"Community" undersells what this was. It's closer to a second product tightly integrated into beehiiv's core one: a feed, channels, group and one-on-one messaging, the ability to highlight and comment on posts, real-time chat. None of it could feel bolted on, though; it had to live inside beehiiv's existing platform, render newsletter posts the way beehiiv already does, and let every publication carry its own brand, so thousands of separate communities could each look like their own thing without breaking beehiiv's design system.
We joined beehiiv's engineering team as fully embedded team members: same ticket pool, same daily standups, one-week sprints where each engineer owned a full epic start to finish. Claude Code was just how our engineers worked day to day — getting up to speed in a complex codebase they hadn't touched before, writing implementation against a requirements doc, and generating the test coverage that kept quality from slipping as we moved fast. That's what let people spend their attention where it actually mattered: architecture calls and pattern decisions, not busywork.
We think about AI engineering the way we'd want any engineer to work: know the fundamentals cold, then use AI to move faster inside that. Our engineers collaborate with Claude to align on a requirements document, execute with Claude on implementation, and measure the result. That didn't change with beehiiv. It's just what let a small team ship on a timeline that would normally take a lot more people.
We also supported the Claude-powered MCP integration that lets publishers manage Community directly through Claude. Publishers can query data, set up their community in natural language, and invite their existing list of subscribers to the Community, all within a contained AI assistant. That part of the build we're still iterating on — the next phase pushes more Claude-powered capability into Community itself.
beehiiv
About beehiiv
beehiiv is the platform newsletter publishers and creators build their businesses on. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Pump Club, Colin & Samir's The Publish Press, TIME Magazine, and thousands more run on beehiiv. Founded in 2021 by Tyler Denk (formerly of Morning Brew), beehiiv quickly outgrew newsletters, adding monetization, website publishing, and a network of users that was growing exponentially.
46B
emails sent
425M
unique readers
130K
publishers
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beehiiv has scaled well beyond email, but their most engaged publishers were still sending audiences to other community platforms. They needed Community built natively by a team that could ship alongside their engineers. And they wanted a partner who could plug into their Claude environment, use it to understand their codebase rapidly, and help design where AI-native features could differentiate their Community product from a growing field of competitors.
Approach
We began with a Strategy & Design phase where we determined how Community was designed and placed within the broader beehiiv product ecosystem. We answered key questions, like how the brand should cascade, from a publisher's main newsletter and site through to their Community UI. That work led to a theming system, so publishers could carry their brand without beehiiv maintaining a third design system. Following this body of work, we embedded with beehiiv's engineering team: a shared ticket pool, daily standups, one-week sprints, each engineer owning a full epic. Claude Code sat at the center of how we worked. We leveraged it to get up to speed on an unfamiliar codebase fast, scope requirements, and write tests that kept quality in step with velocity. Alongside the build, we ran AI strategy with beehiiv and scoped where AI belonged inside a community product. That landed on an MCP integration powered by Claude, letting publishers manage their communities directly through an AI assistant.
Impact
Community launched July 2026 at beehiiv's Summer Release Event and changed how beehiiv's creators and their audiences engage: a feed that surfaces active discussions, real-time chat inside the creator's own platform, and newsletter posts that arrive with their own comment thread. beehiiv scoped Community as an 8-month build. With Rare Days and Claude Code embedded in beehiiv's engineering workflow, the team shipped an alpha to early users in 4 months, giving a first version in half the time originally forecast. Publishers also now manage their communities directly through Claude via an MCP integration beehiiv built alongside the product itself. beehiiv's own engineers are now building on Community with us, and the Claude-powered feature work continues into 2027.
"Rare Days has exceptionally high standards for engineering and AI implementation. We released this product two times faster than we forecasted. They helped level up our internal engineering team, and owned core parts of this product that accelerated us enormously.”
"Rare Days has exceptionally high standards for engineering and AI implementation. We released this product two times faster than we forecasted. They helped level up our internal engineering team, and owned core parts of this product that accelerated us enormously.”
