Build your own Zendesk with Claude Code

A customer support help desk: shared inbox of tickets from email, assign, tag and prioritise, canned replies and more.

1–2 weeksMore screens, accounts and a backend

The Claude Code prompt

Build my own take on Zendesk: a customer support help desk. Give it an original name, logo, colours and copy, and do not use Zendesk's name, branding or assets.

Version one should have:
- Shared inbox of tickets from email
- Assign, tag and prioritise
- Canned replies
- Help centre articles
- SLA timers

The hard part: Email in and out. Use inbound email webhooks from Postmark.

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: shared inbox of tickets from email, 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

  • Shared inbox of tickets from email
  • Assign, tag and prioritise
  • Canned replies
  • Help centre articles
  • SLA timers

The hard part

Email in and out. Use inbound email webhooks from Postmark.

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

More to build

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