Faster Than You Think: Part 2
Be the Asteroid
A case in point: this website — and how Claude hit our agency vendor like an asteroid.
Six weeks ago, Liz and I retained a UK-based design & development agency. While demanding, we were ideal clients (so we all think). Before kickoff we shared the copy, the logo, and a fully formed design system. Their mandate was straightforward: design and development. Ideally in a month.
A month and a week later, we were still circulating homepage comps in Figma.
I’ve experimented with most of the LLMs — technical tasks, non-technical tasks, large and small. As recently as six months ago, my bias was simple: I’d rather pay a professional than wrestle with the tools myself when it comes to coding.
A nerd friend and heretofore LLM skeptic had been urging me to spend time with Anthropic’s newest release since it launched. So on the afternoon of February 16th, I decided to dip my toes into Claude Opus 4.6. The goal was modest: push the homepage forward with a clickable prototype.
I fed Claude our design system, homepage copy, and a project brief. Boom.
As I was about to ship the results to our agency, log out, and sit down for dinner, Claude asked whether I wanted to complete the rest of the site. Within hours, I had roughly 80% of what you’re looking at now.
It went into production that night.
We fired the agency in the morning.
AI didn’t need to integrate into the agency’s workflow. It didn’t need a migration plan. It operated at the human layer — on my side of the monitor — and collapsed a six-week project into an evening.
If you’re evaluating AI partners or wondering how to structure an AI implementation, our guide to selecting an AI development partner covers what to look for.
Be the rock, not the dinosaurs.
Photo by Unsplash