I've wanted a portfolio for years. Not a tidy LinkedIn page. A real, breathing thing that felt like me. Extra. Beautiful. Something with the warmth of a West African magazine and enough whimsy to make you smile mid-scroll.

The problem? I'm not a developer. My throat is long, but my skill didn't stretch far enough to build what I could see in my head. I build systems. I run operations. I grow communities. I write. But I don't code. And every time I thought about hiring someone, I'd hit the same wall. I couldn't translate a feeling into a brief, and the designers who could were out of budget.

So I decided to build it myself, with Claude 🌟.

motitomi.com

My Experience with Claude

A bit of context: I started using Claude as a thought partner in 2024, when it began breaking into wider use. It was my first real brush with any tool like it. I have no formal training, no tutorials, no study plan. Most of what I know is from watching examples and feature updates pass through my social feeds, and from one simple habit: anything I don't know how to do with Claude, I ask Claude how to do it.

Planning my Work

<aside>

Many good things start with a Notion page. So, I started with this page and updated as I built.

</aside>

<aside>

Step 1: Explore the Vision in Claude Chat

</aside>

<aside>

Step 2: Bring It to Life in Claude Code

</aside>

<aside> 📝

Three things I'd tell you before you start

1. Just start. You don't need to know what a .jsx file is. You need one conversation and the willingness to just say what you want, especially if you don't have the technical language for it.

2. Use plan mode. A lot. In both Claude Chat and Claude Code, plan mode is the difference between vibes and velocity. Let Claude lay out the steps before it touches a single line of code. Read the plan. Push back. Adjust. Then let it run. You'll burn fewer tokens, catch wrong turns early, and end up with a site that actually matches what's in your head.

3. The first version does not have to be the final version. I went through four major iterations in Chat before I had something I loved. Every “no, not this” sharpens the “yes, exactly this.” Save each version. Come back to it. Let it evolve.

</aside>

<aside> 🛬

What's next

In Part 2: Improve and Host, I'll walk through how I set up GitHub and making the site live, so anyone with a URL can visit.

For now - if you've been sitting on a portfolio because you don't code: the barrier is lower than you think. It's a conversation. Then npm run dev. Then there it is.

</aside>