I listened to a relatively dry Complex Systems podcast on how Patrick McKenzie recently found Claude Code beneficial. I then listened to his (linked in the show notes) Claude code overview for normies which swung in the other direction. Convinced, I decided to take it for a spin.

I’m a long Claude desktop and MCP Server (on Desktop) user with a pro plan and I had a lot of great projects. I decided to start four in parallel from the Desktop UI, and quickly ran out of tokens. I upgraded to Max, the $200/month plan, with the intent of really taking it for a test drive and downgrading if I didn’t find it useful.

In the meantime, I also setup the CLI: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/quickstart

Project 1: Resurrect a newsletter of mine available only on the Internet Archive by posting it to my wordpress

I started a new Code Session, pointing it to an empty folder on my harddrive I named TinyLetterWordpressArchive

I then typed the prompt:

I had a newsletter on TinyLetter that has since disappeared since MailChimp sunsetted it.
I’d like to use the internet archive’s copy https://web.archive.org/web//http://tinyletter.com/corbett and then post it to my self hosted wordpress https://codexgalactic.com/ ideally with the same backdates to match the original articles as well as all the original images.

There’s no code yet but I’m hoping you can help

It was completely off to the races, with minimal interaction needed from there.

After that I had to click “allow this” occasionally, create an API key and put it in an env (which it gave me full instructions how to do), and once say “try harder” when it found the WordPress rest API was blocked, after using Claude in chat mode to do some light debugging. Overall time interacting: about 5 minutes. Claude itself took some time in the background, I wasn’t tracking closely because I was multitasking. Finally it came back to me and said it had checked off all its todos!

and reported “All done. Here’s what was published, all backdated to their original dates”

Post	URL
Welcome new subscribers	https://codexgalactic.com/2015/11/21/welcome-new-subscribers/
Pole preparations	https://codexgalactic.com/2015/12/23/pole-preparations/
January in Antarctica (part 1/2)	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/01/27/january-in-antarctica-part-1-2/
January in Antarctica (Part 2)	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/02/03/january-in-antarctica-part-2-the-first-month-at-the-south-pole/
Febrrrrrrrrary in Antarctica	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/03/07/febrrrrrrrrary-in-antarctica/
The Sun Has Set…	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/04/30/the-sun-has-set-but-in-antarctica-time-marches-on/
April ice brings May… ice	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/06/13/april-ice-brings-may-ice/
South Pole medical evacuation	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/06/14/south-pole-medical-evacuation-flight-launched/
Midwinter greetings	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/06/20/midwinter-greetings-from-everyone-on-antarctica/
The Ides of July	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/08/18/the-ides-of-july/
August August	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/10/08/august-august/
Postcards are sending!	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/10/13/postcards-are-sending-last-call-has-passed/
A September to Remember!	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/10/19/a-september-to-remember/
Octobrrrrrr	https://codexgalactic.com/2016/12/07/octobrrrrrr/

Eureka! Formatting could be a little better here and there, but happy to have rescued my very cold letter from the coldest of storages!

Project 2: Syncing WordPress to Substack

Here, I thought Claude might write some custom code. My prompt was:

No code currently exists here but the idea is I have a self hosted wordpress:
https://codexgalactic.com/

in addition I have a substack:
https://substack.com/profile/1526824-christine-corbett-moran

I want to always post on my wordpress but have it mirror to substack.

But through a combination of brainstorming and pros-and-cons together, it seemed like Code would be fragile and we should figure out another way.

So my bud Claude and I decided not to write code after all and go with the following approach

Import WordPress backlog as paid content

Instead I used Substack’s native import feature to import my WordPress archive as paid subscriber content.

After some debugging I figured out I needed to supercharge my RSS feed to display all the posts

and then visit the url https://yoursubstackname.substack.com/publish/settings#import-export-settings and input my WordPress blog’s URL. It worked perfectly!

Crosspost new WordPress posts to Substack going forward using the Chrome Extension

Use WordPress lab’s Chrome extension setup to cross post future posts (including this one, fingers crossed) going forward

Conclusion – find me here or on Substack!

Well that’s two of four projects finished for the day! If I get to the other two (or rather – Claude Code does), I may post an update [hints in a previous screenshot]. You can find me (also) on Substack now at https://christinecorbettmoran.substack.com/.

I intend for my content to remain free on my WordPress: https://codexgalactic.com/, and to be able to quote from my archive conveniently on Substack, even if behind a paid subscriber flag to prevent Google from thinking it’s the canonical source.

I hope this to be especially beneficial, as I’m now using Substack as my replacement-in-my-life for what Twitter used to be, and by being able to conveniently reference the content I’ve built up since 2009 in blogging, it may help me connect to interesting people.