17 sept 2025
1 min read
The Era of the Builders at Beam: How Cursor and Claude Changed the Way We Build
Six months ago, if our solution engineer had an idea for improving our demo flow, they'd write a specification, schedule a meeting with product, wait for design mockups, and eventually see their vision implemented weeks later, if priorities aligned and resources were available.
Today, that same solution engineer opens Cursor, describes their idea in natural language, and ships a working feature to our production environment within hours. The product manager prototypes new agent workflows directly in our platform. The GTM team builds their own ROI calculators. Designers code their interface concepts straight into our application.
This is what we call the era of the builders at Beam.
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From Gatekeepers to Collaborators
The traditional software development process created natural bottlenecks. Ideas lived in Figma mockups for weeks. Features waited in backlogs for engineering capacity. The people closest to customer problems, our solution engineers, customer success team, and product managers, could envision solutions but couldn't implement them directly.
Cursor and Claude have shattered these constraints. What we're experiencing isn't just faster development; it's a fundamental shift in who gets to build and how ideas become reality.
Our solution engineer doesn't just demonstrate Beam's capabilities anymore, they extend them in real-time during customer calls. When a prospect asks, "Can Beam handle this specific workflow?" our response changed from "Let me get back to you" to "Let me show you" as they build and deploy the solution on the spot.
The transformation happened gradually, then suddenly. It started with curiosity: what if our non-technical team members could make small changes to our demo environment? Within weeks, they were building complete features. Within months, they were contributing meaningfully to our production application.
Building Production-Ready AI Agents Without Design Bottlenecks
Figma served us well as a design communication tool, but it created a translation layer between ideas and implementation. Designers would create beautiful mockups that developers would interpret and implement, often losing nuance in the translation.
Now, our design process flows directly into code. When someone has an interface idea, they don't create a static mockup, they build a working prototype. This isn't crude HTML and CSS; we're talking about sophisticated React components with proper state management, animations, and responsive behavior.
Our AI agent builder enables this transformation. Our team members describe interface concepts in natural language and watch them materialize as functional components. They iterate in real-time, adjusting behaviors and aesthetics through conversation rather than switching between design tools and development environments.
The result is a vibing environment where our production application becomes the canvas for innovation. Ideas don't sit in design files; they live and breathe in our actual product, ready for testing with real data and real users.
Everyone Builds, Everyone Ships
The democratization of building at Beam has redefined every role:
Our GTM Team has evolved from demonstrators to builders. They don't just show prospects what Beam can do, they extend our platform's capabilities to address specific customer needs. During a recent enterprise demo, our solution engineer built a custom compliance reporting feature live, addressing the prospect's unique regulatory requirements and closing the deal on the spot.
Product Managers prototype new features directly in our platform before writing specifications. They can validate concepts with real user interfaces and working functionality, dramatically reducing the risk of building features customers don't actually want.
AI Agent Development Engineers build solutions for client-specific challenges. When a customer requests a unique integration or workflow modification, our success team can often deliver working solutions within hours rather than escalating to engineering.
The velocity is intoxicating. Ideas that once took weeks to communicate, specify, and implement now become reality in hours. But speed isn't the only benefit, quality has improved because the people building features are the same people who understand the problems deeply.
The New Workflow: From Idea to Production
Our development process has evolved into something we call "prototype-first development":
Ideation: Someone identifies a need or opportunity
Direct Prototyping: They build a working solution using Cursor and Claude
Testing: The prototype runs in our actual environment with real data
Iteration: Rapid refinement based on immediate feedback
Handover: Production-ready code is reviewed and integrated by our development team
Quality Assurance: Final optimization for scale, security, and maintainability
This process removes the traditional barriers between idea and implementation while maintaining quality controls. The development team's role has evolved from pure implementation to architecture guidance, code review, and production optimization.
Design's Evolution: From Creators to Curators
Perhaps the most interesting transformation is in our design function. Instead of creating mockups and specifications, our design team now focuses on:
Quality Assurance for Builders: Reviewing and refining the interfaces created by non-designers to ensure UI/UX consistency across our platform.
System Design: Maintaining our design system and component library so builders can create cohesive experiences.
User Experience Strategy: Focusing on higher-level user journey optimization rather than pixel-perfect mockups.
Builder Education: Teaching team members design principles so their prototypes align with our user experience standards.
This shift has been liberating for our designers. Instead of spending time on static representations of interfaces, they focus on the strategic aspects of user experience while ensuring consistency across the many features being built by different team members.
This Week's Highlights: Building in Action
The best way to understand our transformation is through concrete examples. Here's what our team built and shipped just this week:
Looping: Automating Repetitive Agent Tasks
Built by: Our Designer
Problem: Customers needed agents to perform repetitive tasks across multiple data sets
Solution: A visual looping interface that allows agents to iterate through lists and perform actions on each item
Our PM identified this need during customer interviews on Monday. By Wednesday, they had a working prototype running in our production environment. The feature includes visual workflow building, progress tracking, and error handling, functionality that would have taken our engineering team weeks to scope, design, and implement.
MCP Server: Extending Agent Capabilities
Built by: Our Solution Engineer
Problem: Agents needed better integration with external tools and services
Solution: A Model Context Protocol server that dynamically discovers and integrates new tools
This wasn't a simple integration, it's a sophisticated system that enables our agents to discover and use external tools dynamically. Our solution engineer built this while working with a prospect who needed specific API integrations, demonstrating Beam's extensibility in real-time.
Learning Hub: Centralizing Agent Training
Built by: Our CEO
Problem: Customers needed a centralized location for agent learning features
Solution: An interactive learning hub which shows all features that are need to level up your agent
Our customer success team was spending hours answering the same questions about agent optimization. Instead of creating more documentation, we built an interactive learning hub that guides users through advanced concepts.
Want to experience this builder transformation firsthand?
The Transformation Beyond Tools
While Cursor and Claude enable our transformation, the real change is cultural. We've shifted from a permission-based culture ("Can engineering build this?") to a capability-based culture ("How can we build this?").
Unlike AI prototypes that break in production environments, our approach ensures that every feature built by non-technical team members meets the same reliability standards as our core platform. This democratization has unexpected benefits:
Faster Customer Response: Solutions emerge from the people closest to customer problems
Reduced Miscommunication: No translation layer between idea and implementation
Increased Innovation: More diverse perspectives contributing to product development
Higher Quality: Features built by people who deeply understand the problems they solve
Better Team Satisfaction: Everyone can contribute meaningfully to product development
The Challenges We've Navigated
This transformation hasn't been without challenges. We've had to establish new processes for:
Code Quality: Ensuring that rapid prototyping doesn't compromise system reliability
Architecture Consistency: Maintaining coherent system design as more people contribute
Security Standards: Applying proper security practices to quickly-built features
Documentation: Keeping pace with rapid feature development
Testing: Balancing speed with thorough quality assurance
Our development team plays a crucial quality assurance role, reviewing all prototype code before it reaches production. We've found that AI-generated code often requires optimization for performance and security, but the functional logic is typically sound.
Looking Forward: The Future of Building at Beam
We're still in the early stages of this transformation. As AI development tools continue evolving, we expect even more sophisticated capabilities:
Multi-Agent Development: AI agents that can collaborate on complex features
Automated Testing: AI that generates comprehensive test suites for prototype features
Performance Optimization: Automatic scaling and optimization of AI-generated code
Cross-Platform Building: Extending our building capabilities beyond web interfaces
But the most exciting aspect isn't technological, it's human. We're discovering that when you remove the barriers between ideas and implementation, incredible things happen. People who never considered themselves "technical" are building sophisticated software solutions. The collective creativity of our entire team is now channeled directly into product development.
The Bottom Line
The era of builders at Beam represents how we think about product development and team capabilities. We've democratized building without sacrificing quality, empowered non-technical team members without replacing technical expertise, and accelerated development without compromising thoughtful design.
The transformation is ongoing. Every week brings new examples of team members solving problems they never could have addressed before. Our platform grows not just through planned development cycles but through the organic innovation of people closest to customer challenges.
If you're curious about our approach or want to see how Beam can transform your own processes, we'd love to show you what's possible when everyone becomes a builder.
The tools are here. The capability is proven. The question isn't whether this transformation will happen; it's whether you'll lead it or follow it.
Ready to build something amazing?
