A Complete Beginner Bossing Around an Expert

Claude built a hair simulation app for me.

It seemed like it had been working really hard on it, but when I looked at the project, there was only a single file: index.html.

“This is an app?”

Since I knew absolutely nothing about software development, I had no choice but to ask about every single step.

Claude showed me how to upload the project to GitHub. Apparently I had created an account years ago while trying to learn programming, although I barely remembered doing it.

After uploading the repository, Claude told me to wait about two minutes and then open the link on my phone.

Finally, the wait was over.

When I opened the page, I saw four views: front, left, right, and back. Just as I had requested, there was also a camera button for taking photos.

I switched to selfie mode and slowly turned my head to capture the front and side views. When it came to the back view, I had no idea how to photograph it, so I simply took another front-facing picture.

It was only a prototype, after all.

Once all four photos were uploaded, a control panel appeared for each view. There were sliders for adjusting hair length, volume, and other settings.

I dragged the length slider, and the hair actually became longer. Sliding it back made it shorter again.

I hadn’t written a single line of code myself, but it was fascinating to watch.

what software development feels like

Of course, the hair didn’t actually look right.

Instead of covering my whole head, it looked like a clump of hair sitting on only the upper half of it.

I captured a screenshot and uploaded it to Claude.

Claude immediately started explaining what had gone wrong, mentioning various libraries, rendering techniques, and implementation details. Honestly, I couldn’t even bring myself to read most of it.

Then it quietly fixed the problem by itself and handed me a new file.

From that point on, the process simply repeated itself.