These are my notes from implementing Movie Magic using Claude, an AI-powered development assistant.
Before diving into details, it's crucial to introduce an important feature of Claude called Artifacts. Launched in June 2024 as part of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, artifacts are standalone pieces of content that Claude can share in a separate window from the main conversation. These can include documents, code snippets, HTML pages, and React components, providing a powerful tool for developers. Here's a screenshot from my session with Claude showing an artifact containing a React component.
A key advantage of artifacts is the ability to iterate on their content directly. You can ask Claude to modify an artifact, and the updates will appear in real-time within the artifact window. This feature streamlines the process of refining and developing ideas or code.
Moreover, Claude can execute certain types of artifacts, offering a preview of the result. For instance, it can render HTML pages or React Single Page Applications (SPAs). Below is an example of a Movie Magic landing page created as a React SPA:
It's worth noting, however, that there are limitations to this feature. Claude was not able to render my more complex movies page generated as a Next.js app with multiple components.
The development process began with a series of prompts to Claude, guiding it through the creation of the Movie Magic app. Here's a summary of the prompts. You can review a detailed transcript here. However, note that it is cut off due to Claude's size limitations.
"Give me a detailed description of what's in this wireframe."
Claude demonstrated a thorough understanding of the layout, breaking it down into four main sections: header, main content, movie list, and movie entry details.
I then asked Claude to reorganize its breakdown into my preferred structure:
"Modify your breakdown to follow the this structure:
- Header: ...
- Toolbar: ...
- Movie List: ..."
Claude adapted its breakdown accordingly, showcasing its flexibility.
Through a series of follow-up prompts, I refined the requirements:
- Change "Poster placeholder (square)" to "Poster placeholder (aspect ratio of 2/3)
- Add the following height specifications for each section ...
- Add the following specs for column widths ...
- Change the name of the "Number" column to "Rank". It represents the rank of the movie based on audience votes.
- Gap between movie list columns should be 12px. Also the rank column should be right justified.
- The default mode for the app should be dark mode
- Using the above breakdown as requirements, implement the Movie Magic app using
the following tech stack:
- TypeScript
- Next.js (be sure to use the App Router, not the old Page Router)
- Tailwind CSS
- shadcn/ui
The resulting code was impressively well-structured and modular, demonstrating Claude's strong grasp of Next.js, Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui. The generated code was fairly close to how a human would code.
After Claude generated the initial codebase, I performed two main iterations:
I transferred Claude's code to my repository and, after minor cleanup, successfully ran the app. The result was remarkably close to my manual implementation:
With some UI cleanup and fine-tuning, I achieved a final implementation that matched my manual version exactly:
See this commit for the changes involved. Based on the complexity of the design, and the specificity of my prompts the changes are indeed very reasonable. This highlights the quality of Claude's initial output.
It's important to note, however, that this achievement primarily addresses the visual aspects of the application. The functional elements, such as data fetching from a server and implementing working filters, remain to be developed. I chose to stop here, as I had already understood Claude's capabilities in frontend development.
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Comprehensive Understanding: Claude exhibited an impressive ability to interpret and break down the hand-sketched wireframe into detailed components.
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Adaptability: Claude quickly adapted to changing requirements and specifications throughout the development process.
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Technical Proficiency: Claude demonstrated a strong grasp of my preferred tech stack, producing well-structured code that closely resembled human-written quality.
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Modular Code: The generated code was well-organized and modular, enhancing readability and maintainability.
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Artifacts Feature: The ability to generate and iterate on standalone content proved to be a powerful feature, streamlining the development workflow.
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Rendering Limitations: Claude was not able to render the generated Movie Magic application due to current limitations. This capability would have allowed quicker iterations to arrive at desired outcome faster.
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Minor Inaccuracies: While Claude's implementation was very close to the desired outcome, it still required some manual adjustments to perfectly match the intended design.
Claude's ability to rapidly translate a hand-drawn wireframe into a functional application, with only minor manual adjustments needed, is truly impressive. It understands both design requirements and technical implementation, producing code that closely matches human-developed solutions. The artifact feature, in particular, proves to be a powerful tool for iterative development and prototyping.
While Claude currently has limitations in rendering complex multi-component applications, overcoming this constraint would enable even faster iterations and quicker achievement of desired outcomes. The ideal workflow is to remain in a single environment from start to finish.