Software for One

BLUF - I vibecoded(ish) a site called Aesthete that collects nearly 200 “aesthetically satisfying” brands and displays them in (what I hope is) an aesthetically satisfying way.

Last week I was looking for a few gifts, and so I asked Claude to help me out with ideas of brands that are like some of the brands I like and was thinking about in the moment: “What other design companies would like if I like teenage engineering craighill eames and ghostly gimme links.” (Period added for posterity.)

It came back with a nice list to get started with:

From Research Report to Product

But I wasn’t satisfied, so I asked it to come back with a fully comprehensive, deep research report. The nearly-3,000-word writeup was great, but a wholly unsatisfying way to explore a world of highly aesthetic products. (I published the whole thing to the Aesthete site if you want to read it.) And so, I did what any self-respecting nerd would do and fired up Claude Code and let it rip. I had a few basic requirements that I gave it:

1. Typescript/NextJS/Tailwind/ShadCN: If given the choice, this is where I start. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but most importantly, I believe that when the goal is to get building, whatever set of tools feels most comfortable and will get out of the way most quickly is the best set of tools.
2. Local Only: I really didn’t want to deal with any databases, keys, or anything like that. Partly because it’s another level of complication and partly because of the next requirement …
3. Fast: In a particular corner of web development, some people got very excited about the McMaster-Carr website a few months ago. So excited, in fact, that someone created a NextMaster repo that tried to replicate the general aesthetic and approach on top of Next.js.

The Skill-to-Code Pipeline

With a bit of basic scaffolding in place, I got to work. Step one was to get the data. On the upcoming episode of Forward Deployed, I talk a bit about a pattern I’ve been noticing a lot in my own behavior. Let’s call it the skill to code pipeline. Basically, I use a Claude Code skill to write out the scaffolding of a workflow. Particularly with a problem like this, where I’m not even sure exactly what data I want, not having to jump straight to code is pretty nice. Then, as I understand what I want more and more, I split out bits and pieces of the skill into scripts that can be run as part of it. It’s a great way to move from probabilistic to deterministic space as ideas harden.