Simon Willison uses Claude Artifacts to build a YAML preview tool for Datasette news
The datasette.io news section is driven by a news.yaml file in the project’s GitHub repository, where each entry combines a date with a markdown body. Editing raw YAML without a preview makes catching syntax mistakes or malformed markdown tedious, so Willison offloaded the tooling problem to Claude rather than hand-rolling a viewer.
Using standard claude.ai with Artifacts, he pointed Claude at the datasette.io repository, asked it to inspect news.yaml and the homepage rendering logic, and had it emit a pasteable preview artifact that also surfaces YAML and markdown errors. The workflow leans on Claude’s ability to clone and read GitHub repos inline during a chat session.
The piece is a small but concrete example of using LLM artifact tooling to generate purpose-built internal utilities on demand, trading a persistent custom app for a disposable preview harness scoped to one editing workflow.
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