I get why
you stay on Claude Code
until 2 in the morning.
My wife Shirley is a client account manager in insurance. She asked me for a hand a week ago. Here's what we built together, and what it taught me about Claude Code.
The story in three lines
- Shirley, my wife, is a client account manager in insurance. She had a 40-page Word file she could no longer use in meetings.
- I'm not a developer. In three evenings in front of Netflix, I built a standalone tool with Claude Code that shows the right script based on each prospect's profile.
- The next morning, she was using it in meetings. That evening, she texted me: "I get why you stay on Claude Code until 2 in the morning."
"Can you help me?"
One evening Shirley pulls out her Mac and shows me her Word file. Around forty pages. Opening scripts, personas by age bracket, pitches by product, 2026 prices, common objections with their answers, statutory rules by profession. She built this document all by herself, module by module, over the weeks.
The problem: she never actually uses this file in meetings. Too long, too dense, impossible to find the right passage when the prospect asks a specific question. The result — she keeps it all in her head, she improvises every meeting, and she knows she could sell better if she had a tool to guide her.
Her job in insurance: meeting prospects and clients (public-sector workers, military personnel, hospital staff, the self-employed) and offering them the right insurance policies based on their profile. Insurance is a business where the details matter. A homeowner with a mortgage and no death benefit — that's a gap. A young family with no accident cover — that's a gap. Shirley knows all these gaps. Her Word file mentions them. But in a meeting, there's no way to string them all together.
She says to me: "Can you help me?"
I tell her: "Let me take a look tonight."
What was really in her Word.
I spend a first hour reading her file to understand the business logic.
In reality, it isn't one file. It's about twenty Word documents she'd piled up: a personas module, a products module, an objections module, a long-script module, a short-script module, appendices by product (Auto, Home, Health, Accidental Injury cover, Legal Protection), summaries by government department for statutory benefits.
Her real need wasn't a cleaner document. Her need was a tool that would show her the right script matched to the right prospect, at the right moment. With the right objections at her fingertips. And the right prices in force.
It was an interface problem, not a content problem.
Here's what the tool looks like today:
Why Claude Code and not something else.
I could have told her "use ChatGPT, paste in your prospect's profile and ask it for a script." But Shirley wanted a tool of her own, usable offline, without depending on an internet connection in an office where the wifi is flaky. And above all, a tool that keeps all her business rules: the exact prices, the age limits for product eligibility, the fine print of statutory benefits by public-sector role.
Claude Code was the right door. Because Claude Code can read all the Word files in one go, understand the structure, and propose a full application architecture (in plain terms: the plan of every screen and the logic that ties them together). That's what I couldn't do on my own.
Let me be clear: I'm not a developer. I've never taken a programming class. I know what a variable is because I've read a few articles. But I know how to state a problem clearly, and Claude Code does the rest. If you want to understand my method after six months of daily use, I laid it all out in Claude Code after 6 months, from a non-dev's point of view.
The three Netflix evenings.
Here's how it really went, no sugarcoating.
Evening 1 · Tuesday · Understand and structure
I drop Shirley's 28 Word documents into a folder. I launch Claude Code inside that folder and tell it: "Read everything. Give me a summary of what Shirley has built. Propose an architecture to turn all of this into a sales-support tool that's usable in meetings."
Claude Code takes four minutes to read every document. It hands me a twelve-screen plan. I reply: "Too complex for a meeting. Fit it all onto a single page that adapts based on the profile I enter."
It reworks the plan. I sign off. We start building.
Evening 2 · Wednesday · The data and the interface
I ask it to extract all the factual data from the Word files: the eleven products in her catalog with their pitch, base price and options. The ten job profiles with their statutory specifics. The forty-five recurring objections.
I hit a real snag: her company publishes its General Terms as PDFs, but the site is protected by an anti-bot system called DataDome. No way to grab the files automatically. I download them by hand, one by one. Twelve PDFs. Claude Code reads them and pulls out the age limits for subscription, the special clauses, the important exclusions.
By the end of the evening, the tool shows the right pitch for the right profile. The interface is rough, but the logic works.
Evening 3 · Thursday · The features that change everything
The features I want to add — Shirley dictates them to me while she watches me build. "If the prospect is a homeowner with a mortgage and has no death benefit, throw up a red alert. If it's a service member with no accident cover, same thing. If the reason for the meeting is a new baby, push the accident cover, health and family benefit to the top."
For each rule she gives me, I hand it to Claude Code in plain language. It implements it (in other words: it translates it into code that works). We test it together. We adjust.
By midnight, the tool automatically detects six critical rules and seven watch-out rules. It filters products based on the prospect's age (because a retirement savings plan is strictly 18–70). It generates a different opening script depending on the reason for the meeting (twelve reasons covered). It offers responses to forty-five common objections. It suggests an upsell on seven products when the prospect already holds a policy with her.
The next day in a meeting.
Friday morning, Shirley heads out to a meeting with her Mac. She opens the tool, enters her first prospect's profile — a 52-year-old local-government worker, married, two kids, a homeowner with a mortgage still running. The tool instantly shows:
- A red alert: "Homeowner + mortgage + no death benefit → offer Family Benefit"
- The opening script tailored to the "annual review" reason
- The products to offer in order, with the exact price and a pitch tailored to a local-government worker
- The likely objections and their answers
She runs her meeting. The prospect signs up for a Family Benefit and a Legal Protection.
The sentence.
That evening, she texts me.
"Honey, your tool is amazing. I did three meetings with it, I feel ten times more prepared. I get why you stay on Claude Code until 2 in the morning."
It's the first time she's said that to me. Ever since I started spending my evenings building my own tools with Claude Code, I often felt like she saw it as some geeky obsession. And there, in three evenings, she'd just touched on why this tool fascinates me.
Claude Code isn't a tool reserved for developers. It's a tool that lets you turn a business problem into a concrete solution. If you can describe your problem clearly, you can build the tool.
What it means for you.
If you're reading this article and thinking "I'll never manage it, I'm not a developer," I understand. I thought the same thing two years ago.
Three lessons I take away from this week with Shirley:
You already have the hard part: a concrete problem
Shirley didn't set out to "learn AI." She had a Word file that couldn't keep up in meetings. Your Word file might be an Excel spreadsheet for tracking clients, a folder of product sheets, an onboarding process that takes three hours for every new hire. That concrete problem is your way in.
You don't have to drop everything
Three evenings in front of Netflix. It's not a sacrifice, it's a gradual shift. You do 90 minutes an evening for a week and you've got a usable tool. That's more effective than three months watching tutorials without ever building anything.
Claude Code is your collaborator, not your tool
I don't know how to code. But I know how to state a problem. Claude Code knows how to translate that into working code. The rare skill in this duo isn't knowing how to type JavaScript (the language that makes web pages run) — it's knowing how to phrase precisely what you want.
If this making-of logic interests you, I've also documented the We dropped Calendly and Letsignit project, where we replaced two paid SaaS tools with an in-house Claude Code tool, and the Superpowers for Claude Code ecosystem, which adds sub-agents to go further than the single-agent mode.
For the curious.
A few numbers on the tool built with Shirley:
- A single standalone HTML file, works offline with a double-click
- 28 Word documents digested, 12 official PDFs analyzed, 60 web pages read
- 11 products from her catalog covered, 10 job profiles, 45 objections on file
- 6 red-alert rules, 7 orange watch-out rules
- 12 meeting reasons that adapt the opening and the product priority
- Automatic filtering by the prospect's age, based on the official General Terms
The tool stays private — the prices and sales pitches of her company aren't meant to be public. But the method, that I'm happy to share.
The stack, plainly : a single standalone HTML file that bundles everything (data, rules, interface). No framework, no database, no server. For a more ambitious project that would need a backend or a public deployment, I'd have gone with Vercel for hosting (€5 a month), Zod to validate inputs on the server side, and the Anthropic API for the model calls. But as long as you can stay in pure HTML, do it: zero maintenance, zero dependencies, it'll still run in ten years.
And you, what's your Word file?
If you've got a document you use every day and can't manage to use at the exact moment you need it — a sales guide, a process, a catalog, an FAQ, a manual — I'm curious to know what it is.
Reply to this email with your file. I read everything, I'll share my ideas. I can't promise anything, but I often find some leads.
FAQ building with Claude Code.
How long does it take to build a similar tool?
For Shirley's tool: three two-hour evenings, so about six hours over a week in front of Netflix. Count on eight to twelve hours instead if you're starting from scratch, the time it takes to get comfortable with Claude Code and learn how to phrase your requests. The key factor isn't technical complexity but how clearly you describe your business problem.
Do you need to be a developer to do the same?
No. I'm not a dev, I've never taken a programming class. Claude Code reads the instructions you give it in plain language, proposes an architecture, writes the code, runs it. The real prerequisite is being able to state a problem clearly and being willing to iterate several times until you get the result you want.
What does Claude Code Max cost on this kind of project?
Anthropic's Claude Code Max plan is $100 or $200 a month depending on the quota tier. For a project like Shirley's (6 hours), the monthly quota included is more than enough. If you pay per use through the Claude API (Sonnet at $3 per million input tokens), count on $5 to $15 to build this kind of tool.
How does Shirley use it in meetings?
She opens the tool on her Mac before the meeting and enters the prospect's profile (age, professional status, family situation, homeowner or renter, reason). The tool instantly shows the prioritized alerts (red for critical, orange for watch out), the opening script tailored to the reason, the products to offer in order with prices and pitches, and the likely objections with prepared responses. She tells me she feels ten times better prepared.
What OS does the tool run on?
It's a standalone HTML file that works on any computer with a double-click: Mac, Windows PC, Linux. No install required, no dependencies, no internet connection needed. The tool runs on Shirley's Mac in a meeting even when the office wifi is flaky. All the data and business rules are baked into the file.
How does Claude Code read a PDF or Word file?
Claude Code has built-in file-reading tools. It calls a reading tool that extracts the content, then sends that content to the Claude model for analysis. For Shirley's 28 Word documents, it took four minutes to read everything, summarize it and propose an architecture. For the PDFs, it's the same. The only headache was DataDome, which blocked the automatic download from the employer's website.
What if the tool crashes during a meeting?
Since the tool is a standalone HTML file that runs locally, it doesn't crash because of a connection or a server. If a business rule is written wrong or a piece of data is out of date (a price has changed, a new product), you reopen Claude Code, point it at the file, describe the problem in plain language, and it proposes the fix. Count on 10 to 30 minutes for a simple fix.
Why Claude Code and not ChatGPT?
ChatGPT answers in a chat window. Claude Code writes, reads and runs code directly on your computer. For Shirley, I needed a tool that could digest 28 Word docs + 12 PDFs + 60 web pages and produce a standalone HTML file. ChatGPT would have meant manual copy-pasting at every step. Claude Code works inside the folder, reads everything, structures it, codes and tests without you stepping in.
What are the risks of building with Claude Code when you're not a dev?
Three risks. One, generated code that works on the surface but hides subtle bugs — which is why it matters to test the real user journey, not just check that it compiles. Two, third-party dependencies or libraries that Claude installs without you understanding what they do — favor tools that stay in pure HTML whenever you can. Three, the temptation to keep asking for more and more features without validating — cut it short, validate each building block before the next.
Can you share the code of Shirley's tool?
No. The prices and sales pitches of Shirley's employer aren't meant to be public, and the brand name has been anonymized for this article. But the full method is shared right here — read the business sources, propose an architecture, extract the data, dictate the business rules in plain language, and have Claude Code implement them. You can replay it on your own Word file.
Spotted a mistake?
An outdated fact, a number that's changed, a stale source? Write to me at sagnier.jeremy@gmail.com · I fix it within 48h max and I note the update date at the top of the article. Field feedback is worth a thousand times more than the articles — I read everything, I reply.
Shall we keep going?
I test AI for real and I share what works, no jargon, no hype. If this article helped you, the easiest way to not miss anything is my Friday letter. And if you have a question or a doubt: reply to me, I read everything.