I Completely Let Claude Code Cook for 20 Minutes to Redesign a Weekend Project

That was my homepage. I know.

That's it now. Same project. Same codebase. 20 minutes — none of them mine.

About a year ago I built barrierefreiheitcheck.de. A tool that checks websites for accessibility compliance — WCAG 2.2, BITV 2.0, EN 301 549, the full German and European regulatory stack. Technically solid. Works. Does exactly what it's supposed to do.

The design was... flat. Generic. The classic "I'm a developer and design is technically not my problem" output.

I knew this for a year. I didn't touch it for a year. Mostly because client projects kept piling up and honestly, redesigning my own side project was never going to win against a paying client deadline.

The Phone Call That Sent Me Back

Then I got one of those calls.

You know the ones. B2B sales outreach, even though my contact page literally says I don't want to be cold called. I get them every week. I've stopped being polite about it.

This one was different though — the guy on the other end asked if my websites and my clients' websites were compliant with German accessibility requirements. "We have a tool that can help you and your clients."

I paused.

Then I told him I built one myself.

Silence. A small cough. "Oh... thank you for your time." Call ended.

That moment stuck with me. Not because I wanted to win some weird phone battle, but because it sent me straight back to barrierefreiheitcheck.de to see if it still actually worked. It did. But the moment I opened it, I noticed how rough the design looked.

I didn't want to spend real time on it. So I didn't.

Handing Over the Wheel

I opened Claude Code, pointed it at the project, and said something like: "Redo the entire design. Homepage, premium page, PDF audit page, blog overview, blog detail pages. Colors, typography, components, everything. You decide."

No mood boards. No color constraints. No "please keep the vibe professional but approachable" briefing.

I went to make coffee.

What Happened in 20 Minutes

When I came back, the homepage had actual visual hierarchy. The hero section communicated the tool's purpose immediately. The compliance badges — BITV 2.0, EN 301 549, EU 2016/2102, WCAG 2.2 — were integrated in a way that built trust instead of creating noise. The pricing section was clean and readable.

What surprised me wasn't that it looked better. It was that it made actual design decisions. Typography hierarchy. Breathing room. Components that felt like they belonged together.

The old design had no thread running through it. The new one does.

Not a masterpiece. But a real improvement — and one I'd been putting off for twelve months.

On the "AI Is Taking Jobs" Thing

Here's where I'll be straight with you, because I'm tired of the diplomatic version of this conversation.

A lot of those jobs? Already gone. Or going. And if you're reading this and still have yours — the question isn't if, it's when.

What I did in 20 minutes would've taken a junior designer a day, maybe two. That's not me celebrating it. That's just true. And at some point, a company owner is going to look at that math and make a decision. Most of them already are.

I know a lot of people are still somewhere in the middle of the grief cycle on this — denial, anger, bargaining. I get it. It's uncomfortable. But it's coming whether anyone likes it or not.

The people who figure out how to work with these tools instead of against them are the ones who are going to be fine. The ones waiting for things to go back to normal are going to be waiting a long time.

I'm not saying this to be harsh. I'm saying it because I'd rather you hear it plainly than read another article that softens it into something manageable.

What This Actually Means for Me

I'll be honest: I'm still figuring out where the line is.

Claude Code did a solid job on a focused, functional tool with a clear purpose. Barrierefreiheitcheck.de doesn't need a deeply emotional brand story. It needs clarity, credibility, and compliance signaling. It got those.

For a client with real brand requirements, with history, with a specific audience and emotional expectations — that's a different project. I still think human judgment matters there. But I'm also watching that space narrow every few months.

What I know for now: the time I used to spend staring at my own side projects, paralyzed by design decisions I don't enjoy making anyway — that time is better spent elsewhere.

If you're building something that needs to be accessible and compliant with German standards — and the EU Accessibility Act deadline is closer than most people realize — let's talk. I build the thing. You keep the focus on your business.