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Everyone should be using Claude Code more

2025-10-14 21:03:49

👋 Hey there, I’m Lenny. Each week, I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. For more: Lennybot | Lenny’s Podcast | How I AI | Lenny’s Reads | Courses

Annual subscribers get a free year of 17 premium products: Devin, Lovable, Replit, Bolt, n8n, Wispr Flow, Descript, Linear, Gamma, Superhuman, Granola, Warp, Perplexity, Raycast, Magic Patterns, Mobbin, and ChatPRD (while supplies last). Subscribe now.

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Ever since my chat with Dan Shipper, I couldn’t stop thinking about his hot take that Claude Code was the most underrated AI tool for non-technical people. A few weeks ago, I finally started playing around with it, and holy sh*t, we’ve all been sleeping on Claude Code.

The key is to forget that it’s called Claude Code and instead think of it as Claude Local or Claude Agent. It’s essentially a super-intelligent AI running locally, able to do stuff directly on your computer—from organizing your files and folders to enhancing image quality, brainstorming domain names, summarizing customer calls, creating Linear tickets, and, as you’ll see below, so much more.

Since it’s running locally, it can handle huge files, run much longer than the cloud-based Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini chatbots, and it’s fast and versatile. Claude Code is basically Claude with even more powers.

To inspire your own ideas, I’ve collected 50 of my favorite and most creative ways non-technical people are using Claude Code in their work and life. This list includes my own favorite use cases, and the best examples y’all shared with me on X and LinkedIn of how you use Claude Code.

A huge thank-you to the more than 500 of you who shared your stories. 🙏

But first, let’s install Claude Code on your computer

  1. Open your Terminal app

    1. On a Mac, press Command (⌘) + Space, type “Terminal”, and hit Return

    2. In Windows, press Windows key + R, type “wt”, and press Enter

  2. Install Claude Code

    1. On a Mac, run this command: curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

    2. In Windows, run this command: irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

  3. Launch Claude Code: claude

If you run into any trouble, just ask your favorite chatbot for help. Or better yet, install Warp (free with your newsletter subscription!), which replaces your local terminal app and automagically solves any issues you encounter trying to install stuff like Claude Code. That’s how I solved the problems I ran into, and I highly recommend you do the same.

Five ways I’ve been using Claude Code this month

1. Clearing space on my computer

Prompt: “How can I clear some storage on my computer?” I then discuss my options.

2. Improving the image quality of screenshots

Prompt: “Improve the image quality of [filename]”. I used this many times for the screenshots below.

3. Downloading YouTube videos

Prompt: “Download this YouTube video: [URL]”. Then I ignored all the warnings 🤫

4. Downloading all of the images embedded inside a Google Doc

Prompt: “Download all of the images in high-res from this Google Doc: [URL]”. This paired well with item #2.

5. Picking a random raffle winner from a Google Sheet of submissions

Prompt: “Pick a random row from this Google Sheet to select a winner for a giveaway.” I used this for a recent Sora 2 giveaway in our subscriber Slack community.

50 creative ways non-technical people are using Claude Code

Out of the over 500 ideas you shared with me on X and LinkedIn, here are my favorites (with screenshots):

1. Brainstorming domain names, from Ben Aiad

“Just describe your project, and it’ll suggest creative options across multiple TLDs (.com, .io, .dev, etc.) while verifying what’s actually available to register.”

2. Finding high-quality leads, from Jeff Lindquist

“I literally just typed: look at what I’m building and identify the top 5 companies in my area that would be good for a pilot for this. Then I go to LinkedIn and message them. If it’s not clear, I do this in the source directory of the code of my app so the first thing it does is figure out what it is that I’m building.”

3. Same as above, but instead, scraping GitHub repos, from Sergei Zotov

“My product masks sensitive data in code assistant queries. So Claude Code proposed the idea to find potential leads in the GitHub repos, by searching for the actual sensitive values in them (and whether in the repo we see some evidence of using coding agents). This was actually genius—not only does it filter out a lot of companies, but it also provides instant value to the lead. Here’s what it came up with: repos list, priority score, even LinkedIn URL.”

4. Noticing when you’re avoiding conflict, from Dan Shipper

“I download all of my meeting recordings, put them in a folder, and ask Claude Code to tell me all of the times I’ve subtly avoided conflict.”

Pro tip: Use Granola (first year free!), and ask Claude Code how to download your meeting notes into a folder.

5. Figuring out why your computer is running slow, from Anthony Roux

“I sometimes use Claude Code for system diagnostics when my Mac slows down.

I use it to check load averages, memory pressure, disk space, stuck processes, and swap activity, then it dives deeper to find what’s actually causing issues. It can calculate cache sizes, check Docker usage, find Time Machine snapshots eating space, etc.

It is usually faster and more user-friendly than running all the commands and trying to extract the right numbers myself. It can explain what the analyses mean and why they matter, and suggests fixes with the actual commands while assessing the risk of running each of them.”

6. Cleaning up messy invoice files, from Martin Merschroth

“I use Claude Code to sort my invoices for taxes. It reads each file in a messy folder, renames it to ‘YYYY-MM-DD Vendor - Invoice - ProductOrService.pdf’, and moves it into the right folder.”

7. Organizing files and folders across your computer, from Justin Dielmann

“For me, staying organized is a huge chore. The cognitive load of figuring out where to store files and keeping everything clean and up to date was insane. My hack: I run Claude Code from my home directory and use it as my personal organization assistant. I’ll ask it things like:

  1. ‘Find duplicate files and help me decide which to keep’

  2. ‘Organize these downloads into proper folders’

  3. ‘Review my directory structure and suggest improvements’

  4. ‘Find old files I probably don’t need anymore’

It’s like having a thoughtful assistant who actually understands context and can make smart decisions about file organization. Game changer for reducing mental clutter.”

8. Building a slide for your child, from John Conneely

“I built my own DIY subagent last week to help me build a slide tower for my son 😀”

The finished product:

9. Organizing scattered thoughts, from Helen Lee Kupp

“I’m a mom who voice-records ideas during morning stroller walks, not a developer. The terminal interface? Overwhelming at first. The word ‘Code’ . . . but what if I don’t have a ‘coding project’? After 3 weeks of struggling to organize my scattered thoughts, I tried it anyway. And discovered something wild: Claude Code isn’t about coding at all. It’s about having an AI that manages your entire process—whatever the goal might be.

How I use it:

→ Fed it rambling voice notes from stroller walks
→ It organized them into coherent research themes
→ Wrote a full article in my exact voice (pulled from my own examples!)
→ Created LinkedIn versions automatically (this post is one of them!)
→ Everything saved and ready to publish (including grabbing a screenshot of the template repository that I’m adding here!)” [Here’s the repo]

9. Writing a job description, from Justin Bleuel

“I used it to generate a full job description, hiring plan, interview plan, and rubric for a new role at Clay.

I made a folder with internal Notions of our hiring material for PMs, added similar role JDs from other companies, then in planning mode asked to generate the same collateral for this new role.”

11. Synthesizing transcripts of calls with customers, from Derek DeHart

“My current Claude Code jam is synthesizing transcripts of calls with customers to compile evidence that supports or invalidates a running tally of assumptions/requirements/hypotheses/whatever. Given MCPs to interact with other tools in our productivity stack—Fireflies, Linear, Notion, etc.—it’s become my hub for ongoing product research and development.”

12. Improving your writing, from Teresa Torres

“I now write all of my content with Claude Code in VS Code. We iterate on an outline, it helps me improve the hook, it conducts research for me and adds citations to my outline, and it reviews and gives feedback on each section as I write. It has completely changed the way I write.” [Much more on Teresa’s process here]

13. Working with audio files, from Dan Heller

“I’m working with multiple audio files. I use Claude Code to manipulate them, convert the sample rates, rename them, and translate them from Portuguese to English.”

14. Creating “self-driving” documentation, from James Pember

“The most interesting use case we’re playing with is something I call ‘self-driving documentation.’ Basically, how can we give an Agent the responsibility of figuring out how/where our documentation can be better and more comprehensive. We’ve been experimenting with using Claude Code together with Playwright to automatically explore our software independently, identify knowledge gaps in our documentation, and then create those changes itself. Very promising!” [More here]

15. Creating a self-improving feedback loop, from Gang Rui

“I created a slash command that analyzes my journal entries + Git commits (for the past 7 days; usually I use this weekly), spots gaps between what I said vs. did, and suggests system improvements. Like having a COO that learns from my patterns.”

16. Getting inspiration from competitors’ ads, from Sumant Subrahmanya

“Extract ads from competitors to find the problem, use case, or copy/asset that’s working for them, and then repurpose it for my ads. Claude Code built out these scripts that would screen-grab all ads running on the ad library, and it’s super cool to watch it navigate to the browser and grab all screenshots in an almost ‘agentic’ way.”

17. Automatically creating changelogs, from Manik Aggarwal

“I use Claude Code to create user-facing changelogs. I ask Claude Code to scan all commits from a specific time period, then pull in my changelog guidelines. It drafts a clean, structured changelog that usually needs few quick edits. What earlier took me hours is now down to 10–15 minutes. Most of our changelog output is created with Claude Code, with a final polish done by me.”

18. Building presentations, from Hank Yeomans

“All my slide work is done in Claude Code as HTML, then imported into PPT.

First, I make a couple of slides that I need with some simple but well-prompted data, while also prompting to create them as html pages. Otherwise they might get created as SVGs or ‘slop AI images.’ I work with Claude Code making any adjustments.

When I get it the way I want it, I ask Claude Code to make a template that I can use to ensure all future slides added are the same format, branding, look, and feel.

This template becomes an .md file (I’ve put a snippet of that file below). With html you can be extremely specific—‘change this wording to say that’—and then you can use an MCP to view the ‘slides’ to show what you mean as well for greater context. With this, I have added several more slides as well as changed others using the template to keep things the same. Yes, hallucinations happen, that has to be accepted going in. Someone who knows what they want and can articulate what they want will not have too much trouble.

When I want to put these into PPT, I just do well-thought-out screenshots. But honestly, If I’m using these for a customer or some presentation, I just open a browser and I have ‘previous’ and ‘next’ buttons built into them so that I can click through. Claude Code creates these as interactive html ‘slides’ so they react to the mouse.”

19. Doing social media research, from Danny Shmueli

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Everyone should be using Claude Code more

2025-10-14 17:02:13

If you’re a premium subscriber

Add the private feed to your podcast app at add.lennysreads.com

Claude Code isn’t just for developers - it’s actually one of the most underrated AI tools for non-technical people.

In this episode, I share 50 ways to use it: decluttering your hard drive, enhancing images, synthesizing customer calls, drafting presentations, and more, all collected from 500+ stories shared by this community. If you’ve been sleeping on Claude Code, then this episode is your wake-up call.

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In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Exactly how to install and launch Claude Code on Mac and Windows

  • Five ways I used it this month

  • 45 creative non-technical workflows, from file organization, to lead discovery, roadmap support, and social listening

  • Ten more detailed advanced Claude Code use cases

Listen now: YouTube | Apple | Spotify

References:

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Evals, error analysis, and better prompts: A systematic approach to improving your AI products | Hamel Husain (ML engineer)

2025-10-13 19:03:43

Watch or listen now:
YouTube // Spotify // Apple

Brought to you by:

GoFundMe Giving Funds—One account. Zero hassle.

Persona—Trusted identity verification for any use case


Hamel Husain, an AI consultant and educator, shares his systematic approach to improving AI product quality through error analysis, evaluation frameworks, and prompt engineering. In this episode, he demonstrates how product teams can move beyond “vibe checking” their AI systems to implement data-driven quality improvement processes that identify and fix the most common errors. Using real examples from client work with Nurture Boss (an AI assistant for property managers), Hamel walks through practical techniques that product managers can implement immediately to dramatically improve their AI products.

What you’ll learn:

  1. A step-by-step error analysis framework that helps identify and categorize the most common AI failures in your product

  2. How to create custom annotation systems that make reviewing AI conversations faster and more insightful

  3. Why binary evaluations (pass/fail) are more useful than arbitrary quality scores for measuring AI performance

  4. Techniques for validating your LLM judges to ensure they align with human quality expectations

  5. A practical approach to prioritizing fixes based on frequency counting rather than intuition

  6. Why looking at real user conversations (not just ideal test cases) is critical for understanding AI product failures

  7. How to build a comprehensive quality system that spans from manual review to automated evaluation

Where to find Hamel Husain:

Website: https://hamel.dev/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HamelHusain

Course: https://maven.com/parlance-labs/evals

GitHub: https://github.com/hamelsmu

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Hamel Husain

(03:05) The fundamentals: why data analysis is critical for AI products

(06:58) Understanding traces and examining real user interactions

(13:35) Error analysis: a systematic approach to finding AI failures

(17:40) Creating custom annotation systems for faster review

(22:23) The impact of this process

(25:15) Different types of evaluations

(29:30) LLM-as-a-Judge

(33:58) Improving prompts and system instructions

(38:15) Analyzing agent workflows

(40:38) Hamel’s personal AI tools and workflows

(48:02) Lighting round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• Braintrust: https://www.braintrust.dev/docs/start

• Phoenix: https://phoenix.arize.com/

• AI Studio: https://aistudio.google.com/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/

Other references:

• Who Validates the Validators? Aligning LLM-Assisted Evaluation of LLM Outputs with Human Preferences: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3654777.3676450

• Nurture Boss: https://nurtureboss.io

• Rechat: https://rechat.com/

• Your AI Product Needs Evals: https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/evals/

• A Field Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products: https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/field-guide/

• Creating a LLM-as-a-Judge That Drives Business Results: https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/llm-judge/

• Lenny’s List on Maven: https://maven.com/lenny

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

🧠 Community Wisdom: Best path to becoming a mid-level PM, vibe coding a simple game, growth strategy for early-stage company, getting better at AI, and more

2025-10-12 00:02:57

👋 Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of ✨ Community Wisdom ✨ a subscriber-only email, delivered every Saturday, highlighting the most helpful conversations in our members-only Slack community.

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Inside Google's AI turnaround: The rise of AI Mode, strategy behind AI Overviews, and their vision for AI-powered search | Robby Stein (VP of Product, Google Search)

2025-10-11 07:11:27

Robby Stein is VP of Product at Google, where he oversees the core products of Google Search—including the new AI Overviews, AI Mode, search ranking, Google Lens, and more. Previously, he led consumer products at Instagram, where he and his teams built Stories, Reels, Close Friends, and other key features now used by billions.

What you’ll learn:

  1. Why Google’s AI products are suddenly taking off after years of perceived stagnation [04:46]

  2. How AI is expanding Search rather than replacing it, contrary to what many predicted [06:08]

  3. The three core product principles that have helped Robby build multiple billion-user products [51:35]

  4. Inside Instagram’s decision to build its own version of Snapchat Stories [30:10]

  5. His mantra of “relentless improvement” [21:31]

  6. How Google developed AI Mode from concept to launch in just one year [43:39]

  7. Why most teams give up too early on potentially transformative products [26:52]

Brought to you by:

Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.

Jira Product Discovery—Confidence to build the right thing

Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows

Where to find Robby Stein:

• X: https://x.com/rmstein

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbystein/

Referenced:

• Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app

• Nano Banana: https://aistudio.google.com/models/gemini-2-5-flash-image

• Chat GPT: https://chatgpt.com/

• Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/

• Google Lens: https://lens.google/

• AI Google search: https://www.google.com/ai

• Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour (Reforge): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-chatgpt-will-be-the-next-big-growth-channel-brian-balfour

• Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell

• A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-4-step-framework-for-building-delightful-products

• Look broader, look closer, think younger: Tony Fadell speaks at TED2015: https://blog.ted.com/look-broader-look-closer-think-younger-tony-fadell-speaks-at-ted2015/

• Jobs to Be Done: https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/jobs-to-be-done/

• The ultimate guide to JTBD | Bob Moesta (co-creator of the framework): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-jtbd-bob-moesta

• Rinstagram or Finstagram? The curious duality of the modern Instagram user: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/26/rinstagram-finstagram-instagram-accounts

• V03: https://v03ai.com/

• Pirate GPT: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/silentmeditation/pirate-gpt/

The Bear on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bear-05eb6a8e-90ed-4947-8c0b-e6536cbddd5f

Dune on HBO Max: https://www.hbomax.com/movies/dune/e7dc7b3a-a494-4ef1-8107-f4308aa6bbf7

Top Gun: Maverick: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745960/

• Purple pillows: https://purple.com/pillows

• Avocado pillow: https://www.avocadogreenmattress.com/products/green-pillow

• Justin Bieber’s website: https://www.justinbiebermusic.com/

• Scooter Braun’s website: https://scooterbraun.com/

Recommended books:

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice: https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Against-Luck-Innovation-Customer/dp/0062435612

The Design of Everyday Things: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654

Aurora: https://www.amazon.com/Aurora-High-Stakes-Survival-Navigate-Darkness/dp/0062916475

Project Hail Mary: https://www.amazon.com/Project-Hail-Mary-Andy-Weir/dp/0593135202


Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.


My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

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First interview with Scale AI’s CEO: $14B Meta deal, what’s working in enterprise AI, and what frontier labs are building next | Jason Droege

2025-10-09 19:03:40

Jason Droege is the CEO of Scale AI, a company that provides foundational training data to every major AI lab. He previously co-founded Scour with Travis Kalanick and built Uber Eats from idea to $20 billion in revenue. In this conversation, Jason shares lessons from getting sued for $250 billion, discovering restaurant economics by weighing sandwich ingredients, and over 25 years of launching transformative technology businesses.

What you’ll learn:

  1. What actually happened with Meta’s $14 billion investment in Scale AI [10:27]

  2. Why AI models still need human experts to improve, and how that relationship is evolving [28:18]

  3. How AI models learn from experts building websites and debugging code [18:48]

  4. The business lessons from building Uber Eats from zero to $20 billion [41:43]

  5. Why most enterprise data is useless for AI models today [25:53]

  6. Why urgent daily problems beat super-valuable occasional problems when building products [46:03]

  7. How to think independently when building new products and businesses [48:19]

Brought to you by:

Merge—The fastest way to ship 220+ integrations

Figma Make—A prompt-to-code tool for making ideas real

Mercury—The art of simplified finances


Where to find Jason Droege:

• X: https://x.com/jdroege

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondroege/

Referenced:

• Travis Kalanick on X: https://x.com/travisk

• Scour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scour_Inc.

• Scale: https://scale.com/

• Alexandr Wang on X: https://x.com/alexandr_wang

• Why experts writing AI evals is creating the fastest-growing companies in history | Brendan Foody (CEO of Mercor): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/experts-writing-ai-evals-brendan-foody

• Brendan Foody’s post on X about knowledge work changing: https://x.com/BrendanFoody/status/1970163503702188048

• MIT Finds 95% of GenAI Pilots Fail Because Companies Avoid Friction: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonsnyder/2025/08/26/mit-finds-95-of-genai-pilots-fail-because-companies-avoid-friction/

• Uber Eats: https://www.ubereats.com/

• Stephen Chau on X: https://x.com/thestephenchau

• a16z Podcast: https://a16z.com/podcasts/a16z-podcast/

F1: The Movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16311594/

• V03: https://v03ai.com/

• Careers at Scale: https://scale.com/careers

Recommended books:

The Selfish Gene: https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152

The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth: https://www.amazon.com/Road-Less-Traveled-Timeless-Traditional/dp/0743243153/

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don’t: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996

Thinking, Fast and Slow: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.


My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

Read more