THE LAB
Real builds. Real numbers. Curated case studies from across the web.
Anthropic Courts Mom-and-Pop Shops With Claude for Small Business
May 13: Anthropic launched a 15-workflow package targeting solo founders and small businesses. Workflows cover payroll, invoice chasing, contract review, lead triage. Free AI fluency course + 10-city tour.
I Tried 100 Claude Skills — These Are the Best
Hands-on tests of 100 skills from Anthropic and community. Top picks: Superpowers (94K stars), skills.sh marketplace (1,340+ skills), Remotion (117K weekly installs). Why Sonnet 4.6 + Opus 4.7 closed the 'AI suggested snippet vs AI shipped PR' gap.
Anthropic Targets $900B Valuation in 2 Weeks — Surpassing OpenAI
48-hour investor allocation window. Real revenue run rate $40B not the public $30B. Last private round before IPO this year. What this means for Claude API users.
Kimi K2.6 vs Claude vs GPT-5.4: The 5x Cheaper Coding Agent
Moonshot's open-weight model handles 12-hour coding sessions and 300 parallel agents at $0.60/$2.50 per million tokens. Side-by-side benchmarks with Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.4.
Anthropic Catches OpenAI: $900B Race Reshapes the AI Stack
Per Ramp data: 1 in 5 businesses now pay for Anthropic. OpenAI dropped from 37% to 26% among first-time AI buyers. The most useful slice of the funding-round drama for builders.
Claude Design's New Flow Editing Feature Reviewed
Matt Maher's hands-on review of Flow Editing — Claude Design's new capability to generate cohesive design systems from uploaded repositories. Real-time iteration with brand consistency.
Opus 4.7 Benchmarked: 98.5% on XBOW, 70% on CursorBench
Deep-dive on Claude Opus 4.7's benchmark performance. Vision acuity jumped from 54.5% to 98.5%. CursorBench improved from 58% to 70%. Rakuten-SWE-Bench shows 3x more production tasks resolved vs 4.6.
Claude Design Challenges Figma — The Full Product Stack Strategy
Detailed analysis of Anthropic's shift from model company to product company. Why Claude Design + Claude Code + Claude Cowork is a vertical play. $800B valuation breakdown.
Claude Design vs Figma and Canva: A Rival Built on Claude
Practical breakdown of what Claude Design can actually do, how it exports, where the Canva integration fits, and why Figma's Mike Krieger resignation signals more than a product launch.
AudioPen: $20k MRR From a Half-Day Hackathon — The Full Story
No technical background. No VC money. Built in one day. Here is how Louis Pereira grew a voice-to-text AI tool to $20k monthly recurring revenue using annual-only pricing.
AI Apps Convert 52% Better But Churn 30% Faster — RevenueCat's 2026 Data
RevenueCat analyzed 75,000 app developers. AI apps monetize better upfront but struggle with annual retention. The data every indie builder needs to see.
Poke: The AI Agent You Control by Text Message — 10x Growth in 2 Months
A startup built an AI agent accessible via iMessage and SMS. No downloads, no signup. Here's how they got to 10x user growth and what indie builders can learn.
10 Must-Have Claude Code Skills Every Builder Is Using in 2026
From frontend-design (277k installs) to the Google Workspace CLI that hit 4,900 stars in 3 days. The skills that separate fast builders from slow ones.
Top 10 Claude Code Skills for Production-Grade AI Agents
Composio breaks down the skills that give Claude actual execution power: sandboxed code, 850+ SaaS integrations, persistent memory, and browser control.
Enterprises Are Consolidating AI Spend — What This Means for Builders
VCs predict 2026 is the year enterprises stop experimenting and pick winners. How indie builders can position products to benefit from enterprise consolidation.
Marketing Skills for Claude Code: 30 Open-Source Skills for Advertisers
Corey Haines built 30 open-source marketing skills covering CRO, copywriting, SEO, Google Ads, and email sequences. All free on GitHub.
39 Claude Skills from 23 Creators — Real Workflows That Cut Work in Half
A community roundup of the most useful Claude skills in practice. Voice DNA, YouTube transcription, brand hero images, and 36 more real workflows.
30 Claude Marketing Skills for Google Ads and Meta Ads — Full 2026 Guide
Stanford research shows AI-augmented content creation is 127% faster. These 30 skills capture that advantage for paid media. Free to download on GitHub.
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