How Manus AI Helped Me Create a 318-Page Ebook and Interactive Course

A behind-the-scenes breakdown of how I used AI to turn simple prompts into fully-built digital products, with real outputs you can replicate.

Jun 12, 2025

I had this whole plan. I was going to write about all the tools I know that can help for creating courses, presentations, ebooks, visuals, and so on, plus how to use the biggest players like Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude to do it.

A lot of you actually jumped into my group chat saying this would be useful, which made me even more excited to pull it together.

Then my post draft became gigantic, and I decided to stick to this one tool – Manus AI – that actually really deserves its own spotlight.

I'm not exaggerating. In three days of experimenting with Manus, I created more fully finished content than I’d normally produce in weeks if I did it all by hand.

We're talking full websites, interactive courses, a 318-page ebook – all from simple prompts that took me less time to write than this intro.

So here’s what happened: instead of that comprehensive roundup I planned, I’m dedicating this entire post to the one tool that changed how I think about AI-powered content creation.

I’ll walk you through exactly what I built with Manus, show you the experiments I ran, and share the actual prompts I used, so you can see what’s possible and try it yourself.

I’ll still write about those other tools in a future post. They deserve their own spotlight too.

You’re reading AI BLEW MY MIND, where I run real experiments every week and share prompts and practical workflows so you can turn AI into your unfair advantage at work and in life.

Who’s this for

If you’re building (or even thinking about building) an online course, digital product, workshop, cohort, or training, this is for you.

This applies whether you’re:

a solo creator monetizing your expertise
a consultant turning your knowledge into scalable products
an agency helping clients package what they know
or part of a team building trainings, certifications, or onboarding programs

In any case, you’re here because you’re trying to turn your knowledge into something people can actually use, and AI is starting to reshape how fast and how easily you can do that.

The content creation landscape in 2025

Let’s zoom out for a second.

The global E-learning services market is estimated at $378 billion this year. By 2034, it’s projected to hit $2 trillion.

In parallel, the number of creators is expected to grow by 10 to 20 percent each year over the next five years, as more educators turn their skills into courses and digital products.

One platform alone, Kajabi, has grown into a giant since launching in 2010. They now host over 60 million students, support more than 50,000 course creators, and serve users in 120 countries. And when you break down how six-figure creators on Kajabi actually make money, the picture becomes even clearer:

In other words: the opportunity is massive. The space keeps growing, but it’s getting more crowded and competitive every year.

The good news? What once required full teams of designers, copywriters, editors, and developers can now be done by solo operators, if you have the right tools.

That's where Manus comes in.

What makes Manus different? It actually finishes things.

Most AI tools give you a starting point. You ask ChatGPT for a course outline, you get a list of bullet points. Helpful, but you’re still the one doing the heavy lifting.

Manus? It goes from idea to finished product.

I’m talking deployed websites with custom URLs (like the vibe-coding tools I talked about here), courses with interactive elements, fully formatted ebooks ready to download.

Not drafts. Not “here’s what you could do next.” Finished. Deployed. Live. Or fully packaged and ready to send.

How is it able to pull this off?

Unlike ChatGPT, which is purely conversational (you prompt, it replies), Manus operates as an autonomous agent built on multiple AI models working together (including Claude and others). But more importantly, it can actually execute and keep working while you’re doing something else. It can:

Create and deploy websites to live URLs
Generate and compile documents
Set up interactive elements and databases
Continue working even when you close the browser
Self-correct and iterate without you babysitting the process

It’s basically like having an intern who works while you sleep.

My three-day Manus experiment

I tested Manus with three different projects to see what it could actually do. Here's what happened:

Day 1: The interactive course — fully built

I started simple. Or at least I thought I did.

Prompt 1:

Create an interactive course on building an AI business, including: 
finding a niche problem, validating your idea (without overbuilding), 
building a minimum viable product (MVP) no code or low code, 
using AI tools to supercharge your work, marketing + monetization 
— packed with actionable tips, AI tools that can help, and prompts.

Here's what blew my mind: I didn't give it any materials. No outlines, no existing content, no research. Just that one prompt.

And it built full, downloadable modules with content, examples, and resources, entirely from scratch.

But I wanted more. I wanted a website.

Prompt 2:

Turn your creation into a website and deploy it permanently.

A while later, I had a live website. Not a prototype. Not a mockup. A deployed, accessible website with a custom URL.

But it looked... pretty bad. So I pushed further.

Prompt 3:

Add interactive experiences directly into course material and links to high quality videos. Make the website visually appealing.

This is where Manus really started showing off. It didn't just make it prettier. It added interactice games and quizzes for each module. It found and embedded relevant YouTube videos.

You can check out the full process in this video:

The result:

A fully deployed, interactive course website, built with just three prompts.

What Manus did well:

Structured full course modules entirely from scratch, with no source material.
Automatically generated quizzes, examples, and interactive elements tied to each module.
Built and deployed a live, accessible website.
Added multimedia (YouTube videos, visual elements) directly into the content.

Where I’d still step in:

I’d review and verify all the content before publishing.
I’d also push Manus to refine sources and pull information only from trusted material for higher content quality.
The initial visual design still needs some polish if you want a fully branded, client-facing product.

One more thing: everything is editable directly on the site. There’s an “Edit mode” button that lets you modify any text live, as you can see here:

Takeaway from this experiment:

If you’ve got an idea for a course but no starting materials, Manus can build fully structured course modules, generate interactive elements, and even deploy a working website, all from simple prompts. It won’t replace your expertise, but it dramatically accelerates getting from zero to a usable, editable product.

Day 2: The 318-page eBook — massive but unpolished

Feeling ambitious, I decided to push Manus with something more complex: creating a full eBook based on some of my previous materials.

I wanted to see if it could not only pull from an existing base (an eBook I had with 100 one-paragraph prompts), but also understand the quality bar I’ve been building in my own work.

So I included my personal prompting guidelines and previous prompt collections (like the ones I shared here), basically giving Manus my “prompting brain” to work from.

The prompt:

Take the ebook I attached, titled “Supercharge Your Workday with ChatGPT” and recreate a significantly improved version.

The new ebook should deliver more value by expanding the original 100 prompts into higher-quality versions (500 to 1000 words each), covering all 20 categories of use cases.

Use the following materials to guide prompt creation:
- My prompting guidelines from “prompting_guidelines.txt”
- My previous prompt examples from “The Custom GPT Cheatsheet for Content Creators”
- My additional prompt examples from “Think Better with AI: 11 High-Impact Prompts to Sharpen Your Mind”

The ebook should be branded under my AI BLEW MY MIND newsletter (logo attached), and written in the clear, practical, high-value style.

Make sure all prompts follow best practices, are highly practical, and deliver maximum depth and utility for each scenario.

The task was huge, so big that I kept hitting Manus’ context limits. I couldn’t run it all in one shot. Instead, I had to break the same project into three separate tasks and pick up where each left off.

It also took quite a while to process, but since Manus was running multiple agents in parallel, I could just let it work in the background while I focused on other things.

The result?

A 318-page professionally formatted ebook.

What Manus did well:

Pulled together a fully structured, formatted book from scattered materials.
Expanded the simple one-paragraph prompts from my original eBook into much richer, more detailed versions, using my own guidelines.
Generated clean layout, chapter structure, use cases, examples, and a full table of contents.

Where I’d still step in:

The prompts were solid, but I’d still review and fine-tune each one before publishing to ensure they deliver real value.
The branding and visual design still need work, probably too much for Manus to fully nail at this scale.
With 300+ pages, polishing the final formatting would burn through quite a few additional credits, so I left that for manual cleanup.

Takeaway from this experiment:

If you’ve got scattered materials (drafts, notes, articles, outlines, even old products), Manus can turn all of it into fully-built digital products: books, guides, courses, workbooks.

Day 3: The infographic — where it broke

Not everything worked perfectly. I tried creating an infographic from one of my recent posts.

The prompt:

Create a bold, engaging infographic titled “How to Read Non-Fiction with GPT” based on this article I wrote: https://aiblewmymind.substack.com/p/the-one-thing-that-changed-how-i  

The infographic should walk the viewer through a five-step system inspired by the post. Include: the problem with passive reading, a smarter active reading workflow, how to use GPT at each stage (e.g., questioning, summarizing, applying), practical example prompts, and the end transformation or benefit.

The design should use AI BLEW MY MIND brand colors (a deep black background with bursts of blue, orange, magenta, green, and purple, as shown in the uploaded logo). 

Typography should be bold and modern, with uppercase section headers and a clean, easy-to-read body font. 

Use a strong visual hierarchy to guide the reader through a step-by-step flow, incorporating simple icons or illustrations where relevant (like a book, chat bubble, brain, or lightning bolt). 

The tone should feel energetic, confident, and a bit playful. Avoid anything academic or dry.

The result?

Completely illegible text, even after multiple tries to fix readability issues.

Maybe uploading a few infographic templates as reference would help. I didn’t test that, but it’s something I do with ChatGPT when generating visuals (and it works).

Takeaway from this experiment:

Manus isn’t magic. It has clear strengths (web development, document creation, interactive content) and clear weaknesses (complex visual design).

Either way, the platform officially launched on March 6, 2025, so I expect a lot of improvements as it evolves.

What other people are building

While I was experimenting, I started noticing what other users were creating. Two examples stood out:

Interactive Van Gogh Gallery – Someone built a full virtual art gallery. You can move around, zoom in on paintings, and read details about each piece. It’s a mini museum website.

Physics Game for Middle Schoolers – A physics teacher used this prompt: "I am a middle school physics teacher preparing to teach the law of conservation of momentum. Could you create a series of clear and accurate demonstration animations and organize them into a simple presentation html?"

The result was an interactive physics game with animations demonstrating momentum concepts fully usable in class.

It reminded me of some of the educational experiments I ran with Gemini.

Turning ideas into digital products, fast

What used to take days or weeks (from research and writing to formatting, design, coding, and testing) now takes minutes or hours.

Manus compresses the entire process from idea to deployed product with just prompts.

I'm not saying it replaces all the steps. You still need to review, refine, and add your personal touch. But it eliminates the technical barriers that stop most people from turning ideas into reality.

And to make sure the quality holds up, I wouldn’t rely entirely on AI-generated content. Instead, feed Manus your existing materials (your articles, notes, past courses, research) just like I did with the eBook.
That way, you get the best of both worlds: your expertise and voice, with AI handling the technical execution and formatting.

The limitations (because nothing's perfect)

Where Manus still falls short:

Speed vs. Quality Trade-off:

For complex projects, processing can take hours. Plus, sometimes tasks fail, costing both time and credits. I saw this with the eBook, where I kept hitting context limits and had to restart in new windows, using more credits each time.

Credit System Friction:

You get limited credits per account. When projects fail, those credits are gone. It’s not that expensive per task, but failed attempts add up. I got the Manus Plus subscription ($39/month) to make sure I had enough credits to properly test things (and I didn’t end up spending them all), but it’s also not super cheap. Tools like Lovable.dev or Bolt.new are much cheaper.

Visual Design Limits:

As I learned with the failed infographic test, detailed visual design still needs human intervention. Complex layouts, graphic choices, and fine-tuning aren’t Manus’ strong suit (yet).

That said, even with these limitations, it’s still the most capable autonomous AI I’ve used so far for content creation.

How to get started (and what to try first)

You get 1,500 credits initially if you use my invitation link, plus 300 credits daily — and I get 500 credits too, which helps me keep experimenting.

My recommendation for your first project:

Start with something you'd normally spend hours on manually: a course, a structured document, or an interactive presentation.

Starter prompts you can try:

Take the attached files [upload your notes, slides, or documents] and create a complete online course with [5] modules, interactive elements, and a landing page to deploy live.

Turn this outline [paste your content] into an interactive presentation with visuals.

Create a complete ebook on [insert topic]. Structure it into [8-10] chapters, with clear explanations, actionable insights, examples, and practical tips in each chapter. Write in a clear, engaging, and easy-to-read style, suitable for [target audience]. Format it for easy export as a downloadable PDF.

Be specific about the outcome you want, but don't micromanage the process. Manus works best when you give it a clear end goal and let it figure out the steps.

The bottom line

The barrier to testing ideas just dropped to almost zero.

And when the friction between idea and execution disappears, you start thinking differently. You become more experimental. You test more concepts. You ship faster.

Is Manus perfect? No. Will it replace human creativity and strategy? Definitely not.

But will it dramatically speed up the gap between your ideas and finished products you can actually deploy and test? After three days of experimenting, I'm convinced it will.

And that’s what makes it exciting, as long as it doesn’t lower the quality of what you put out.

You still need to do the work that matters. The point isn’t to skip the hard parts, it’s to clear the technical barriers so you can focus on what actually makes your product good.

What would you build if the technical barriers disappeared? Leave a comment and let me know what you're planning to experiment with.

AI blew my mind

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