
I'd use Claude to scaffold the Next.js form builder and generate the state-compliance matrix - mapping which states require e-filing, which accept PDF, which need specific fields. Claude cuts that research from days to hours.
Tests accelerate dramatically. I'd generate test cases for each state form variant, edge cases (minor decedent, out-of-state disposition, multiple beneficiaries), and happy-path flows. Claude writes 80 percent of the test suite. Same with copywriting - the funeral home UI needs to speak to a 52-year-old director who's skeptical of software. Claude nails the empathetic, jargon-free tone.
Edge-case enumeration is where AI shines. What if the funeral home's address is out of state? What if submission fails mid-way? What if a state changes rules between submission attempts? Claude brainstorms these scenarios fast, saving me hours of "what did we miss" debugging later. Debugging itself is faster - Claude pair-programs the state-specific conditional logic, cutting the debug cycle in half.
How I'd hand it off
I'd record a Loom walkthrough of the onboarding flow, death certificate submission, and admin dashboard. Linear board documents known compliance gaps and the state-by-state filing roadmap. You get a runbook for adding new states and handling common support tickets.
I'd run a 30-day pager rotation - you page me if submissions break or state portals change. All credentials, API keys, and Access Control Lists transfer to your account. The codebase is yours to maintain or hand to a junior engineer. I'd leave it documented and tested so the next person doesn't inherit a mystery.