Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Lovable turns any live URL into a working website clone in under three minutes, and its section-level edit controls mean you can fix AI layout drift without regenerating the entire site.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

A freelancer or agency owner who builds websites for clients and wants to prototype from real references faster than designing from scratch.
A template seller curious how AI cloning changes the competitive landscape for premium WordPress or Elementor themes.
A non-developer who wants to build a functional web app like a filterable AI tools directory without writing any code.
Someone evaluating Lovable who wants a realistic picture of output quality and correction workflow before committing paid credits.

SKIP IF…

You need to own the raw code in your own repository from day one — Lovable outputs hosted Vite/React that requires extra steps to export.
You already use Lovable daily and know the URL-paste cloning workflow.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Paste any public URL into Lovable and it generates a visually close clone in 1-3 minutes. Layout, typography, color palette, and section structure transfer reasonably well; padding, image counts, and column layouts drift and need correction. Lovable's section-targeting mode lets you scope correction prompts to one element without a full rebuild. The second half of the video extends the technique to functional cloning: clone the visual shell of a directory site, then issue follow-up prompts to add filterable galleries, pop-up modals, and affiliate links. The practical ceiling is any site with clear visual hierarchy.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:44

01 · Cold open + tool intro

Sets up the premise: AI cloning is real, Lovable is the tool, two Elementor demo templates chosen.

00:44 – 01:57

02 · Cloning Wunderlust

Copy URL from browser, paste into Lovable prompt, wait 1-3 minutes, open result in new tab.

01:57 – 03:12

03 · Side-by-side: Wunderlust

Hero, buttons, sections, FAQs all present. Padding issues and social icon orientation are the main misses.

03:12 – 04:38

04 · Section-level editing

Click-to-target edit: selects social icons, prompts horizontal fix. Moves button above three columns. Both succeed.

04:38 – 05:00

05 · Fresh-project rule

Critical tip: close editor and start fresh before cloning a second site to avoid style bleed from the prior session.

05:00 – 06:43

06 · Cloning DocCare

Complex layout drifts more. Impact section numbers land in wrong column. One correction prompt fixes it.

06:46 – 08:32

07 · Functional cloning: directory

Clones AI tools directory shell, then adds pop-up modals, filterable tags, and affiliate link placeholders.

08:32 – 09:30

08 · Pop-up demo + wrap-up

Modal works with description, features, pricing, and visit link. Affiliate links injectable. Future speculation.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Pasting a URL into Lovable produces a working website clone in under three minutes with no code written.
AI cloning gets layout and color right most of the time, but padding, column counts, and image placement drift and need manual correction.
Lovable's section-targeting mode lets you click a specific element and prompt a fix for just that area, bypassing full regeneration.
Always start a fresh Lovable project when switching to a second clone — working from an existing session bleeds the prior design into the new one.
Screenshot-based cloning produces results virtually identical to URL-paste cloning, so both routes are viable.
Cloning visual design is step one; cloning functional behavior — modals, filters, affiliate links — is a separate follow-up prompt layer.
A year was the gap between this technique being impossible and being a 3-minute tutorial — AI tools compound faster than CMS platforms.
Prompting the AI to look at the original design again when a section is wrong is faster than manually adjusting CSS.

Takeaway

What AI website cloning can and cannot do yet.

WHAT TO LEARN

Lovable's URL-paste cloning closes most of the gap between a reference design and a working prototype in minutes, but layout fidelity degrades on complex pages and functional behavior is always a separate second pass.

Pasting a URL into an AI builder produces a working clone in under three minutes — the bottleneck is no longer getting a starting point, it is knowing which mismatches to fix.
Simple, grid-based layouts clone well; pages with overlapping boxes, asymmetric columns, or dense hero sections give the model the most trouble.
Section-targeting edit mode is the core productivity unlock — correcting one element without regenerating the whole page means you can iterate quickly on specific drift.
Always start a fresh project session when switching clone targets, because AI context from a previous design actively bleeds into the next generation.
Visual cloning and functional cloning are separate tasks: clone the shell first, then issue follow-up prompts to add interactivity such as modals, filters, and affiliate links.
Screenshot-based cloning produces results virtually identical to URL-paste cloning — useful as a fallback when a URL is behind authentication or renders dynamically.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Lovable: An AI-powered web app builder at lovable.dev that generates and edits React/Vite websites through natural-language prompts. Accepts URL or image input to clone existing designs.
Section-targeting edit: A Lovable editing mode where clicking a visual element on the preview scopes the next prompt to that section only, so the AI corrects one area without regenerating the entire page.
Fresh-project rule: The practice of opening a new Lovable project for each site clone rather than continuing from a previous session, to prevent the AI from mixing design elements across projects.
Functional cloning: A two-step workflow of first cloning a site's visual layout, then issuing separate prompts to add interactive features such as pop-up modals, filters, and affiliate links the original site had.
Elementor template: A pre-built WordPress page layout sold by designers. The two demo sites in this video (Wunderlust, DocCare) are Elementor templates sold by the channel owner.

Resources Mentioned

Things they pointed at.

00:22toolLovable ↗

00:44productWunderlust (Darrel Wilson template) ↗

00:44productDocCare (Darrel Wilson template) ↗

07:05productndarrel.com AI tools directory ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

09:09

“A year ago, that was not possible. A year later, this is possible. So two years from now, I'm very curious to see what these AI tools are gonna do.”

Clean arc statement, no setup needed, makes a forward-looking claim→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

04:00

“You can actually kind of use it like a page builder almost.”

Reframes Lovable in a familiar mental model — sharp and quotable→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

04:43

“Start from scratch — the AI tends to take stuff from that previous design and drag it on to your new one.”

Concrete counterintuitive tip most users discover the hard way→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

analogystory

00:00As AI continues to reshape web development, cloning websites today has never been easier. In this video, I'll demonstrate how to use AI tools to replicate a website's design and structure so you can rapidly prototype, study layouts, or even build client ready pages in a few seconds. But what happens if you wanted to clone a function inside of a website?

00:17Can you do that? Well, the answer is yes. So let me walk you through how to clone a website using AI.

00:22Okay. And this is lovable. Dev, and this is the AI tool that we can use to pretty much clone any website that we come across on the Internet.

00:29So let's do it. Let's start cloning some websites. Now, I have two demo websites that I've chosen for this video.

00:34We have Wunderlust, and we also have DocCare. These are essentially Elementor templates that I sell on my websites.

00:41So I actually wanna go ahead and see if I can clone these using AI. So let's go back over here to Lovable. Now if you guys do not have Lovable, you guys can sign up for free.

00:49There is a link to Lovable in the video description, and you can use that to sign up for free and use some free credits. Okay. So let's do this.

00:56Now there's a few ways on how to do this. Right? The first thing that we're gonna do is go to our URL right here, and I first wanna get rid of all this weird text.

01:04Right? There we go. Alright?

01:05And I'm gonna take this, and I'm gonna copy it. There's my little pop up. Right?

01:09I know great design looks good. And we're gonna go to Lovable, and we're gonna ask it to clone it. So here we go.

01:14Can you please clone? And then all you gotta do is just hit enter twice, and then go ahead and paste in the link, and that is it. And then we're gonna see if this can actually, uh, generate us this website.

01:25So here, I'll go ahead and generate these websites. And then we're just gonna wait maybe, like, one to three minutes. And voila.

01:31Here is our cloned AI generated website. And I gotta be honest. It doesn't look bad at all.

01:36Now in order to get a better preview of the website, you need to view it from a new tab. This right here, it creates like a small distorted version. So let's go ahead and preview this in a new tab and compare it to the original design.

01:47Okay. So I'm gonna show you what this looks like versus the original, and then I'll give you a side by side comparison and let you be the judge on how accurate this was. So here's our landing page.

01:56Right? We have the two buttons. We have these social icons here on the right side, very similar to the original design.

02:02Now, the only difference here is that we just have padding issues. Right? If we put this here to the left side, and if we just made these social icons horizontal, I mean, it would be very close to the original design.

02:12So let's take a look at the next section and compare it. And then like I said, I'll give you all a side by side comparison of both websites. So scrolling down here, we have this section.

02:21And under Wunderlust, if we scroll down, we have this section. Very similar, you know, to the original design. They did sort of like add in their own touch and feel to it, but, uh, you get the gist.

02:31Right? They added in like three different sections. Right?

02:35Scrolling down, we have this section here with the sky with the camera. I love this little design they gave to it. Right?

02:39It looks looks looks cute. Right? It looks good.

02:42Let's go ahead and scroll down here. And if we look at these side by side, you can see that it is very similar. It's not 100% identical, but that's okay.

02:50And the only difference here really is that there's two images here, and on our cloned website, there is only one. But they do have the three little sections and then the button there at the bottom. Or I know the the button at the top.

03:02Right? So, yeah, they did kind of readjust it a little bit. No problem.

03:05And then the last section, we'll go ahead and take a look at the FAQs. And then below that, we also have the FAQs. Now, if you ever wanna make changes to something on your websites, you can instruct the AI, and you can even pick specific areas.

03:18For example, you'll click on this edit button, and what's really cool is you see these icons right here? I'm gonna click on this.

03:26Right? And I'm gonna instruct the AI to make this horizontal. Can you make these icons horizontal like the demo website?

03:38Okay. Let's go ahead and run this prompt. And bam.

03:42There we go. It's horizontal. So what's great about the AI here is that you can actually go pick specific things throughout your website and just say, hey.

03:49You messed up here, or I want you to fix this, or I want you to change that. And you can actually edit the AI website with specific sections. Now a long time ago, this actually was more difficult because you'd have to run prompts and generate the entire website all over again.

04:03But now with Lovable, you can actually kind of use it like a page builder almost. You can pick specific areas and just say, hey, I want you to fix this area. I want you to adjust this area and so on.

04:12So another thing right here is I'll go ahead and click on edits. And I'm gonna say, you know what? Put this button.

04:17So I'm gonna put move this button above the three columns right here. So I'm gonna go ahead and instruct the AI to move this button. And look at that.

04:24Now we have this, like, AI pays blur almost. Like, this is this is getting good. Right?

04:28I wanna clone a doctor's website. So I'm gonna try this one more time, and I'm gonna run this through the AI generator. Right?

04:34So I'm gonna go ahead and copy this. Now, if you do wanna clone a website again, I highly recommend to completely close the editor and start from scratch.

04:42The reason why is because I've noticed when you actually try to work off of a section that you're already building, the AI tends to take stuff from that previous design and drag it on to your new one, and you don't want that. So you gotta start from scratch. So I'll go ahead and open this in a new tab.

04:57And then I'm gonna ask it to clone this website now. Right? Okay.

05:01Go ahead and press enter. Now you can also do this an alternative way. So if for whatever reason this isn't working out for you, here at the bottom, you have this plus.

05:09You can actually attach an image and make a screenshot of a website and ask the AI to actually clone the website as well. I've actually seen that it produces similar results. Like, they're virtually the same.

05:19I think the link is just easier. Right? But if you do want to, you know, add an attachment and add an image of the website, you can go that route as well.

05:27Okay. So here's our design. Right?

05:28And here is the original design. You'll see that it's not, uh, exactly the same. And I think the reason why is because there's a lot going on here.

05:35Right? We have this box in the middle. We have these two boxes on the right side, and it might confuse the AI a little bit, but it did bring those boxes, but it just kinda put them, like, you know, throughout the website.

05:45And here is our about us section, and here we have this about us. We have some text, an image here on the left side, and then we have four squares below that.

05:53Going to our demo website, we have a similar design. You know, they put the image here on the right side instead of the left side. That's okay.

06:00And for our next section here, have the r impact. And here we have these numbers on the right side with a call to action on the left side. The AI looks like it didn't make it exactly the way it was supposed to look.

06:11So they put the numbers below that. Now a quick fix here would just be to tell the AI, hey, look at the design again. Uh, put this here on the left side and the numbers on the right side.

06:19I'll tell you what, let's try it out. Okay. So I'm asking the AI now to redo this section and make it look closer to the original design.

06:26So now you'll see that it's more closer to the original design. Right? We have the call to action on the left side and we have the numbers with bullet points on the right side.

06:33So here is a general side by side comparison of both websites. I'll let you be the judge, but I do think that the AI did a really good job at getting as close as possible to cloning this websites.

06:46Now, cloning websites sounds great and everything. Right? You can clone websites, get the design, and work from there.

06:51But what happens if you wanted to clone a function inside of a websites? Can you do that? Well, the answer is yes.

06:56So let me walk you through this. So me and my team, we wanted to build an AI directory website that virtually listed AI tools. Now, here are a few websites that actually do this.

07:05So there's one right here, and if you click on it, it creates this pop up. I personally think this is a very cluttered messy website. Right?

07:12But this just gives you like a general idea of what these sites look like. So they have the list of the AI tool, and then you can go visit the tool. Right?

07:19Now, I wanna make my own. So what we did here was we actually built our own AI directory websites. So this was actually built with WordPress.

07:27And here, we have this filterable gallery. We have these tags, price.

07:32And then below that, I actually, uh, go ahead and click on this right here, it makes this pop up where we can actually view the actual app. Right? So there it is.

07:40Or I can just click on get this AI tool. Now, what we can do here is you can find a directory website, and you can actually ask the AI to clone the website and its features. So here's my clone websites, and here is the original.

07:52So I'll give you all a side by side comparison of both websites right here. They do look pretty similar as you can tell. So the thing is here, we have this clone web but how do we add the features inside of this cloned websites?

08:03So if I actually scroll down, it's like we have all this demo content. This ain't gonna work for us. Right?

08:08And if I click on this image, nothing happens. However, if I go to my website and I click on it, we have this pop up. So how do we get this done?

08:15Right? Well, what we can do is we can go over to the AI, and I'm gonna instruct it now to create a pop up module with more information when someone clicks on the image. So what we can do here now with AI is we can clone the websites, and then we can start adding in features and functions inside of these AI generated websites.

08:32So here, I'll go ahead and run this prompt. Okay. So I went ahead and integrated a pop up module feature.

08:38So if I click on this now, you will now see that it creates this pop up module with more description, key features, the pricing, and then here we can visit the actual websites. Now, you can also instruct it to add affiliate links inside of here as well. So if you do wanna promote something and you want your, you know, commissions, you can say, put my affiliate link for this one, give them the link and they'll do it.

08:57So I hope you all enjoyed this video. Cloning websites today is getting easier and easier. Now, from what I've showed you all today, you know, a year ago, that was not possible.

09:06A year later, this is possible. So two years from now, uh, I'm very curious to see what these AI tools are gonna do.

09:12Because every year, these AI tools, they evolve at a rapid rates compared to other CMS platforms, unfortunately. So we're gonna have to see what the future holds with all these AI tools. I hope you guys enjoyed this video.

09:22If have any questions for me about AI or anything else, let me know in the comments below, and I'll do my best to get to all of your comments. My name is Daryl Wilson, and I will see all of you party people later.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

The title makes a claim that sounds like marketing — ten thousand dollars, seconds — but the video delivers it literally: paste a URL, wait three minutes, compare side by side. What makes this worth studying is the second half, where the same technique extends from copying pixels to copying behavior.

Frameworks