Ask HN: Anyone build a full website with Claude Code?
Has anyone here built a full database-backed website using Claude Code in your workflow? What was your stack and what was your experience as the site became more compelx?
10 comments
I did. Elixir with Ash Framework, backed by PostgreSQL. Claude Code did just fine -- but this was back in June before Claude got nerfed.
Thanks! do you mind sharing the site, if it's still up? interested in seeing what you built.
I had never deployed it because I was building it just to prove to myself that I could.
Anyway, I just deployed to https://retrospectify-staging.fly.dev -- it's running in demo mode and you can login as [email protected] with any password.
Once logged in, make sure to Find the example retro I started, and see if it makes sense. Basically I built the app I wish I had for doing our weekly retro. And it uses a modified subset of markdown for creating/editing cards -- so if you start a line with :-), for example, it'll put that card in the What Went Well column.
And once you're on the "columns view" you can move cards -- and if someone else is using it they'll see your card move as you're moving it...
I had mostly forgotten about this thing... It's less bogus than I remembered.
Anyway, I just deployed to https://retrospectify-staging.fly.dev -- it's running in demo mode and you can login as [email protected] with any password.
Once logged in, make sure to Find the example retro I started, and see if it makes sense. Basically I built the app I wish I had for doing our weekly retro. And it uses a modified subset of markdown for creating/editing cards -- so if you start a line with :-), for example, it'll put that card in the What Went Well column.
And once you're on the "columns view" you can move cards -- and if someone else is using it they'll see your card move as you're moving it...
I had mostly forgotten about this thing... It's less bogus than I remembered.
Oh yeah! And if you Start a line with "! - [ ]" it'll make an action item with a checkbox -- and if you check the checkbox it'll mark that action item as complete.
Let me know what you think. It's kinda fun and potentially useful.
If I remember right -- yeah, at the end of an action item line, you can put @[[email protected]] to assign it to somebody -- and that assignment goes from the semi-markdown to the database and back. Iirc for example, it shows up on the assignee's dashboard and action items show up on the next week's retro as discussion items (marked complete if the assignee checked the checkbox during the week).
Let me know what you think. It's kinda fun and potentially useful.
If I remember right -- yeah, at the end of an action item line, you can put @[[email protected]] to assign it to somebody -- and that assignment goes from the semi-markdown to the database and back. Iirc for example, it shows up on the assignee's dashboard and action items show up on the next week's retro as discussion items (marked complete if the assignee checked the checkbox during the week).
hi. sorry I am just checking this now. Is your site still up? I wasn't able to log in, I get the following error:
{"error":"Too many requests","message":"Rate limit exceeded. Please try again later.","retry_after_seconds":0}
Oh, I had just deployed it the one time and left it running for a day.
Now I'm in the middle of trying to turn it into a real product so if anything is currently deployed to staging it may or may not be functional at all.
Now I'm in the middle of trying to turn it into a real product so if anything is currently deployed to staging it may or may not be functional at all.
pretty cool, any plans on making it OSS some day or sharing more about your process? The Ash community would love that I'm sure.
Yes! I build and ship from scratch constantly with it. Start with the idea, drop it into plan mode, let Claude outline an approach, then iterate: confirm what’s right, fix what’s wrong, refine, execute, debug, repeat. The power is in that plan → review → iterate loop.
Stack is usually React + Supabase/Neon/Postgres, hosted on Vercel.