How I AI: Felix Rieseberg's Claude Workflows for 3D House Design and a $20 Hardware Buddy

Welcome back to How I AI! I’m Claire Vo, and I’m on a mission to help you build better and more creatively with the latest AI tools. I was so excited to sit down with Felix Rieseberg, who is one of the key engineering leads at Anthropic working on the Claude Cowork and Claude Code experiences that so many of us use every day. He’s one of the minds behind the desktop app, the Chrome extension, and more.

Felix is a true builder, and in this episode, he walked me through some of the most inventive and practical workflows I’ve seen. We’re not just talking about summarizing documents; we’re talking about using AI to fundamentally change how we interact with our own data and even the physical world. Felix’s philosophy is all about moving up the “abstraction ladder”—instead of doing tedious tasks yourself, you teach the AI to handle the entire process, freeing you up for the creative, fun parts.

He showed me how he used Claude to take a simple realtor’s floor plan and turn it into a full 3D interactive model of his new house, complete with his actual furniture pulled from his email receipts. Then, we explored how to build beautiful, auto-updating dashboards with Live Artifacts. And for the grand finale, Felix demoed a custom $20 hardware “buddy” that he programmed using Claude to act as a physical approval button. These are the kinds of projects that really stretch the imagination and show what’s possible when you stop asking “what can this tool do?” and start asking “what problem do I want to solve?”

Workflow 1: Building an Interactive 3D House Planner

One of the most daunting parts of moving is figuring out how your life (and your furniture) will fit into a new space. Felix faced this exact problem when his realtor gave him a marketing floor plan with no measurements. Instead of breaking out a tape measure and graph paper, he turned to Claude Cowork.

This workflow is a perfect example of what I call the “anti-to-do list.” When you find yourself starting a tedious task, stop and ask: “How could Claude do this for me, and how can I make it so I never have to do this again?”

Step 1: Find the Missing Units

First, Felix gathered all the documents related to the new house—disclosures, permits, mortgage info, and the unit-less floor plan—and put them into a single folder. He then pointed Claude Cowork to that folder.

His initial prompt was simple and direct. He used the Sonnet 4.6 model, noting that it’s more than capable for well-scoped problems like this. You only really need to reach for Opus when you don't fully know what you're asking for and need the model to do more interpretation.

In this folder you can find a floor plan. Can you figure out what the units for that floor plan are? and maybe make me. a new one with units.

Claude scanned all the documents, found a building permit for the garage that listed its dimensions, and used that as a reference point to calculate the dimensions for the entire house. Brilliant.

Step 2: Go One Abstraction Layer Up

With a dimensioned floor plan, Felix’s next thought was interior design. But as he started to ask Claude to place furniture, he had a realization. Why settle for a static image? He stopped himself mid-prompt and asked for something much better: an interactive planner where he could move the furniture around himself.

This is the core of Felix’s philosophy. Don't just automate one step; automate the entire outcome you want. Claude got to work and built a custom interactive application.

Step 3: From 2D to an Immersive 3D Walkthrough

Here’s where it gets truly amazing. Claude didn't just build a simple 2D planner. It analyzed the floor plan image, identified the walls, extruded them, and created a full 3D model of the house. Felix could then drop into the model and walk through it like a video game, moving furniture around in 3D space. He admitted he's a good software engineer but would have no idea how to do this himself.

To take it even further, he connected his Gmail account. He told Claude to find all the furniture purchase receipts in his email, extract the dimensions, and add his actual furniture to the planner. This turns your sprawling, unorganized email archive into a structured, queryable database of your personal inventory. I'm definitely trying this with my clothes!

Workflow 2: Creating Live, Auto-Updating Dashboards

Next, Felix showed me the power of Live Artifacts in Claude Cowork. These are outputs—like reports, web pages, or tools—that can automatically refresh with the latest data from connected services. The goal is to create something once and have it stay relevant forever.

Step 1: Connect Your Data Sources

The magic starts with Connectors. In your Claude settings, you can securely link various accounts like Spotify, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Notion. This gives Claude permission to pull in data without you needing to manage API keys or complex authentication. You just sign in once.

Step 2: Prompt a Personal Dashboard

With his connectors set up, Felix used a wonderfully open-ended prompt to create a daily dashboard. He didn't specify exactly what widgets he wanted; he let Claude figure it out.

hi. Please make me a personal daily dashboard, including reports and information from my various data services, say Spotify. Gmail calendar notion, whatever else you find that's relevant to my life.

this is for a product demo. Please do not use any real data. Just make all the data up. Thanks.

...make this a modern editorial design, something calming.

also make this a life artifact.

Notice the key phrases here: “whatever else you find that’s relevant” gives Claude creative freedom, and “make this a live artifact” is the magic incantation that enables the auto-refreshing capability. The result was a clean, personalized dashboard that could be refreshed with a single click to pull in the latest data.

Step 3: Get Creative with Design

This is where it gets really fun. Live Artifacts aren't just for data; they're a creative canvas. To prove it, Felix had Claude redesign the dashboard with a completely different aesthetic.

I want this to look like a software made in the early two thousands.

Claude instantly understood the assignment. It generated a new dashboard with a gloriously retro, pixelated design, complete with a reference to Winamp instead of Spotify. The clock was ticking, the design was perfect, and the copy was spot-on for the era. This demonstrates that you can bring your own personality and creativity to the tools you build, and you don’t need to be a designer or developer to do it.

Workflow 3: Building a $20 Physical Claude Buddy

For our final workflow, Felix showed me how he's bridging the gap between the digital and physical worlds. He wanted a more tangible way to interact with Claude, especially for the frequent permissions required in Cowork. So, he decided to build a piece of hardware.

As someone who is not a hardware developer, this seemed intimidating, but Felix proved that with AI, it's totally achievable.

Step 1: Get the Hardware

Felix went online and bought a tiny, self-contained hardware device for just $19. This little stick includes an LCD screen, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. It's a powerful little package that’s just waiting for a purpose.

Step 2: Give Claude Code the Vision

He plugged the device into his computer and turned to Claude Code. He didn't write a single line of low-level C code. Instead, he just described his vision:

I want my little Claude to live on this thing, and I wanted to cheer me on every single time I do a good job, and also every single time I need to approve something that Claude is doing, I want it to be on this big button that is out here.

Claude took that description, figured out the Bluetooth protocol, and wrote all the necessary code to make it work. Felix didn't have to correct a thing. The code for this project is open-sourced, so you can build your own!

Step 3: Connect the Buddy to the Claude Desktop App

This feature is now integrated directly into the Claude Desktop app for anyone to try. Here’s how you set it up:

1. Go to Help > Troubleshooting and select Enable Developer Mode. The app will restart.

1. A new Developer menu will appear in the menu bar. Click it and select Open Hardware Buddy.
2. A window will pop up to scan for your Bluetooth device. Click connect, and you're paired.

Now, whenever Claude needs permission to perform an action (like writing a file to disk), the hardware buddy lights up, makes a cheerful sound, and displays an approval prompt. You can physically press the button on the device to grant permission. It’s a delightful, tangible, and surprisingly useful way to interact with your AI assistant.

Your Turn to Build

What I loved most about my conversation with Felix Rieseberg is how it expanded my own sense of what's possible. From building a 3D house model to a physical approval button, he showed that the biggest limitation isn't the technology, but our imagination. As Felix pointed out, kids are often the most magical AI users because they’ve never been taught what not to ask for. They ask for the world, and Claude says, “Good idea, let’s go.”

My challenge to you is to adopt that same mindset. The next time you face a tedious task, don't just do it. Stop, go one abstraction layer up, and ask Claude to build a better way. You might be surprised by what you create.

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Brought to you by

• [Magic Patterns](https://www.magicpatterns.com/)—Prototypes that look like your product
• [Guru](https://www.getguru.com/)—The AI layer of truth

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Episode Links

• Where to find Felix Rieseberg:
• Website: https://felixrieseberg.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixrieseberg/
• X: https://x.com/felixrieseberg?lang=en
• GitHub: https://github.com/felixrieseberg
• Where to find Claire Vo:
• ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/
• Website: https://clairevo.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/
• X: https://x.com/clairevo
• Tools Referenced:
• Claude Cowork
• Claude Code
• Claude for Chrome
• Claude Desktop
• Live Artifacts
• Connectors (Spotify, Gmail, Calendar, Notion)
• Slack