Claude for Everybody · Meetup Talk

Too Fast, Too Good,
Too Scary

How I built the perfect solution — and then watched it get shelved.

A small, slightly awkward journey with Claude Code

First — who's talking?

An honest career ladder

01Senior Software EngineerI write the code.
02Solution ArchitectI draw the code on a whiteboard.
03Project ManagerI put the code in a Gantt chart.
04Requirements EngineerI ask why we need the code at all.
05PsychoanalystI ask how the code makes you feel.

Act

“I thought the hard part
would be the technology.”

Adorable, in hindsight.

How it started

I overheard a deadlock

A disputed MVP delivery — and the vendor who built it, no longer available.
One camp: “it works.” The other: “this isn't usable at all.”
I caught the argument by chance — and said: I think I can help.

All I knew at first: there's a PDF, and it needs to be digitised.

The hook

Trust, in 3 prompts and 15 minutes

I handed Claude Code the PDF and asked for an HTML prototype.
3 prompts, 15 minutes → a clickable prototype at ~70% fidelity.
Trust, acquired. And we knew: this was only the beginning.

The clickable HTML prototype (multi-step form)

From PDF to clickable HTML — in about a coffee break.

The unglamorous part

Then: three weeks of listening

We interviewed every stakeholder along the end-to-end order process.
The “flow” was the flaw: a PDF filled, signed, then re-typed into Salesforce by hand.
No validation at capture → wrong or missing data → endless rework.
Back-office couldn't reach customers — every fix detoured through sales.

The real manual process: branching entity creation and a rework loop back to any step

The real workflow — manual, branching, looping back at every snag.

The insight

Flip it: the PDF becomes the output

The streamlined green sequential process: capture & validate, generate, sign, auto-create entities, activate

Documented to the last field, rule and source — enough to kill ~80% of the data errors.

The roadblock

“Thank you — but not two systems.”

We proved it end-to-end: the form, structured data into Salesforce, even SSO.
The verdict: “Impressive — but we won't run two systems for one process.”
A genuinely good solution — parked over a technical constraint. That one stung.

The working web app: SSO, autocomplete, validation — proven end-to-end

Rejected

Built, proven, SSO and all — and then: parked.

Act

“Fine. I'll just build it
inside Salesforce.”

Three weeks earlier I couldn't find the login button.

The secret weapon

Requirements beat prompting

I'd over-invested in requirements up front. Felt like procrastination.
Turns out: rock-solid requirements make the tech stack disposable.
Swapping web stack → native Salesforce became almost boring.

Daysfor a pivot that normally takes months

The co-pilot

Claude Code as ecosystem guide

It didn't just write Apex and Lightning — it navigated for me.
~95% automated: deploys, configs, pushing code to the dev instance.
The other 5%: literal “now click here” GUI steps for permissions.

95/5automated vs. click-by-click

The payoff

It worked. Natively. Fully integrated.

LIVE DEMO

Rejected

The native Salesforce flow — contacts, sites, configure, generate the contract.

The plot

The problem wasn't the solution.
The problem was the speed.

Every stakeholder loved it. That wasn't the issue.

What actually happened

A 10x cycle the org couldn't absorb

Nobody questioned the form. They called it the best they'd dreamed of.
What broke was the process: who maintains, reviews, signs this off?
The traditional way takes months — and that slowness has a hidden job.

Not rejected.
Just… faster than
the operating model.

A brief moment of self-awareness

Two versions of me

POW!

Me, allegedly the hero

“I shipped the perfect solution in days.”The cape is fake. The ego, regrettably, is not.

…ACTUALLY

Me, the Klugscheißer

“…well, actually, the requirements were the real hero.”Insufferable, but correct.

The takeaways

The tech is ready. Are the processes?

Requirements > prompts

Clear specs make the whole stack interchangeable.

Agent as guide

Not just a coder — a navigator through foreign ecosystems.

The real work is people

AI solves the tech problem — and exposes the human one.

Don't blame the people — read the system. The work was never just technical.

Danke. Thank you.

The tech is ready. The real question is whether our processes are.

Claude Code

Methodisch · Pragmatisch

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