Occasion Speech Writer

An AI tool that writes personalized wedding, best man, maid of honor, and retirement speeches. Visitors get a free preview and pay a one-time fee to unlock and download the full speech. No accounts, no database — the whole thing is a static site plus two serverless functions.

How it works

1. Visitor fills out a short form (occasion, names, relationship, a few memories, tone, length).
2. api/generate.js calls the Anthropic API to write the speech, returns a free preview, and sends the full text back to the browser encrypted (nothing is stored server-side).
3. Visitor clicks "Unlock," pays via a Lemon Squeezy checkout overlay.
4. api/unlock.js verifies the payment with the Lemon Squeezy API, then decrypts and returns the full speech for the browser to display, copy, or download as PDF/txt.

Setup

You need three things before this can go live: an Anthropic API key, a Lemon Squeezy account with one product, and a Vercel deployment. None of these can be created on your behalf — they involve identity/payment verification only you can complete.

1. Anthropic API key

1. Create an account at console.anthropic.com.
2. Add billing and set a spend limit (Settings → Limits) — this is your real cost control, since the free preview has no other rate limiting. $20–30 is plenty to start.
3. Create an API key (Settings → API Keys). You'll paste this into Vercel as ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.

2. Lemon Squeezy product

1. Create a store at lemonsqueezy.com and complete payout/identity verification (needed before you can receive money).
2. Create one product, e.g. "Speech Unlock," priced around $8.99, type "Single Payment."
3. On that product's variant, enable "License Keys" and set the activation limit to 1. This is not optional — api/unlock.js relies on Lemon Squeezy's license-key activation (one-time use per order) to stop a single paid order from unlocking unlimited speeches. Without this enabled, unlock requests will fail with license_not_ready.
4. Open the product's variant and copy its Buy Link — paste it into config.js as SPEECH_WRITER_CHECKOUT_URL.
5. Under Settings → API, create an API key — this becomes LEMONSQUEEZY_API_KEY in Vercel.
6. Note your Store ID and the product variant's Variant ID (visible in the dashboard URLs or via the API) — these become LEMONSQUEEZY_STORE_ID and LEMONSQUEEZY_VARIANT_ID in Vercel. They're optional but recommended: without them, api/unlock.js only checks that an order was paid, not that it was paid for this product.

3. Deploy to Vercel

1. Push this repo to GitHub (or connect it directly) and import it into Vercel — no build step needed, it's static + /api functions.

2. In the Vercel project's Settings → Environment Variables, add:

   Variable	Value
   ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	from step 1
   ANTHROPIC_MODEL	optional, defaults to claude-haiku-4-5-20251001
   UNLOCK_SECRET	any long random string (e.g. openssl rand -hex 32) — used to encrypt speeches in transit
   LEMONSQUEEZY_API_KEY	from step 2
   LEMONSQUEEZY_STORE_ID	from step 2 (optional but recommended)
   LEMONSQUEEZY_VARIANT_ID	from step 2 (optional but recommended)

3. Edit config.js with your real SPEECH_WRITER_CHECKOUT_URL and price, commit, and deploy.

4. Test before going live: switch the Lemon Squeezy store to Test Mode, run through the full generate → checkout → unlock flow with a test card, and confirm the full speech unlocks. Then switch the store to Live Mode.

You're launching on Vercel's free *.vercel.app subdomain — no domain purchase needed to start. Only buy a custom domain later if the product shows real traction.

Local development

npm i -g vercel
vercel dev

This serves the static pages and /api functions locally, reading the same environment variables from a .env.local file (see vercel env pull).

How single-use redemption works (no database)

A paid order alone doesn't prove which speech it should unlock, and nothing stops a client from generating unlimited free preview/blob pairs from api/generate.js. So api/unlock.js doesn't just check "is this order paid" — it also requires activating that order's Lemon Squeezy license key (see setup step 3 above), which Lemon Squeezy allows exactly once per order when the activation limit is set to 1. The first unlock request for a given order succeeds; any replay of that same order ID fails with order_already_redeemed. This pushes single-use tracking onto Lemon Squeezy's own infrastructure instead of needing a database here.

Files

• index.html, best-man-speech.html, maid-of-honor-speech.html, wedding-toast.html, retirement-speech.html — landing pages sharing one widget, each targeting a different search intent.
• app.js / style.css — the shared form, checkout, and unlock UI.
• config.js — the one file you edit with your Lemon Squeezy checkout URL.
• api/generate.js — calls Anthropic, returns a preview + encrypted full text.
• api/unlock.js — verifies payment with Lemon Squeezy, decrypts full text.
• lib/crypto.js, lib/prompt.js — shared helpers (not deployed as routes).