From nothing to built, in two hours

Yesterday I ran a clinic session for business owners to help them build what in marketing terms is known as a lead magnet but what the rest of us would call an online quiz.

They built fully functional web pages in two hours from literally nothing, from never having used Claude Code.

It was forking amazing. And loads of fun. How I imagine going to Build-a-Bear Workshop might be, if I'd ever been. Except the output's more functional.

Give Claude hands

Claude Code is Claude with hands. Same brain as the chat you already know, but instead of telling you how to build a web page, it builds the web page. And screenshots give it eyes. Paste one in and it can see exactly what you’re seeing.

Now I’m not necessarily an advocate of d*cking around and spending all day building random stuff in Claude Code.

In fact I was on a call last night and apparently I managed to give the host of the call a side eye. How do you give someone a side eye when you’re on video and everyone’s faces are in a random order? Somehow I managed it.

The host said they’d done a 22-hour session on Claude Code. I always say AI is an ingredient not a meal. 22 hours is excessive IMHO.

There will be so many things that you can be doing to drive your business, your career, your personal goals forward, and only a subset of them will you be suitable for using an AI tool for.

That’s not to say I’m going to rain on your parade. It’s absolutely amazing what you can build that’s completely bespoke to you and your organisation, your business, and the flexibility to try stuff out.

So, what did we do?

Gather context. Real documents: the actual offer, real testimonials, real examples they liked, their voice and brand guidelines. Good looks like: rich, specific, real material. Thin context gets you a generic quiz. This unglamorous bit matters more than the prompting.

Design the quiz. Get Claude to interview you and write up a one-page design doc before anything gets built. Good looks like: specific questions and outcomes, signed off before a line exists.

Build it. Design doc becomes a working page. Good looks like: a page that matches the doc, refined with screenshots until it’s right.

Ship it. Make it real. Good looks like: it’s actually live, the responses land somewhere, someone can book time, and you’ve tried to break it yourself before a stranger does.

It’s not a one-shot deal. You’ll still iterate to get it exactly right, but it’s a massive accelerator.

And we don’t build everything from scratch. No one needs to be vibe-coding payment infrastructure: just use Stripe (other payment providers are available). Likewise a hosting service like Vercel, a repo like GitHub. So don’t be overwhelmed if you have to sign up to the free tier of some supporting platforms.

Carla’s words

“I’m really familiar with Claude but had not used Code before so it blew my mind that we were able to go from start to ‘built’ in 2 hours, all thanks to Helen’s brilliant guidance. She’s great at explaining both what to do and also why you’re doing it, which is so useful. Helen’s calm and super fun to work with. Thank you so much for guiding through my first Coding caper Helen!”

That’s the not-a-Bear workshop: walk in with nothing, pick your parts, walk out with something that works.

Want to book in a “hackathon” where we do something similar with your team? It’s perfect for tapping into that back-to-school energy that September brings. Book a call to talk more: https://calendly.com/helen-dawson/discovery-call​

Till next time,

Helen

P.S. The latest episode of The Innovation Crowd is out: “Your Sales Proposals Are Probably Rubbish — Here’s the 7-Step Fix” with Sandie Essemann. Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1QsYgBvysMlokUrCrd0SyV