# What I Built

Most AI coding tools will build whatever you ask for, even if it’s a flawed idea. I built **Rootpilot**, a Mac app that sits as an orchestration layer on top of your local Claude Code instance to sharpen product ideas before writing code.

* **Phase 1: Idea Sharpening.** It conducts parallel web research on competitors, market positioning, and pricing. Instead of a pile of raw links, it outputs an actionable position on where a market gap exists.
* **Phase 2: Execution via Claude Code.** It drives your local Claude Code CLI slice-by-slice using the research context. It checks each code slice against the initial specs, course-correcting automatically if the output strays from the plan.

# How Claude Code Was Used to Build It

I built Rootpilot with Claude Code as my primary development workflow.

* **Native core and hooks.** Claude Code wrote the Rust/Tauri layer: The driver that spawns the user's own claude binary.
* **Prompt engineering and context management.** Each project keeps a .companion/ memory (north star, spec, plan, decisions) that is injected as a cache-controlled system block, so the orchestrator holds state across multi-step execution passes without re-paying for the context on every call. Work is routed across Haiku, Sonnet and Opus per task.
* **UI and integration.** Claude Code generated most of the React and TypeScript frontend: the chat surface, the build cockpit, and the state plumbing between the research layer and the local execution layer.

**Method:** Specs and plans live in the repo as markdown, then Claude Code executes them slice by slice under test-driven development, often fanned out to subagents, with test suites on both the TypeScript and Rust sides guarding the loop.

# Key Takeaways & What I Learned

* **Context Drift is Real:** When running long-form coding pipelines, Claude Code excels when given strict boundary checks. Feeding it a clear "definition of done" for every slice drastically reduced hallucinated features or incomplete refactors.
* **Upfront Validation Saves Tokens:** Sharpening the architecture and requirements before triggering Claude Code saved a massive amount of context tokens compared to letting it explore blindly on loose prompts.

# Looking for Beta Testers

I am looking for macOS users who currently use Claude Code to test the app and try to break it. It is completely free with no credit card required..

* **How to get access:** Drop a comment or send me a DM, or: [rootpilot.dev](http://rootpilot.dev)

I built Rootpilot (an orchestration app for Claude Code) using Claude Code. Here is how it works and what I learned.