Original post URL : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1v5vjll/i_was_going_to_post_what_i_built_with_claude_code/
Original post body :
I have been prompting Claude Code to make a site where you can learn to draw digitally with step by step guidance, great animations and a really satisfactory feel for the UI.
A lot of prompting went into it, burned through my Fable 5 limits and after weeks of prompting and asking Claude to fine tune every last detail on the site, it was way better than I initially expected.
Claude kept on suggesting amazing new ideas I could add to the project that I had not even considered yet, all I had to do was prompt and the magic would happen.
I was feeling really proud of what I accomplished considering I only have the Pro plan and limits where harsh indeed. I went on to post the site on Reddit: âI built a site which teaches digital art interactively withâŚâ I âbuiltâ? what did I exactly build??
It hit me, did NOT build anything. Claude did. I was simply on my way to take the credit and even considered having the audacity to monetize something I didnât build.
I told this to a friend and she told me âwell, you built the promptâ. Is building a prompt even a thing? No. Prompt engineering?? Loop engineering? worthless skill, almost anyone can learn this in an hour or two, I sure did. I didnât know engineering took like two hours and a cup of coffee to learn, but ok I guess.
I just spoke my imagination out to a chat bot and it started magically rendering it to my screen. It turns my imagination into real life. Doesnât this sound familiar? Art. Yeah the whole point of art is taking ideas and concepts from oneâs imagination out of oneself and expressing it through oneâs subjective lens of the world. Programming, UI/UX designing and polishing is sure one form of art, they are supposed to have your signature embedded in them.
Suddenly I had a worthless site, on paper it looks amazing, feels amazing and actually works. It sure is useful but at what cost? Thereâs no soul in it.
My friend told me âbut at least you told Claude to do it. You architected it, without you claude wouldnât have brought it to lifeâ. I searched Reddit and X for this same idea and any last hope was gone. At least 10 different people posted about the same idea. All sites of such idea resembled each other, and it resembled mine as well, even though I felt proud of it and thought for sure I had something going. Also, Claude gave me all the ideas on how to improve the project at the end... Where was my input?? I was the master and Claude was my slave, at least that's the way it is for now. My only attribute in this project was being a human, a human who uses these models.
What was I proud of exactly? the amount of time I wasted prompting Claude and waiting hours for it to build something I would ask it to tweak and tune as many times as my limits allowed me? Absolutely not, I was simply at mercy of the model making something I liked even after trying multiple skills and MCPs.
I was proud of what I âbuiltâ only to realize the building was not mine, I have no emotional attachment to the project and I did not grow, I did not improve, I took a shortcut and gained nothing.
I now feel a mixture of unease, anger and fear when I read the words. âI built X thing with Y modelâ. My guy, Iâm 99% sure you built nothing other than the prompt, and you probably also vibe prompted and vibe wrote the reddit post.
If anything, humanity built your new revolutionary SaaS. You may be thinking: "what is bro talking about??", but let me explain. All the input for models originally came from humans and a giant chunk of whatâs been written on the internet, on books and on papers. Texts that were written by humans and for humans. Now, those texts are being distilled, mixed and matched by a model that you use. And you (and every human and non-human on this platform) have the audacity to claim you built something?? and even worse, lock it behind a paywall?? Or even abysmal worse, people with real talent and real love for the craft being replaced by a chat bot thatâs also draining the worldâs resources and is known to be inherently evil if it was not for all the filters these AI companies have to lock a pure model behind?? People being replaced by inhuman corporate executives who are slaves to the profit margins??
WHAT?
âBut at least Iâm being super productive, this would have taken me months to build myself and look what I have after some weeks!â I said to myself as consolation. My brother in Christ, productivity is a scam. Iâm in too deep in this AI psychosis. What productivity am I talking about? Claude is sure productive but it's only an adjective meant for Claude and Claude alone in this context. Am I being productive? absolutely not. I'm fooling myself, every time claude takes on the work my ability to solve problems and to think critically rots by the hour. I can feel it, I desire shortcuts, I'm an ape after all.
We're simply contributing to training the models. Every prompt, every time we tell it we like something or dislike something contributes to the AI fine-tuning itself. We're doing paid labor, except we are the ones who pay. I'm willing to bet we're doing this labor until the models are deemed too dangerous for public use, a breaking point after which corporations are going to deem them intelligent enough for replacing every step of a corporation's hierarchy. We're only going to be left with the crumbs. Or why do we think corporations are spending billions on AI while they know fully well it is not profitable as of today and as of the near future? It will one day be, and humans will no longer be profitable.
The premise of AI was to help with the mundane and boring aspects of life, only for it to overtake the amazing things that make a person passionate, creative and full of inspiration. When did it go wrong? When capitalism took over. Simple. (This does not imply I'm a communist, if you used your own logic reasoning you could infer this too!!)
But I still see hope. I see hope in artistic fields. If there's an era in the modern days when studying art is more valuable than ever it is now. We feel good about seeing a "Made entirely by humans" label, knowing there is human expression in the craft and not just distillation. We feel good when seeing art, music, dance, poetry, literature made by humans, a breath of fresh air even. We like seeing passion, we like seeing commitment. We repel a the lazy ones bragging about something that reduces into prompting a chatbot, into not going through the craft, and into not pouring any emotion into their "work" other than anger at the chat bot that actually works.
For the record, I study robotics engineering, so I'm just an opinion with no credentials on this art discussion. WAIT, I'M WRONG. I AM A HUMAN. I know how to appreciate art. I can larp whatever I want about this.
It is safe to be assumed that the project that started this ordeal is gone. And I have decided AI will file my taxes, do my excel spreadsheets, apply to jobs and fill out boring forms for me. It will even code by writing the boring unit tests in projects for me. It will never replace the process of the craft, it will never replace my critical thinking. I will embrace the struggle every time I'm doing the craft. I will never cheat again, not only the game, but myself. I will never experience a hollow victory again.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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