Beyond Coding: 10 Unexpected Use Cases for Claude You Haven't Tried
Z
Zack Saadioui
8/11/2025
Beyond Coding: 10 Unexpected Use Cases for Claude You Haven't Tried
Hey everyone, hope you're doing well. If you're in the tech world at all, you've probably heard of or even used Claude, the AI from Anthropic. Most of us, especially developers, see it as a pretty slick coding assistant. It can debug, write boilerplate code, & even help you learn a new programming language. But here's the thing: pigeonholing Claude as just a tool for coders is like using a supercomputer to only run a calculator. You're missing out on a TON of its power.
Turns out, people are using Claude for some seriously mind-blowing stuff that has nothing to do with writing software in the traditional sense. I've been digging into this, & honestly, some of the applications are just plain creative & unexpected. We're talking about everything from building entire applications without writing a single line of code to acting as a personal advocate in a hospital.
So, I wanted to put together a list of some of the most surprising & powerful ways people are using Claude that go way beyond your typical coding tasks. Whether you're a developer, a marketer, a business owner, or just someone curious about AI, I think you'll find some of these pretty eye-opening. Let's dive in.
1. Building Full-Fledged Applications with Zero Coding Experience
This one is at the top of my list because it's a real game-changer. You don't have to be a seasoned developer to build a functional app anymore. People with little to no programming knowledge are now creating SaaS products, websites, & mobile apps just by describing their ideas to Claude.
For instance, one person on Twitter, Adam Pietrasiak, created an app that removes the background from a webcam feed. He had very little experience with the Swift programming language, but in about an hour of prompting Claude, he had a working product. That's INSANE. Think about all the great app ideas that have died on the vine because the person who had them didn't have the technical skills to build them. Now, that barrier is starting to crumble.
It's not just simple tools, either. Riley Brown managed to build an entire website from scratch, including both the front-end & back-end code, by prompting Claude. Sure, it was a process. He'd ask Claude to write the code for a specific page, paste it into an editor, & if there was an issue, he'd just tell Claude to fix it. This iterative process of describing, testing, & refining is becoming the new "coding."
2. Crafting Interactive Games & Educational Tools on the Fly
This is where things get really fun. Imagine having an idea for a game or an interactive lesson & being able to bring it to life in minutes. A high school English teacher shared a story about how he had an idea for a game to teach a complex chapter of Orwell's 1984. He sketched out the interface on paper, scanned it, gave it to Claude with a description of the game mechanics, & within 20 minutes, he had a fully functional HTML game to share with his students.
This is a huge deal for education. Teachers are constantly trying to find new ways to engage their students, & being able to create custom, interactive content on a whim is a superpower. Another person mentioned creating "Spelling Detective Missions" for their daughter to make learning her spelling words more fun. They just give Claude a photo of the word list, & it generates a whole themed mission.
This extends to more complex applications too. People have been using Claude to create things like a functional game of Snake, interactive sales dashboards, & even real-time social media sentiment analyzers. The key here is the "interactive" part. You're not just getting static code; you're getting a dynamic application that you can play with & use.
3. Acting as a Personal Research Assistant & Advocate
This use case is one of the most powerful & human-centric I've come across. Someone shared a story about their 89-year-old father-in-law being in the ICU at a hospital with a strict "no overnight visitor" policy. The father was terrified & anxious without family present. While at the hospital, exhausted & stressed, the person used a Claude-based AI assistant on their phone to fight for an exception.
The AI, which they had named Emma, independently researched best practices for hospital visitation exception requests, found successful examples, & even scoured the web to identify the contact information for hospital administrators. It then composed a compelling case & sent it to 15 different email addresses. By the next morning, an overnight exception was approved. That's not just productivity; that's AI providing crucial support in a moment of human need.
In a similar vein, another person described how they used Claude to help their 77-year-old mother, who was hesitant about a doctor-recommended test due to the copay. They fed her symptoms & test results into Claude & asked for the potential diagnostic benefits of the recommended test. Claude's detailed response convinced her to get the test.
4. Designing & Optimizing Complex Systems & Workflows
This is where Claude's ability to understand & reason about complex systems really shines. The Product Design team at Anthropic, the creators of Claude, have found an unexpected use for it: mapping out error states, logic flows, & system statuses. By doing this during the design phase, they can identify edge cases & potential problems before a single line of code is written, which saves a massive amount of debugging time later on.
It's like having a super-intelligent systems analyst on your team. They even had Claude build Vim key bindings for itself with minimal human review. This shows a level of "meta" understanding that's pretty incredible.
This capability isn't just for software development. The Growth Marketing team at Anthropic built an agentic workflow that processes hundreds of ads in a CSV file, identifies the underperformers, & generates new variations that adhere to strict character limits. This turns a task that would take hours of manual work into a process that takes minutes.
5. Serving as a Hyper-Personalized Task & Project Manager
We've all struggled with to-do lists & task management apps that just don't quite fit how our brains work. One user on Reddit detailed how they set up Claude as a personalized personal assistant to manage their tasks. They gave it information about how their brain works, what kind of support they need, & their areas of responsibility.
Now, they can have informal conversations with Claude about their work, & it will capture new tasks, break them down into manageable sub-tasks, & even suggest a daily schedule based on their energy levels. It can tell them if they're overscheduled, congratulate them on their progress, & find "quick wins" when they're feeling stuck. The user said this system has kept them on track longer than any other method they've tried.
This is a far cry from a simple to-do list. This is an AI that understands your personal workflows, your strengths & weaknesses, & actively helps you be more productive in a way that's tailored to you.
6. Revolutionizing Customer Service & Engagement
Okay, so this one might seem a little more obvious, but the depth of what's possible here is what's truly unexpected. We're not just talking about basic chatbots that answer frequently asked questions. We're talking about creating deeply knowledgeable, 24/7 customer support agents that can be trained on a company's entire knowledge base.
This is where a platform like Arsturn comes into the picture. Businesses can use Arsturn to build no-code AI chatbots trained on their own data. This means you can create a chatbot that knows your products inside & out, can troubleshoot complex issues, & can provide personalized recommendations to website visitors. It's like having your best customer service rep available to every single customer, instantly.
The Legal team at Anthropic even built a prototype "phone tree" system using Claude to help employees find the right lawyer to talk to for their specific issue. This is a perfect example of how a tool like Arsturn can be used to create custom, internal-facing tools that streamline communication & improve efficiency. It's not just for external customers; it's about making the entire business run smoother.
Coming up with fresh, engaging ad copy is a constant challenge for marketers. You need to create dozens, sometimes hundreds, of variations to test what resonates with different audiences. This is a perfect job for an AI like Claude.
The Growth Marketing team at Anthropic, as mentioned earlier, uses Claude to generate hundreds of ad variations in minutes. But it's not just about speed; it's about creativity & effectiveness. They also developed a Figma plugin that programmatically generates up to 100 ad variations by swapping out headlines & descriptions. This reduces hours of tedious copy-pasting to a few seconds.
For businesses looking to boost their lead generation & customer engagement, this is a massive advantage. You can use a tool like Arsturn to build a chatbot that not only provides customer support but also engages potential customers with personalized messaging based on their browsing behavior. Imagine a chatbot that can dynamically adjust its tone & messaging to match the user's journey on your website. That's the level of personalization that's now possible.
8. Assisting in Scientific Research & Data Visualization
The power of Claude to process & understand vast amounts of information is a huge boon for the scientific community. Researchers are using it to analyze complex datasets, summarize research papers, & even generate hypotheses. For example, an AI system trained on a database of molecular & protein structures can help scientists identify viable chemical compounds for new vaccines or treatments.
On a more practical, everyday level, data scientists at Anthropic who aren't fluent in TypeScript are using Claude to build entire React applications for visualizing the performance of their reinforcement learning models. They can just describe the visualization they want, & Claude writes the code. This is a massive force multiplier, allowing experts in one domain to leverage the tools of another without having to become experts in it.
Someone on Reddit even mentioned uploading their blood lab results, vitals, & medication history & having Claude create an interactive dashboard to track everything & a game plan to help lower their blood pressure. The possibilities for personalized health & wellness applications are staggering.
9. Facilitating Creative Writing & Storytelling
For all the talk about AI replacing creative jobs, it's also proving to be an incredible tool for augmenting creativity. Writers are using Claude as a brainstorming partner, a co-writer, & a tool to overcome writer's block. One person shared how they wrote a 12-chapter book for their granddaughter for Christmas. They used her favorite Roblox games as the settings for each chapter & worked with the AI to structure the story & refine the plot.
Another fascinating use case is in the world of tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. For people who have trouble getting a group together, Claude can act as a Dungeon Master, creating a dynamic & responsive story that adapts to the player's choices. One user with ADHD mentioned that this was the perfect solution for them to finally be able to play solo, as the AI could keep track of everything for them.
10. Fact-Checking & Demystifying Complex Information
In an age of misinformation, having a powerful fact-checking tool at your fingertips is invaluable. One of the more interesting "everyday" uses I've seen is people taking screenshots of social media posts with wild claims & asking Claude, "Is this bullshit?" or "How accurate is this?". The AI can quickly parse the information, cross-reference it with reliable sources, & provide a nuanced answer.
It can also be used to understand complex or poorly written communication. Someone mentioned using it to explain a "weird client email" in plain English, which probably saved them a lot of confusion & potential miscommunication. This ability to act as a universal translator & sense-checker for the firehose of information we all face every day is a surprisingly practical & powerful application.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it. Ten unexpected, creative, & genuinely useful ways people are using Claude that go far beyond just coding. From building apps with no experience to getting life-saving advice in a hospital, the applications are as varied as they are impressive. It's a powerful reminder that these tools are not just for one specific type of user or one specific task. They're becoming general-purpose problem-solving machines.
The common thread here is that Claude is empowering people to do things they couldn't do before, whether that's due to a lack of technical skills, time, or even just mental energy. It's augmenting our own abilities & allowing us to be more creative, more productive, & in some cases, more human.
I hope this was helpful & maybe gave you some new ideas for how you can use AI in your own life & work. It's a rapidly evolving space, & I'm excited to see what other crazy & brilliant uses people come up with next. Let me know what you think