TLDR: Last week we hosted a workshop in the community on how to vibe code a consultant website. It ended up being the perfect format for those who were new to working this way with Claude, and a safe place to address the tough and also the under-represented, yet incredibly important, questions that come up when working with AI. It was all about opening up our thinking to realize if we can build a website, what else can I build? This mindset shift is where the real magic happens.
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This may be a hot take, but I believe the comms professionals who really need to get their hands deep into AI are consultants. Consultants need to build their own tools that aren’t necessarily always about how to run a comms program, but more so how to run a business with a comms lens. It’s a unique challenge that comms consultants face because there’s not really an existing tool that walks that fine line, and it’s hard to explain exactly why it’s so different to someone who hasn’t walked in our shoes.
It’s the same way that measurement in comms is hard. It’s a vibe, but for creating services, systemizing our work, building for the unknown to have an edge, and scaling how we work to handle more clients.
Building your first consulting website has the same kind of vibe. It’s like a resume and a product page had a baby. You want to prove that you can deliver results, but you also don’t want to look like you’re bragging. You want to look professional, but also show your personality. You want to have sharp messaging, but it’s hard to speak about comms without sounding like everyone else.
I know a lot of comms consultants who never made a website because the opportunity cost just didn’t seem worth it given they had a LinkedIn.
But with thousands of comms consultants entering the market just in 2026 alone, and LinkedIn feeds starting to fill up with a sea of thought leadership, now is the time to start finding ways to differentiate. A clean consulting website is a great place to start (not to mention it helps with SEO).
The Workshop: we lived, we laughed, and we learned
I’m not an AI expert – maybe more of an AI enthusiast – but building a custom website from scratch in front of the group was the perfect format to address the tough and also the under-represented yet incredibly important questions that come up during the process.
The session was all about learning together, troubleshooting in real-time, and discovering what's possible when you combine AI with a bit of curiosity. In the end it was less about building a website, and more about unlocking ideas of what AI can do outside of developing content.
It was all about opening up your thinking. Once you realize you can build a website, you start wondering: What else can I build? This mindset shift is where the real magic happens.
The tools we used
Here's the toolkit we used to build the website in the workshop with some handy tips:
Claude (Code/Cowork): The AI that does the heavy lifting. You'll need the desktop app, not just the browser version. I'm on the $100/month plan because I use it extensively, but the $20/month plan should work fine for website building.
Vercel: Think of this as your hosting platform where your completed website lives.
GitHub: This might sound scary, but it's really just the bridge between Claude and Vercel. It's where your files and folders live, enabling automatic updates to your live site.
Super Design: A collection of prompt templates for visual design. No need to stress about colors, fonts, or layouts—just choose a style you like.
Hottest tip on the planet: don't be a martyr
The biggest lesson I learned was – if you get stuck – to literally just ask Claude how to get unstuck. If something breaks, take a screenshot of the error message and paste it into Claude. Ask, "Why is this not working?" or "How do I fix this?" Claude will guide you through it.
There's no winning trophy for struggling with a technical problems on your own. Claude knows the answer. Treat it as a collaboration partner and not a task slave and it will guide you through the process.
Beyond building websites
Once you get the hang of this process, you'll start seeing possibilities everywhere.
After I built my website, here’s what I unlocked in my business with Claude:
Proposal landing pages: Instead of sending PDF proposals, I create custom websites for each client. They're faster to produce, easier to update, and feel more professional. Plus, I can reuse templates by just swapping out client-specific details.
Media databases: I'm experimenting with building a custom Muckrack alternative using Superbase (a backend database) and free media, podcast, event database APIs.
Client dashboards: Imagine creating secure, branded dashboards for each client where they can access their deliverables, analytics, and project updates. This is possible and not hard thanks to Claude + screen shots.
Daily intelligence reports: Because my consulting services are mostly around exec thought leadership, I built custom daily intelligence reports for my clients in Claude that aligns their exec narratives to customized Feedly news feeds that delivers narrative aligned thought leadership ideas via slack every morning based on what’s happening in the news.
SOW generator: Client call transcripts from Granola get imported into Claude where my SOW template lives in a project. From there I can then ask Claude to add the agreed tasks to the SOW.
These are the type of AI projects I love seeing shared in the Comms People community and what we focus on in our monthly workshops.
Because you’re not going to make it as a consultant if you can’t adapt and evolve, and that includes the tools you use for your business. If you can imagine it, you can build it. If you need it, you can probably build it for cheaper than what exists on the market. And this is exactly the kind of thinking that will define the next era of comms people.
