Build your own TikTok with Claude Code

A vertical short video app: full-screen swipeable video feed, upload and trim clips, likes, comments and shares and more.

Big buildPayments, real-time, regulation or heavy infrastructure

The Claude Code prompt

Build my own take on TikTok: a vertical short video app. Give it an original name, logo, colours and copy, and do not use TikTok's name, branding or assets.

Version one should have:
- Full-screen swipeable video feed
- Upload and trim clips
- Likes, comments and shares
- Follow creators and a Following tab
- Sounds that link videos together

The hard part: Video transcoding and a For You feed. Use a video API (Mux or Cloudflare Stream) and rank by watch time from simple events.

How to build it:
1. Read this folder first. If it is empty, set up Next.js (App Router, TypeScript, Tailwind) with Postgres through Prisma or Supabase, and Supabase Auth or Auth.js for sign-in. Write a short PLAN.md with the data model, screens, third-party services and what you are leaving out of version one.
2. Build the core loop end to end before anything else: full-screen swipeable video feed, working with real data saved to the database.
3. Add the rest of the features one at a time, and seed realistic demo data so every screen looks alive.
4. Keep API keys in environment variables, and put any paid service behind a small interface with a local stub, so the app runs on a fresh machine without accounts.
5. Run it, click through every screen on desktop and mobile widths, fix what breaks, and finish with a summary of what works, what is stubbed and how to deploy it.

Paste it into Claude Code in an empty folder. It plans first, so read PLAN.md and steer before it starts building.

Version one

  • Full-screen swipeable video feed
  • Upload and trim clips
  • Likes, comments and shares
  • Follow creators and a Following tab
  • Sounds that link videos together

The hard part

Video transcoding and a For You feed. Use a video API (Mux or Cloudflare Stream) and rank by watch time from simple events.

Make it yours: a niche TikTok ignores, an original name and brand, and one feature it does badly done well.

More to build

More in Social · Every build idea