The problem
I wanted to see how far I could push automation and AI-assisted building on a real product: a shop selling beautifully designed map prints of the places people care about. Two rules. The prints had to look quite a bit different to what other companies make, and the business had to need as little of my time as possible.
What I did
I designed and built the whole shop so nobody has to touch an order:
- Customers design and customise their own print, and see exactly how it will look before it goes to the printer.
- Payment triggers a 300 DPI print file automatically. It goes straight to a print partner, is printed on 240gsm artist paper and posted by Royal Mail.
- My own world map data and rendering service, rather than paying per map.
- Unit costs and margins modelled for every size before launch.
Maps that look different
The design is where the data work shows.
- Every map has a digital elevation model underneath it. I downloaded over 130,000 tiles to cover the whole globe, then applied hillshade so the prints have depth.
- Contour lines on top, because they look good.
- 19 map styles. Customers can zoom in and out and drag the map to frame exactly what they want printed.
- A live preview, so what they see is what arrives.
A map for every memorable place
- Strava integration, so runners and riders can show their marathon route and time.
- Upload a GPX file to add your own route if you don't use Strava.
- Drop a pin for a new home, a first date, or anything else.
- Add a title, subtitle, coordinates and more.
- 7,800 wedding venues, for the perfect first wedding anniversary gift (it's the paper anniversary).
- Over 750 motor-racing and karting circuits, plus 26 marathons and 26 cycle races. Racers can add their result, like “Fastest lap” or “1st podium”.
- 1,500 airfields and airports, for anyone who's just flown their first solo.
Social media that runs itself
Promoting the shop used to take around 35 hours a month. Now it takes about 10 minutes, and the only manual step is checking each map before it posts.
- A scheduled Claude job searches the world for events that can be mapped and brings back 20 to 30 a month, such as the NYC Marathon, the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch and the Rolex Middle Sea Race.
- For each event it finds the route, draws it on one of the shop's maps for me to approve, and writes a few paragraphs about the event with hashtags and a link.
- The map image is resized for each social platform and sent to Buffer, which schedules it into a calendar of posts.
- The same content builds a new page on the website for that print, so each post lands on the right page and the site gains useful, search-friendly content about every event. From there, people can order the print, customise it or design their own.
- The four latest products are pushed into a link-in-bio page, so it always shows what was promoted most recently.
How I built it
I built Maps & Son with Claude Code in the terminal, paired with Obsidian as its memory, and automated testing before anything goes live. Knowing which tools and approaches to use is what takes it beyond “vibe coding”.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” About 80% of my time goes into getting the prompts spot on, so I get quality results whenever I build something new.
The result
- Live at mapsandson.com since August 2026.
- Fully automated from order to doorstep, with social media that fills its own calendar.
- 35 hours of monthly marketing work cut to about 10 minutes.
Example prints
Keswick: hillshade brings out the fells. 
Grassington, North Yorkshire. 
One of 1,500 airfields and airports. 
One of 750+ circuits. 
Oxford, in a circle layout.
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