Notes on building software for small businesses.
Organized my Claude Code projects so each client has a top-level folder with shared docs and skills that knows how to work with all the subdirectories. No more figuring out where to start on a new feature. The overhead of getting organized is paying off fast.
Running /insights monthly in Claude Code is starting to pay off. Last month's recommendations are working, and this month flagged a gap in my written skills. Built a couple. Slow continuous improvement but it compounds.
Had manual phpMyAdmin SQL steps baked into my Claude Code instructions from an earlier era. Finally updated everything to reflect the migration file approach I've actually been using, plus got a runner written to track deploys and make rollbacks easier. Docs should match how you actually work.
Today I started thinking about how I can write MCP servers for my own data to help with Claude Code assisted development. For example a knowledge base, a credential store, a task manager accessible by the agent via MCP
Spent yesterday stuck in circles on a subscription feature pulling from four data sources, clear docs and all. Switched from Sonnet to Opus and made real progress within the hour. Lesson learned. Data layer's solid now, interface work is next.
Picked up a habit from a TikTok by GeelHadAGoodTime: end every Claude Code session by asking what it's least confident about, then what you're not realizing about the situation. Already caught issues before they became bugs.
I set up local copies of my database schemas on my VPS now with migration folders for tracking changes. Also updated all the project claude.md files instructions to track DB changes there. We will see if it actually happens!
Using Chrome DevTools MCP has been a huge unlock for Claude Code being able to make accurate and intelligent css and UI changes on my sites. It now feels a lot more easy and smooth like backend dev. I am also converting one Astro site to Tailwind which is going well and I think will help as well.
Im writing an initialization/bootstrap doc that I can put in an empty folder and with Claude code in vscode end up with hello world on the server. I use a lot of the same stock for many projects so having this part be repeatable will be helpful
Did a quick project today that pulled parcel data from state available GIS information and compared to publicly available property tax information. It was for a market sizing exercise for an ecological services company. It was quick to set up and get good data html export with Claude Code.
Made significant progress today in moving and refactoring my backend staff tools sites to a single app. subdomain with app level authentication. The all the pages are now API aware and also two store aware as we are adding a second retail location in the next couple of months.
I completed a suite of reports for the business owner that are populated directly from sales and inventory data and show revenue, profitability, operational health and customer satisfaction daily. I am now finishing hooking up email notifications so that a digest of this info is sent to them daily.
I am building out owner reporting for my retail business that so far gives a daily update (limited by my POS provider) on revenue, profitability and customer satisfaction. These are designed to give situational awareness and to drive decision making
I was running into a problem where Claude code stopped coming up with troubleshooting ideas and started blaming me for not deploying correctly. I kind of yelled at it showing frustration and it actually worked to get it to figure out the problem itself. Kind of strange but glad that's over with
hello world
Trying CODEX on a project and comparing my experience to Claude Code. CODEX can get stuck in a situation where there is no solution and we just have to abandon after wasting a lot of time in troubleshooting. Also it is much weaker in CSS and visual design.