Claude Code is unreasonably good at building MVPs

The most valuable code I’ve written in the past six months is code I fully intend to throw away. This isn’t some zen programming philosophy or agile methodology talking point. It’s the practical reality of using Claude Code to build prototypes and MVPs.

Here’s what’s fundamentally changed: the time from “what if we built X” to “here’s a working version of X” has collapsed from weeks or months down to hours or days. That compression doesn’t just make development faster. It changes what kinds of ideas are worth exploring in the first place.

When building a prototype takes three weeks of your time, you’re naturally selective about which ideas deserve that investment. You do market research, validate assumptions, maybe build a clickable mockup first. The barrier to testing an idea is high enough that most ideas never get tested at all.

But when you can describe a product to Claude Code and have a working prototype by the end of the afternoon? Suddenly the barrier drops low enough that the calculus completely changes. Instead of filtering ideas before you build, you can build first and let actual user feedback do the filtering.

I’m not talking about generating production-ready applications. The code Claude writes for these prototypes is fine for validation but often needs significant refactoring before it’s suitable for real users at scale. Database schemas need rethinking, security controls need hardening, error handling needs sophistication that goes beyond the happy path.

But here’s the thing: most product ideas fail not because of technical execution but because nobody actually wants them. The code quality doesn’t matter if you’re solving the wrong problem. What matters is getting something in front of potential customers quickly enough to learn whether you’re on the right track.

This is where the throwaway nature becomes an advantage rather than a limitation. When you’ve spent three weeks hand-crafting code, you’re emotionally invested in making it work. You’ll convince yourself the idea is good because you’ve already paid the cost. Sunk cost fallacy is real, and it’s especially pernicious in software development.

But code that Claude generated in an afternoon? You haven’t invested your ego in it. It’s easier to look at user feedback objectively and admit when an idea isn’t working. Killing a failed prototype hurts less when you didn’t personally write every line.

The counterargument I hear most often is that AI-generated code creates technical debt and quality problems. That’s absolutely true if you’re trying to ship Claude’s output directly to production. But for prototyping and validation, those concerns are premature optimization. You don’t need perfect code to validate whether people want your product.

What you need is the ability to test more ideas more quickly. To try variations on a concept without massive time investment. To put working software in front of users early enough that their feedback can actually shape what you build.

The traditional software development wisdom says you should think carefully before you code, validate assumptions before you build, and make sure you’re solving a real problem. That’s still true. But Claude Code changes where those validation steps happen in the process. Instead of validating through research and planning, you can validate through building and testing.

The ideas that survive contact with actual users are the ones worth refactoring, hardening, and scaling. Everything else? Throw it away without regret and move on to the next experiment. The velocity matters more than the code quality, because the real scarce resource isn’t development time anymore. It’s the time it takes to figure out what people actually want.

That’s unreasonably valuable, even if every line of code ends up in the trash.