I independently designed and developed a fully custom WordPress portfolio theme using Claude Code for coding and ChatGPT for review, integrating structured meta boxes to make content updates seamless and efficient. The project eliminated the need for external development, achieving 100% cost savings, and improved update speed by 80%, allowing changes in minutes instead of hours.
Project Overview
AI‑assisted WordPress portfolio theme with dynamic meta boxes
Designed, coded, tested, and launched a custom WordPress theme solo using Claude Code for development and ChatGPT as an LLM reviewer. Built a complete content model with custom post types and meta boxes so projects, skills, and timelines are structured, reusable, and fast to update. Established a repeatable prompt‑engineering workflow for spec → code → review → test, enabling rapid iteration without contractors.
Performance Improvement
80% faster
Cost Savings
100% dev cost saved
Challenges & Solutions
Challenges
Building a production‑ready theme from scratch with no external resources
Defining a scalable content model and meta‑box schema that would not paint me into a corner
Ensuring code quality, security, and performance while iterating quickly
Making the UI fully responsive and easy to maintain
Solutions
Created a prompt‑engineering loop: requirements → Claude Code generation → ChatGPT review → refine → test
Implemented custom post types and meta boxes for Projects, Roles, Skills, and Case Studies to enable structured content
Modularized PHP templates and sanitized inputs; added accessibility and Lighthouse checks
Established a lightweight QA checklist and smoke tests for every release
Lessons Learned
Clear, constrained prompts dramatically improve AI‑generated code quality
Define the content schema first; templates and UI fall into place afterward
Small, testable increments beat big drops when working with LLMs
A second LLM as a reviewer catches edge cases the first pass misses