How I turned days of developer training into a skill you can use in minutes

Recently, we added support for YouTube widgets.

So I sent a video to our marketing person explaining that I could add a YouTube video to each tab of our reference backend application to onboard developers on how to build apps/widgets on OpenBB.

She liked the idea, and I was set to do it.

But then I kept postponing actually doing it.

Not because I didn’t have the time, but because I thought my time was better spent doing something different.

Stick with me.

We run developer training workshops where we work hands-on with teams to build OpenBB apps - https://openbb.link/workshops

But not everyone needs that level of depth to get started and even those who do, could benefit from a head start.

Still, whether it's videos or docs, developers need to dedicate time to learning the craft. And some people are very successful at it, I constantly see people building incredible apps on the workspace by just reading the docs. Examples here: https://openbb.co/solutions

But their workflow could be faster if we were there. Next to them providing suggestions on how to apply grouping between widgets, utilize a widget settings more efficiently, mark data as stale, etc…

However, in 2026, we can actually create digital twins.

What if developers could tap into the same mental framework I use when building apps, available anytime, without scheduling a call?

You know where I am heading right? 🙂 

So I provided my full framework on how I build apps on OpenBB and had Claude help me turn that into a skill.

But this isn’t enough because I have a lot of bias as I know what I’m looking for.

So I tested and iterated - in a loop.

I pretended I was a user who knew nothing about OpenBB and asked it to build something. Three use cases:

• From scratch and generic - build a crypto app

• From an existing GitHub repo code - could be just the data

• From looking at an existing website

After each attempt, I'd ask the model to analyze its work - did it learn something new? Could anything be added to the skill?

If a one-shot prompt didn't result in a working app, I'd immediately fix the skill.

Iterate until it works.

Ship.

And it worked.

After my prompt, here’s what Claude outputs:

And then I said: “Ship it”.

Only to come back to this working app:

You can now do this by running

npx skills add openbb-finance/backends-for-openbb

and asking Claude to build an OpenBB app from within that environment.

Excited to see what you build.

We are always happy to highlight innovative apps and work either in our blogpost or solutions page.

Just reach out.