Claude Code Hack Day at Amazon at AWS Builder Loft
I spent this monday at the AWS Builder Loft in San Francisco for a Claude Code Hack Day, and it was one of those experiences that reminds you why building something fast is cool.
A huge shoutout to Adam, who organized the event and set that tone from the start. That kind of environment doesn’t happen by accident. From the moment I walked into the Loft, it felt less like an event and more like being welcomed into a shared workspace where focus was the default.
Not a Typical Hack Day
What stood out to me almost immediately was the constraint. Everyone was working within the same general direction, exploring how to collaborate effectively with Claude Code, yet the projects that emerged were all very different.
That shared framing made it easier to go deep instead of wide. There was a steady, quiet momentum in the room. People were fully absorbed, occasionally surfacing to share something interesting or compare notes, then slipping back into their own flow. It felt thoughtful and unforced.
Building Mindshift
During the day, I built Mindshift, an AI powered mind mapping tool designed for moments when things feel stuck, foggy, or hard to articulate.
The idea behind Mindshift is pretty simple. Most people don’t get stuck because they lack options. They get stuck because they’re thinking about everything through the same mental lens over and over again. Mindshift starts by asking a few open questions about where you are, where you want to be in the next five to ten years, and what feels unclear or uncomfortable right now. From there, it generates an editable mind map that breaks that big picture into milestones, goals, and small actionable steps. To avoid overwhelm, only one milestone is active at a time.
The part I enjoyed building the most was the lens system. Users can toggle between different perspectives, including historical figures like Socrates and modern archetypes like Future Self or Ruthless Strategist. The structure of the plan stays the same, but the way it’s framed shifts. Priorities change and assumptions get questioned. The same situation suddenly looks different.
The AI doesn’t tell you what to do. It helps you see your situation more clearly.
Claude played a central role in making that possible. Instead of just generating answers, it helped maintain a stable base model of the user’s situation that could then be reinterpreted through constrained prompts. Same information, different reasoning paths. Treating the AI as a thinking partner rather than an answer machine felt very aligned with the spirit of the day.
Walking Away With Something Real
What made the hack day work was the combination of clear constraints, uninterrupted time, thoughtful facilitation, and a room full of genuinely curious builders. I left the AWS Builder Loft tired in the good way, the kind that comes from sustained focus, and genuinely excited about what I’d vibe-coded.
Mindshift isn’t finished, and it (sort of) works, and it clarified something important for me about how I want to build with AI going forward: less optimization, more perspective.
