Build anything with Haiku 4.5, here’s how

Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 AI model enables developers to build a functional, full-stack workflow builder for just over a dollar, demonstrating a significant reduction in development costs and time.

• Claude Haiku 4.5 drastically reduces software development costs and time.

• A full-stack AI-powered workflow builder can be created for just over one dollar.

• Haiku 4.5 offers superior speed and cost-efficiency compared to other advanced AI models.

Building a software startup, which once required substantial capital and a large team, can now be achieved for less than five dollars, thanks to Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5. This AI model is presented as faster and more cost-effective than competitors like GPT-5 and even other Claude models, making rapid prototyping and development accessible. The demonstration shows how to leverage Haiku 4.5 within coding environments like Cursor and Claude Code to efficiently build a sophisticated workflow builder, highlighting the model's speed and agentic capabilities.

The Cost-Effective AI Revolution

• 00:00:05 Building a software startup, which previously cost tens of thousands of dollars and required a team of developers, can now be accomplished for less than five dollars. This is primarily attributed to Anthropic's new AI model, Claude Haiku 4.5, which is highlighted as not only superior to GPT-5 but also significantly cheaper, costing $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens, while processing around 120 tokens per second.

Building a Workflow Builder

• 00:02:09 The podcast demonstrates building an AI-powered workflow builder, a type of application gaining popularity with releases from companies like OpenAI and Eleven Labs. The process involves using the React Flow library for the drag-and-drop canvas, and Haiku 4.5 is utilized within coding tools like Kilo Code and Cursor to design and implement the code, proving that complex applications can be developed quickly and affordably. The project prioritizes simplicity, opting for a NodeJS backend and JSON files for persistence instead of SQLite to avoid initial complications and adhere to a minimal budget.

Haiku 4.5 Performance

• 00:09:27 Claude Haiku 4.5 is praised for its exceptional speed and cost-efficiency, being three times cheaper and over two times faster than Claude Sonnet, while maintaining comparable performance for coding tasks. Benchmarks indicate Haiku 4.5 is significantly better than Sonnet 4 in agentic coding and terminal actions, even though it is the smallest model in the Anthropic family. This model fills a market gap for use cases requiring rapid responses, such as chatbots or real-time translation, without sacrificing too much power.

Rapid Development & Debugging

• 00:31:04 The development process, including architectural design, code generation, UI improvements, and debugging, is showcased as incredibly fast when using Haiku 4.5. The model assists in creating a makefile for simplified server management, fixing errors, and iteratively enhancing the user interface, demonstrating its ability to quickly transform and refactor a codebase. Despite encountering several bugs, the system allows for rapid iteration and resolution, leading to a functional application with a total cost of $1.19.