The site you are reading was written by Claude Code, from the first line of code to its pre-launch state. I did three things: said what I wanted, chose between options, and reviewed the results.
Here is the process as it happened, so you can reuse it for your own small product.
Step 1: say what you want in one sentence
My first request was one sentence:
Build a personal AI site that shows my products, AI tutorials, what I make with AI every day, and daily AI news.
That was enough because it said who it is for (people who follow AI) and what the sections are. Tech choices and layout are for the AI to propose.
The most common beginner mistake is opening with “build it in React”. If you do not know the tech, do not pick it. Describe the goal.
Step 2: settle the design before building
AI writes code fast and rewrites fast, but speed does not help if the direction is wrong. So I asked for design options first.
It offered two: A put my work first, B put news first. I chose A for the home page and B for the news page. Only I could make that call, because it is about how I want people to see me.
The same went for the brand: colors (deep navy plus lime), fonts and a logo went into a design spec, and every page and cover follows it.
Step 3: let it build, but insist on seeing results
“Done” does not count until there is something you can open. After each piece I asked for a preview link and checked it on phone and desktop.
When something was off I described what I saw, not why:
- “On mobile the top nav overlaps the content”
- “The cursor in this logo is stretched too thin, it’s not the approved one”
- “Don’t show the score breakdown on the site”
The AI found the cause, fixed it and showed me again.
Step 4: when you hit a wall, change route
A few paths did not work:
- No Anthropic API key: news scoring switched to a Doubao model on Volcano Ark, with a compatible API
- An existing news site’s data could not be reused: its terms forbid it, so we collect from original sources
- A custom font kept missing the mark: we switched to the free-for-commercial-use DingTalk JinBuTi
Same goal, different method. Tell the AI which road is closed and it will find another.
Step 5: write the decisions down
Later on it is easy to forget early rules. I had the AI record every decision in project memory: which logo is approved, that the brand font is only for headings, that scores stay off the site. Before changing anything, it reads those rules first.
Summary
| You | The AI |
|---|---|
| Say what you want and for whom | Propose options, pick the tech |
| Choose between options | Write code, fix bugs |
| Check previews, say what is wrong | Find the cause, fix it |
| Set the rules | Remember the rules |
Not knowing how to code is not the problem. Not knowing what you want, or not reviewing the result, is.