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Let's Go Back

Let's go back to the early days of the internet, when creative Flash websites were all the rage. You know, the time before everything started looking like a Bootstrap website, a Wordpress template, or a Medium theme. Websites used to surprise you. They had intros and soundtracks and little worlds to poke around in. Somewhere along the way we traded all of that for uniformity.

I think we can have the fun back now. Thanks to the power of AI, developers today are able to build cooler experiences in less time than has ever been possible before.

Consider this. In about a week, I built the 2D version of the devSteve.com website that you're reading right now. I built the 3D version of the site, a walkable gallery with its own streets and shops. And I built a handful of other 3D environments to show just how customizable each experience can be. None of this would have been possible without Claude Code. Claude did most of the heavy lifting, I just steered the ship, so to speak.

I also handled things like Git commits, test runs, QA, production deployments, and providing a general theme description of each 3D environment, but Claude Code pretty much did the rest.

The current lineup

If you care to see them for yourself, this site currently hosts the following custom 3D experiences. Each one gets its own environment, NPC dialogs, treasure hunt checklists, and social preview images. Click any card to step inside.

Two of these were built as sales and marketing tools, and the others were built to honor people I love. That range is kind of the whole point. The same approach that can showcase a business's storefront can also preserve a memory of a bike trail or a family vacation.

The web used to be a place you explored, not just a place you scrolled. I think it can be that place again, and it turns out the door back is open to anyone willing to build with these new tools. If you'd like a custom 3D experience of your own, for your business or for someone you love, I'd be happy to hear from you.

A note on this post. The story and the first draft are my own. Claude helped me polish the wording, which felt fitting for a post about building with Claude.