How Anthropic uses Claude in Product Engineering

1. CKChuma Kabaghe0:00

   Having Claude Code and being able to use Claude Code in my work, it almost feels like having this superpower and this ability to send off this sidekick to go take the time, go figure it out, come back, report back. One of the reactions I get very often is like, "Holy snap, you're living in the future." [upbeat music] When I first joined Anthropic, I joined a team that was working on code execution and file generation within Claude.ai. So this is essentially giving Claude a computer and the ability to generate files, which include Excel files. And we had a deadline, and we're trying to get this out in a month and a half. I was able to use Claude Code to get my groundings in the code base. I am primarily a back-end engineer. This is a front end. In times past, it would take me a long time to onboard onto the code base. One of the coolest things about Claude Code so far in my work was when I realized I could hook it up to the Playwright MCP. Let me show you how I implemented the Excel rendering feature using Claude Code. Firstly, entering my prompt, "I need you to implement the Excel renderer feature for Claude.ai. Read the excel-renderer-design.md," which is the design doc that contains the spec. "Use the Playwright MCP. The feature should allow a user to preview Excel, CSV, and TSV files." So now Claude Code is reading the code base, starting the Claude.ai app using the Playwright MCP, and you can see here it does this to get a accurate read of what the feature looks like without it being implemented yet. And now you can see the previewer is not actually implemented. And now that it's ready to actually start implementing code, it asks me for permission to make changes to those files. I will accept that. And now Claude will run off in this loop with Playwright and continue making changes, validating them, and iterating on, on that. There we go. We have the summary of all the changes Claude Code made, and it is ready for me to review the code. I still get to do what I love. I still get to write code. I still get to build things. I can focus on, like, writing code from scratch if I wanted to, but now I can think about like, "Hey, how does the broader system come together?" And now I can focus more on, like, the higher level decisions related to that. So it's like, "Okay, you've given me the data I need. Now I can think about the strategy. I can think about, like, what trade-offs do we need to make with this information. I can think about how this fits in with other teams and then figure out the more human aspects of the work we need to get done." I mean, [chuckles] it's absolutely ridiculous. It really is. It's, it's kind of mind-blowing. Claude Code has helped me dream bigger. I felt like I was always limited by what programming languages I'm proficient at. It, it's just opened up sort of a whole lot of possibilities of things you can get done. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 2:57