Creative entrepreneur who builds AI systems at Scale.
Reading a room is a technical skill.

I have no engineering background. Now my team runs on tools I built with Claude Code. I wrote about it, then gave a talk to 300 people about why they should try it too.

Watch the talk See what I've built
About me
Founded a business, then accidentally became an engineer.

I'm a Contributor Experience Manager at Scale AI, where I own the content layer for Outlier's contributor program: a weekly newsletter (50 editions, 44% open rate, discussed on Reddit), 100+ support macros, help center articles, and all contributor-facing emails. I also built the automation systems behind our comms workflows. Everything below came from the same instinct: if a process is manual and repeatable, I'll build something to replace it.

I studied public policy at UChicago, then went to Qualtrics where I scoped projects for 1,000+ clients across industries: my first time translating a technical product for non-technical buyers. After that I founded a photography business and have run it for five years: finding clients, closing sales, managing a team of associates. It mostly runs itself now.

The photography background is relevant in a way I didn't expect. I spend time in creative communities where the anxiety around AI is real, and I'm also someone who picked up an AI tool and used it to build things I couldn't have built otherwise. I want to be in the rooms where those conversations are happening, not just building tools from my desk.

Eliana Melmed with camera
That's me, in a previous life.
  • Never taken a CS class, built 60+ Claude Code skills anyway
  • Got people at Scale AI to adopt Claude Code when it intimidated them
  • Ran my own photography business for years
The talk

Vibe Coding for the Slightly Intimidated

I wrote and delivered this at Scale AI's Anchor Week in April 2026. 300 people RSVP'd. The goal was to get a room of non-technical people to leave with the tools and confidence to build something real.

There's a companion game too, so people could keep going after the session.

Vibe Coding: The Game, opening screen with tracks for complete beginners and people who have dabbled
Watch: Vibe Coding for the Slightly Intimidated
0
Claude Code skills built
0
emails sent
$471K
in raffle prizes managed
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tool integrations built
2M
reached in a single send
Work
Built with Claude Code.

CommsCat

A production AI system that triages support tickets, drafts responses, and routes them for human review. Our comms team went from three people to two when a teammate went on leave, and we maintained the same output because this system had just launched. Built on n8n with two custom Slack bots, connected to Linear, Slack, Redash, and Google Sheets.

n8n 16 workflows 2 Slack bots human-in-the-loop
CommsCat decision flow diagram

What I built

I designed the entire architecture: which n8n nodes handle classification, how urgency scoring works, how the AI drafts get constrained by our brand voice guide so they don't go off-script. The human-in-the-loop step was a deliberate choice. I could have automated the send, but the team needed to trust the system first.

Under the hood

This is a real Claude-powered system running in production that a non-engineer designed. It integrates 6+ tools (Slack, Linear, n8n, Redash, Google Sheets, the Claude API).

Weekly Newsletter

Inside Outlier newsletter header

There was no newsletter when I started at Scale. I created it from scratch, grew it to 50 editions, and now it gets discussed on Reddit: people speculate about who writes it and dissect the content. 44% open rate at a scale where 20-25% is typical, and the biggest single edition reached nearly two million contributors. I also built the audience segmentation queries (millions of recipients, multiple tiers), a subject line analysis system, and an automated workflow that pulls in the right content each week. Beyond the newsletter, I manage the full content ecosystem: 100+ support macros, help center articles, and all contributor-facing email copy.

50 editions 48M emails sent 44% open rate

What I built

Content comes from teams all across the company, and nobody was coordinating it. I had to figure out who had content, how to get it from them, and what it should say when it reached contributors. I created content pillars, then built a system around them: a Slack channel for submissions, an automated content calendar app that tracks what's planned and what's published, and a weekly reporting loop that feeds performance data back to stakeholders.

Under the hood

Custom Redash queries to segment millions of recipients into the right audience tiers. An AI checker that enforces our voice guide on every draft before it goes out. A subject line analysis across all 50 editions that identified which framing styles drive higher open rates. 44% open rate across 42M+ delivered emails, at a scale where 20-25% is typical. The program has produced 19.8M opens and 484,448 clicks so far.

Skill Toolkit, Dashboard + Developer Enablement

Skills Visualizer showing bento grid of Claude Code skills

Every repeatable process on my team is now a Claude Code skill that anyone can run: morning standups, newsletter drafts, community posts, ticket processing. 60+ of these, shared across the team. But I also had to get people to actually use them. I ran small-group sessions, 1:1 walkthroughs, and a company-wide workshop where ~200 people showed up. I also built a Next.js dashboard that ties everything together. My team uses it daily.

60+ skills Next.js dashboard team-shared

What I built

The morning standup skill was the one that made me realize this was worth investing in. It pulls from five different tools in one command and starts my day with exactly what I need to know. It even opens Spotify and picks a new artist it thinks I'll like. After that, I kept going: every time I noticed a process that was manual and repeatable, I turned it into a skill.

Under the hood

The skills needed a home, so I built a Next.js app to tie everything together: newsletter analytics, the content calendar, raffle management, meeting notes, daily metrics. My six-person team uses it every day. I had never touched Next.js before building this.

Contributor Raffle System

An incentive program that had never been done at Scale before. I was handed it, figured out how to run it, and built the whole operation from there. 16 drawings so far, $471K awarded, 1,798 winners across generalist, i18n, and web dev audiences. Each round is its own campaign: I build the audience query, write the daily emails, run the drawing, verify winners, and announce results to the community. I built a dashboard app to manage the full lifecycle.

$471K awarded 1,798 winners 16 drawings
Aether Raffle management app

What I built

The first round was chaos. I was manually pulling CSVs, trying to figure out how to segment audiences of millions of people, and building the process as I went. The biggest challenge was making it replicable so that each new round didn't require reinventing everything. It now runs through a dashboard app I built, with automated audience queries, configurable prize tiers, and a drawing tool that handles the randomization and verification.

Under the hood

This is a community engagement program at scale. Prize tiers range from $50 to $10,000 grand prizes. Each round involves email campaigns, community announcements, and coordination with the payments team.

The other half
The work that made people reply.

A communal playlist

I asked contributors to send the song they task to, then built a shared playlist out of what came back. Over 1,000 people responded, and submissions arrived from all over the world. There are two so far, Dec '25 and Feb '26.

Outlier Wrapped

Outlier Wrapped is a year-in-review for contributors, built in the Spotify Wrapped mold. I drove the workstream across Design and Analytics on a compressed timeline.

Thanksgiving tables and contributor pets

Two of the best-performing editions I've written asked contributors to show their Thanksgiving tables and their pets.

A $20,000 surprise

One contributor joined what he understood to be a call about task feedback and learned he'd won a $20,000 grand prize instead. I run the raffle behind that moment, from the audience query through the drawing to the announcement. His reaction is worth watching.

How I work
Build the thing, then get people to use it.

Shipping is half of it

Building something is the easy half. The hard half is getting a team to open it, and that's the part I like. I've run a 200-person workshop, small-group sessions, and enough 1:1 walkthroughs to know where people stall out, and it's rarely the syntax. Most people are stuck on whether they're allowed to try at all.

Why Claude Code

I used GPT before Claude and didn't like how it talked to me. I tried Cursor and Codex and didn't like the interface of either. Claude Code was the first tool where I stopped noticing the tool and started thinking about what I was making. That's a product difference, not a preference, and it's what makes a skeptic stick around past the first session.

Founder brain

I built a business from zero and have run it for five years, so I know what resource-constrained feels like: moving fast with no engineer down the hall to ask. Most of the people I teach are in that same spot, which is why I teach it the way I learned it.

The medium keeps changing

I've made photographs, a newsletter that didn't exist before I started, support content, a game, a playlist, and the systems my team runs on. Most of what's on this page started because something needed to exist and nobody was making it.

I was Claude for Halloween a few years ago.

Eliana in Claude costume Back: As a large language model... Anthropic sunburst socks

Handmade iron-ons, hours with my Cricut, and a lot of explaining at the party.

Let's talk.

Pick a project above and I'll walk you through it.

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© 2026 Eliana Melmed. Built with Claude Code.