#177: 🤖 I’ve Been Using Claude Code for 25 Days.
Here’s What I’ve Built.
Hey friends,
I gave a talk at the HotColdClub in Lisbon last week titled “Altered States, Extended Lives” where I gave a recap of all the latest research linking psychedelics as longevity medicines.
Xo,
Nina
💬 In this note:
#177: 🤖i’ve Been Using Claude Code for 25 Days. Here’s What I’ve Built.
#177: 🤖 I’ve Been Using Claude Code for 25 Days. Here’s What I Built.
I attended a 4-hour AI intro class and that was all I needed to enter the future.
Now I want to tell you what happened over the next 25 days.
Using Claude Code has been a gift to my ADHD. For the first time in my life, I feel like I can put all the open tabs in my brain into ONETAB.
I can organize all of my work, visualize it in a way that makes sense, and actually execute on it instead of cycling through it at 2am.
If you have ADHD, get ready to supercharge your superpower.
While other AIs have been great to organize my thoughts… Claude Code takes it further. It lets you execute on all those ideas you’ve been hoarding.
I will admit that it is a fine balance between AI enhancing my ADHD superpower versus making my ADHD worse…but my thoughts on that are for another newsletter.
In 25 days, I launched:
Two cash-generating products (the Women’s Longevity Starter Kit and my proprietary Pitch Deck Analyzer
Rebuilt three websites
Built an interactive daily briefing dashboard that pulls my entire business pipeline in one command
Created tools for better LinkedIn outreach
Built tools for SEO optimization across the entire Nina’s Notes archive
Fed Claude my entire knowledgebase and now get ideas for Substack Notes & YouTube short scripts in my daily briefing dashboard
Built the full Longevity Day event website - with the program and speaker pages.
11 projects. 60 individual files and tools.
And the best part…I am not a developer.
I started on March 20th by taking Nick Sarafa’s LightSchool AI intro class. It was 4 hours long and that was enough to give me the tools to run wild.
Want to join his class?
He offers it in person here in Lisbon and also offers online classes - grab a spot here.
The product I tried to build a year ago and why it failed.
About a year ago I had an idea, take all the pitch deck feedback I’ve given to founders over the years, distill it into core principles and turn it into a product.
I did the first part. I fed transcripts into ChatGPT, extracted the principles, and built a markdown file.
I even tried to make a customGPT, the concept was solid.
But the output was inconsistent. It hallucinated.
The feedback didn’t feel reliable enough to charge money for.
The interface was awkward and I had no idea how to attach payment to it. So it just…sat there.
So when a founder sent me their deck, I would pop it into ChatGPT alongside my Pitch Deck Principles markdown file and ask for an analysis to test it.
Fast forward a year, and 25 days after opening terminal for the first time in ages. I rebuilt it.
I built the landing page, payment processing, PDF upload, AI analysis and PDF download - all of it…in about six hours (try it here: Pitch Deck Analyzer).
The idea didn’t change, but the infrastructure I could use to build it did.
What did I learn over the last 25 days?
Lesson 1: Get over your terminal anxiety.
Claude Code in the terminal is 100x better than Claude Chat or Claude Cowork.
Those interfaces exist for people who want a nice UX and who are scared of the terminal. I was one of those people, and thank god I’m not anymore.
I currently have five terminal windows open at once, different projects running in parallel, and I genuinely love it.
There’s something about the terminal that strips away the pretty and just lets you build.
(However…you can even make your terminal prettier by simply telling Claude - “make my terminal prettier”. It’s ridiculous.)
With Claude Code, I am building real, functional python scripts that live on my computer and run without Claude afterward.
With those scripts, you’re not just getting text replies from Claude, you are creating infrastructure. Personalized tools that work for your workflows.
No biggie guys, I’m just a junior developer over here now.
And it’s a good feeling.
Lesson 2: Connect Everything.
I know, I know…what about data privacy. (AHHH DER DATENSHUTZ!!!)
Here’s my take and maybe it’s the American in me, but these big companies already know everything about us anyway. Stop letting that anxiety keep you disorganized.
I connected my Gmail, Google Calendar, and my CRM.
My morning briefing now pulls live data automatically.
I ask it to look at my last 7 days of emails and look at the week ahead on my calendar. I need this tool to tell me what’s urgent and tell me what needs nudging.
I made it interactive so I can check things off when they are done and Claude automatically updates my CRM and to do list. (exhale, sigh of relief)
I used to hire people to do this coordination work and be the human layer between all my different systems. I needed an assistant to make sure I didn’t drop the ball on something.
Now it’s one click and my briefing reminds me of everything.
This is hours returned to me, every week, FOREVER.
Lesson 3: Claude Code remembers. Claude Chat doesn’t.
This is why I love Claude Code in the terminal.
When you use Claude in Chat or Cowork, it only remembers what’s in that conversation. It has a vague sense of you, but the moment that chat ends and you start a new one, that context is gone. Every new conversation starts cold.
You can amplify this by using projects and loading files in there, but it has memory storage limitations. For example, I tried to load all of my Nina’s Notes markdown files into a Project in Claude last year, and I ran out of memory in the project by #99. And due to the gap of nearly 50+ Nina’s Notes missing, I didn’t use that project as much as I could have.
In the terminal, when I tell Claude to remember something, it writes notes about me into plain text files that live on my computer. My Claude knows my CRM structure, my product strategy, my tone, my goals, my brand guidelines - all of it.
Think of these like notes a good assistant would keep about you between meetings.
Every new terminal session reads those files. So Claude picks up exactly where we left off, every single time.
That’s the biggest reason I live in the terminal now. It’s not just the speed or power, it’s the continuity.
It’s the difference between a young forgetful intern and a brilliant assistant who actually knows you.
And because it’s just files on your computer, you can read them, edit them, and add them yourself.
You are in control of the memories.
Lesson 4: Find the people building with AI.
Last Friday, I hosted a three hour vibe coding session at my flat.
Everyone was working on something completely different.
One friend was building an app to clean up duplicated photos off her phone.
Another person, an actual developer, was trying to load a massive biological dataset into Claude. He hadn’t used Claude Code yet…and he’s a developer (gasp!!). Getting him set up, watching him realize what’s possible with his own dataset, that was super cool.
I launched a product in three hours! While we were talking and laughing and sharing our struggles getting the AI to work out loud.
I want to do that every Friday.
The people using AI to actually write and run code are thinking differently. Not better necessarily, but they are thinking differently.
They are not using AI just to polish emails. They are using AI to build systems, automate the boring parts of their workflows and create things that didn’t exist yesterday.
We are still a small fraction of AI users.
That gap is closing fast.
You don’t need to understand every line of code, but you do need to start thinking like someone who builds. You need to find the people who are building and get in the room with them.
Do you want to build with me?
I’m doing vibe coding Fridays in Lisbon and I’m thinking about what this could look like online.
I’m not ahead of you by much, just by 25 days. And I want to bring you along with me.
I’ve put together a starter kit and am running live vibe coding sessions online.
Edited by Wright Time Publishing