Building things is low-time-cost now, and so I think it’s important for me to remember that some value was created even though the time spent was very low. So here’s a quick list of things I’ve done with Claude Code over the last few weeks - a “tada” list:
- Electronics tinkering: Dusted off my Tessel, played with software-defined radio, breadboarded some Arduino stuff
- Websites: Overhauled this site, revived flax.ie with all the DNS and email faff, started a little self-study library site, updated various other personal sites
- Soundings app: Built a little GPS bathymetry PWA for surveying lakes - never to be used, but interesting to make something in an hour that would have taken me days to weeks
- Games: Half a dozen TIC-80 carts (a deck-builder, a 3D renderer, pixel-physics space invaders), plus an Aubrey-Maturin inspired crew management game (still and forever in development)
- Admin: built an invoice generator that pulls from my shorthand work logs, and a VAT return filer
- Misc: Music, some visualisations, life automation, plenty of stuff not even worth mentioning which just satisfied some curiosity
- Claude skills: Built a bunch of little skills to help with all of the above.
I like Claude Skills a lot - it means that I rarely have to know something longer than it will take to write a skill for it. For example, I’ve always struggled to retain the details of how to set up DNS for email. Now I only need to know what can be done, rather than how to do it - the “how” is now “ask Claude”.
One pattern I find myself using often is:
- I manage some service Foo via their website or whatever.
- I get claude to write a CLI + Claude Skill for the service instead.
- Now I manage service Foo using Claude and I can focus on my intent, not the mechanics of the service or its website.
I have done this for my DNS, my Email service (shout out to Purelymail), even booking courts at my tennis club.
I think one of the most interesting things about this new era of low-time-cost development is that you can get over the procrastination barrier MUCH faster than ever before and get straight into making, instead of convincing yourself out of the substantial time investment.