
Here's a workflow I use constantly when building features I don't fully understand yet:
Start with the dumbest possible version. Like, embarrassingly simple. If you're adding search, just filter an array with.includes().
Get that working in 10 minutes. Click it, see it do the thing. This is your safety net.
Now ask Claude: "Here's my basic search. Users will type fast and it needs to handle 10k items without lag. What's the next incremental improvement?"
Key word: incremental. Not "build me production search." Just one step better.
Claude might say "debounce the input." You add that. Test it. It works. You understand it because you wrote the simple version first.
Then go again: "Works great, but now I need fuzzy matching for typos."
Each cycle you're learning the actual problem space, not just copying solutions. And you always have a working version to fall back to.
I've used this for payment flows, real-time features, data syncing, all of it. The velocity comes from never being stuck on a broken thing you don't understand.
Simple first. Then iterate with AI. That's the whole workflow.
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