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

· 4 min read

I materialized my knowledge of how to build OpenBB apps, and days of building alongside users and clients, into a SKILL that you can give your agents. So you can start building apps 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.

Slack message about YouTube videos


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:

Claude output - part 1

Claude output - part 2


And then I said: "Ship it".

Only to come back to this working app:

Working app - tab 1

Working app - tab 2

Working app - tab 3


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.

Just reach out.