Bits&Letters rebuilds its studio site by having Claude sort a year of brand decisions
David Demaree fed Trust's original brand Figmas and every past site version to Claude Design and Claude Code to rebuild bitsandletters.com.
Done withCDClaude DesignCCClaude CodeFMFigma (MCP)GAGPT-6 AstraLLinearSSanity
Studio's own website; author runs the agency
WHAT THEY DID
David Demaree gave Claude Design the original brand Figma files by Trust plus all prior versions of his studio site, had it document the system, then decided what stayed; a Claude Code cloud session built the new site.
STEP BY STEP
- Site outline and copy sketch in a Google Doc, wireframe in Figma.
- First pass at the design system in Markdown files with GPT-6 Astra; pages built from it looked 'competent but plain' to him.
- Reset: Trust's original Figmas and all prior site versions fed to Claude Design's design system skill; he decided what to keep.
- A Claude Code cloud session (50+ hours, subagents) built a fresh Astro site; content stayed in Sanity, using a content release as a dev branch.
- Review via Vercel preview builds, Vercel Toolbar comments and Linear issues.
HOW IT WENT
He reports the v5.0 site was built in one Claude Code thread that ran more than 50 hours, mostly through subagents, and burned more than 2.1 billion tokens.
Reported results: Live v5.0 site; colour and type-size rules recovered from Trust's guide, and mistaken rules (such as a two-colour limit on generated patterns) removed. He puts the API-equivalent cost at about $807 for the main Claude Code thread and $1,020 for all Claude sessions, and says he paid far less through subscriptions.
WORTH KNOWING
Shows AI used to recover and apply another studio's brand guidelines, not to invent a look. He says it was not fast: months of effort, more than two days of agent time and one full version thrown out, and the agents treated mistakes that had been written down as settled rules. The dates and costs are his own account.
TRY IT
- Give the AI your original brand files plus past site versions, and ask it to list every rule it finds.
- Mark each found rule keep or drop yourself before any build starts.
- Watch for one-off chat decisions turning into permanent design-system rules.
Rates the entry, not the tool.
Source: David Demaree · Bits&LettersOpen as a page
- Work done: not stated in the source (Not stated exactly. He writes that he was stuck on the redesign 'most of this summer', did a GPT-6 Astra design-system pass in September, then ran a Claude Code thread of more than 50 hours before the post (24 Oct 2026).)
- Source published: Oct 24, 2026
- On 4TC: added Oct 28, 2026 · checked Oct 28, 2026
About this source
Type: First-person workflow · Firsthand report · Demonstrated workflow
- How Claude and I rebuilt B&L's website
David Demaree · Bits&Letters · Published Oct 24, 2026 (Page metadata: published 24 Oct 2026, modified 26 Oct 2026.) · Checked Oct 28, 2026
Studio founder writing about his own agency's site. Ends with a sales call to action. No sponsorship disclosed.
Access: open - Bits&Letters (live site)
Bits&Letters · Bits&Letters · Publication date not stated (The live site the article describes. Undated.) · Checked Oct 28, 2026
Own site.
Access: open
Source check: Reviewed by a 4TC editor on Oct 28, 2026. Claims, quotes and dates re-checked against the sources by Ella on 28 Oct 2026. Nobody at 4TC has tested this.
Claims and where they come from
- He included the original brand Figmas and all prior versions of the website as input to Claude Design's design system creation skill, asking it to document everything so he could decide what stayed. (reported) [1]
- The brand identity was designed by Hannah Smith and Jesse MacKenzie of Trust. (reported) [1]
- Claude surfaced rules he had never written down, such as each brand colour pairing with a deeper shade for light backgrounds (teal to forest, yellow to ochre, pink to maroon, fuchsia to orchid). (reported) [1]
- The site used only nine of 108 icons in its icon library, and capped display type at around 60px where Trust's guide set Stringer as large as 90px; the new system runs Stringer from 90px to 215px. (reported) [1]
- Earlier one-off chat decisions had been encoded as rules, such as 'one brand image per page' and a stone-gray pairing that measured 1.09:1 contrast. (reported) [1]
- The Claude Code cloud session that built the v5.0 site was a single chat thread that ran for more than 50 hours, with most work done by subagents. (reported) [1]
- He reports the main thread burned more than 2.1 billion tokens, about $807 at current Anthropic pricing, and says he did not pay $2,000 or more for the compute. (reported) [1]
- He says getting good results from an AI-driven website project is not fast, and that a whole version was built and thrown out along the way. (reported) [1]
- The rebuilt site was live at bitsandletters.com when 4TC checked on 28 Oct 2026. (checked by 4TC) [2]
4TC interpretation
Our reading, not something the source says.
A useful pattern for any designer with a brand guide that never fully made it onto the website: give the model the original files and your history, then edit its findings.
Designer impact
Established [1]
The agents read his emails, Granola notes and Notion docs to flesh out case studies.
- Check client confidentiality before giving an agent access to email or meeting notes.
- Have clients approve case-study copy drafted from private notes.
Established = documented by primary sources or the company’s own statements. Disputed = contested with evidence on both sides. Alleged = reported, not established.
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