Earlier this month, more than forty people at Isometric spent an afternoon building with Anthropic’s Claude Code. Over half had never used a coding agent before, most were not engineers, and many had never opened a terminal. By the end, the dominant reaction was some version of "wow, this was so much better than I expected."
We ran this during our company-wide Team Week, where we mix planning with workshops to get creative and spend time socially. On one hand it was a standard internal hackathon. In practice it also had the goal of being a fast, low-stakes way to help people become familiar with what these tools can actually do—and how good they now are.
Why we did it
The immediate thought came from some side projects over the Christmas break. I’d spent time playing with Claude Code and found myself building pieces of software that I would never have had the time to try to make. I’d tried some coding agents earlier in 2025, but my experiments over the break made it clear they’d crossed a threshold where they felt genuinely helpful.
This is also the worst these tools will ever be. They're improving rapidly, and anyone who hasn't touched them recently, or at all, is likely underestimating how capable they already are. If we want Isometric to make good use of this shift, we need people to get direct experience.
There was another cultural goal as well. We wanted to create an environment where non-engineers could safely try a coding agent, get over the initial intimidation of a terminal interface, and come away feeling this was a tool they could reach for when solving problems. A hackathon was a great fit—low stakes, experimental, and social.
How we set it up
One thing that’s nice about Isometric is how quickly things come together. The idea for the hackathon was proposed on Slack. A few days later someone from the Engineering Team (thanks Neef) was working on a setup script to enable everyone to use Claude Code, and a few days after that dozens of people were working on their own projects.
The main setup pieces were access and creating guidelines for people who had never touched code before. At the time, Claude Code was primarily used by the Engineering Team, and most of the company didn't have API access or subscriptions. Neef built a simple setup script that participants could run. It installed the necessary tooling, and left them with a working environment without requiring prior technical knowledge.
We also put a lot of effort into documentation.
We wrote best practice guidelines and FAQs covering everything from what to do if Claude says it wants to “pip install” something to how to deploy the things you make. We also knew people would want to access Isometric data from sources like our MCP server, Registry API, and CRM, so we wrote guidance on how to do this, which was also loaded into claude.md.
The setup also included a short guide that gave Claude additional context about Isometric: what we do, where certain internal data lives, how our APIs work, and even access to brand assets. The idea was to reduce friction. If someone got stuck, their first instinct should be to ask the agent, not a colleague. Also we thought it would help people reach a “wow” moment faster if they could say, “turn this into Isometric branding,” and it just worked.
What we built
The projects ranged from immediately useful to delightfully unnecessary (cough cough - a waffleometer that listens to how much you waffle when talking, and grades you against our Clear Words Operating Principle). One person built a tool to check tree species lists against our internal criteria, saving time on a task that previously required a lot of manual lookups. Others built scripts to clean up data, prototype dashboards, or explore internal APIs.
My favourite project was a game (desktop only) someone on the team made for her daughter to help explain carbon removal. In the past she had described it as catching Mickey Mouse heads (they do look a bit like a CO₂ molecule) floating around with a butterfly net. Within a few prompts, there was a multi-level game: it started with catching mouse heads; in level 2, factories started spewing out more Mickeys; in level 3, you unlocked trees; and, in level 4, the trees started dropping twigs you can use for biochar. It was a smash hit with the target audience.
Most of these won't become production tools without further work, though that was never the point. The real outcome was that dozens of people who previously wouldn't have considered using a coding agent now had a concrete understanding of what’s possible, what’s safe, and what problems these tools are good at tackling.
What happens next?
The hackathon did its job. It gave people confidence that these tools are good enough to help in workflows across the company, and that rolling them out beyond engineers is worthwhile.
The first change we’ve made has been access. Shortly after the hackathon, Claude Code became available by default on team subscriptions, which made the decision straightforward. Anyone at Isometric who wants a Claude seat with access to Claude Code now has it.
However we want people to actually reach for these tools. To support that, we're creating a Slack channel where people can post things they've built, however rough.
We're also starting to formalise lightweight guidance. How should internal APIs be used? What are reasonable expectations for sharing or maintaining something built with an agent? When does a quick script become something that needs more structure? When should you use Claude chat vs Claude Code?
We're approaching this in stages, first helping people get more familiar with these tools then building up the infrastructure to have them embedded more deeply. What we’re trying to avoid is a world where half-finished prototypes are thrown to the Tech Team 20 times a week to see if they can make them better.
What this experiment reinforced is that everyone at Isometric will soon have the ability to prototype ideas much more rapidly and solve problems without necessarily needing a background in software engineering.
Coding agents don't remove the need for engineers, but they do dramatically expand who can turn an idea into something concrete. Now we need to build the norms, processes, and infrastructure so those tools can be used productively.
The hackathon was a great starting point, and we’re hoping to have the whole company flibbertigibbeting with Claude Code in the very near future.
