AI-Powered Development: Building React & Three.js Apps with Claude
Z
Zack Saadioui
8/10/2025
Can You REALLY Build Advanced React Apps with Three.js Using Only Claude Code? Let's Find Out.
So, you've seen the hype. AI that writes code. You've probably messed around with it, asking it to build a simple to-do list or a basic website layout. It's impressive, for sure. But the real question, the one that keeps serious developers up at night, is whether these tools can handle the HEAVY stuff. I'm talking about complex, production-grade applications. Specifically, can you build an advanced React app, complete with the mind-bending 3D graphics of Three.js, relying solely on an AI like Anthropic's Claude?
Honestly, the answer is a bit of a "yes & no" situation, & it's WAY more interesting than a simple answer would suggest. As someone who's spent a ton of time in the trenches of both front-end development & the wild world of 3D on the web, I've been experimenting with this exact question. It's a game-changer, but not in the way you might think. You're not just going to type "build me a competitor to Figma" & get a perfect, bug-free codebase. But what you can do is pretty darn close to magic.
Let's dive into what "advanced" really means in this context, where Claude shines, where it stumbles, & what the workflow of an AI-assisted developer actually looks like today.
What Makes a React & Three.js App "Advanced" Anyway?
Before we can even talk about building one, we need to be on the same page about what "advanced" even means. It's not just about having a spinning cube on your landing page. We're talking about layers of complexity that push both React & Three.js to their limits.
Here’s a taste of what we're up against:
Deep State Management: Forget simple
1
useState
hooks. Advanced apps often have a global state that's shared across dozens, if not hundreds, of components. Think about a collaborative 3D modeling tool. Multiple users are manipulating objects, changing colors, & adjusting lighting in real-time. That state needs to be managed flawlessly, often with libraries like Redux Toolkit or Zustand, to prevent the entire app from collapsing into a buggy mess.
Performance is EVERYTHING: When you're rendering complex 3D scenes with thousands of objects, shadows, & post-processing effects, performance is paramount. A poorly optimized app will turn your user's laptop into a jet engine. This means mastering React's memoization tools (
1
React.memo
,
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useMemo
,
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useCallback
) & understanding how to prevent unnecessary re-renders that kill frame rates. With Three.js, it's about managing geometry, textures, & draw calls efficiently.
Complex User Interactions: We're not just talking about button clicks. In a 3D environment, users need to drag, drop, rotate, pan, & zoom. They need to interact with objects in the 3D scene, which then needs to update the React UI, & vice-versa. This bridge between the 2D world of React & the 3D world of Three.js is where things get TRICKY. Libraries like
1
react-three-fiber
make this easier, but it's still a major hurdle.
Dynamic Data & APIs: The 3D scene is rarely static. It's often driven by data from a backend server. Imagine a 3D data visualization that pulls live stock market data & represents it as a dynamic, explorable city. This involves fetching data, handling loading & error states, & efficiently updating the Three.js scene without dropping frames.
Authentication & User-Specific Views: Many advanced apps require users to log in & see their own data. In a 3D context, this could mean loading a user's custom 3D avatar, their saved architectural designs, or their progress in a web-based game. This adds a whole other layer of complexity to state management & data fetching.
So, when we ask if Claude can build this, we're not asking for a simple script. We're asking if it can reason about architecture, performance, & complex user flows.
Where Claude Shines: Your New Superpowered Junior Dev
Okay, so here's the good news. Claude is INCREDIBLY good at a lot of the heavy lifting. Think of it less as a lead architect & more as the most efficient, knowledgeable junior developer you've ever worked with.
1. Scaffolding & Boilerplate:
This is where you'll see the most immediate "wow" factor. Setting up a new React project with TypeScript, ESLint, Prettier, & all the other modern tooling can be a drag. Then, you have to install
1
three
,
1
react-three-fiber
, &
1
@react-three/drei
. Claude can do all of this for you. You can literally just ask it: "Set up a new React project using Vite, TypeScript, & include
1
react-three-fiber
&
1
@react-three/drei
for 3D rendering."
It will spit out the terminal commands & the initial file structure. This alone saves a good chunk of time & mental energy. It's not just about speed; it's about reducing the friction to get started.
2. Component Generation:
This is where things get REALLY fun. Need a component? Just describe it. For example, I was working on a project & needed a simple UI panel to control the properties of a 3D object. I prompted Claude:
"Create a React component called
1
PropertiesPanel
. It should take an object's
1
position
,
1
rotation
, &
1
scale
as props. For each property, it should display X, Y, & Z input sliders. When a slider changes, it should call an
1
onUpdate
function with the new values."
In seconds, I had a fully-formed React component, complete with state management for the sliders & prop types. It got me about 80% of the way there. I still had to tweak the styling & integrate it with my specific state management solution, but the core logic was done.
Turns out, developers are using Claude for this kind of thing all the time. One user on Reddit mentioned creating a 3D visualizer for crypto data entirely with Claude & Three.js. It’s a powerful way to quickly prototype ideas.
3. Learning & Debugging:
This is an underrated superpower. Three.js has a notoriously steep learning curve. The documentation is good, but it can be dense. With Claude, you have an interactive learning partner.
Stuck on how to implement shadows? Ask it. "How do I add realistic shadows to my
1
react-three-fiber
scene?" It will not only explain the concepts of casting & receiving shadows but also provide you with the exact code snippet, including the necessary lights & object properties. It can explain what each line of code does. This is HUGE for getting over learning hurdles.
The same goes for debugging. Pasting a cryptic error message into Claude often yields a much clearer explanation of what's going wrong than a Stack Overflow search.
4. Writing Shaders & Complex Logic:
This was the most surprising one for me. Writing shaders in GLSL (the language of 3D graphics) is a dark art. It's complex, math-heavy, & unforgiving. But Claude can actually write them. I saw a YouTube video where a developer used Claude to generate a 3D carousel, including the custom shader code (TSL, Three.js Shading Language) needed for rounded corners on the 3D images. That's a non-trivial task that would take a human developer a significant amount of time to research & implement.
The Reality Check: Where You, the Human, Are Still the Boss
So, if Claude is so great, why can't you just fire all your developers? Because there's a 20% of the job that's still uniquely human. This is the part that separates a cool tech demo from a robust, scalable application.
1. High-Level Architecture:
Claude can build the bricks, but you need to be the architect who designs the house. It doesn't have the context of your entire application, your business goals, or your long-term vision. You need to decide how the components fit together. How should the state flow through the application? What's the best way to structure your files & folders for a project that will be maintained by a team of five for the next three years?
Claude might give you an architecture, but it might not be the right one. As one developer noted, AI can sometimes get excited & refactor your whole codebase when you just wanted to change one small thing. You need to be the guiding hand.
2. The Final 20% - Business Logic & Edge Cases:
Claude is great at generating the "happy path" code. But applications live & die in the edge cases. What happens when the API call fails? What if the user inputs a negative number into a scale property? What if they try to drag an object outside the defined boundaries?
This is where your deep understanding of the problem domain comes in. You have to anticipate these issues & write the code to handle them gracefully. One developer who built a full-stack app with Claude's help put it perfectly: Claude built the entire authentication flow in an hour, but he spent two days hardening it for actual security requirements. That's the difference between a prototype & a product.
3. Optimization & Fine-Tuning:
While Claude can give you performant code to start with, optimizing an advanced 3D application is an art. It involves deep profiling, understanding GPU bottlenecks, & making tiny, informed tweaks. You might need to merge geometries, use instanced rendering for thousands of objects, or implement Level of Detail (LOD) to reduce complexity for objects that are far away.
These are advanced techniques that require a deep understanding of how the graphics pipeline works. You, the developer, need to use browser developer tools to analyze performance & direct Claude on what to optimize. "This part of the code is causing a bottleneck, can you help me rewrite it using instanced meshes?"
4. The "Taste" Factor:
This one is a bit more abstract, but it's real. Building a great user experience isn't just about writing functional code. It's about the feel of the application. How fast should the camera animate when you click on an object? What's the right easing function to use? How should the UI respond to give the user a sense of delight?
This is about creative direction & product sense. It's the human touch that turns a functional tool into something people love to use.
A New Workflow: The Human-AI Partnership
So, what does this all mean for the modern developer? It means your job is changing, not disappearing. The new workflow is a partnership.
Plan & Architect: You start by mapping out the application on a whiteboard or in a notebook. You define the major components, the flow of data, & the core user journeys.
Claude as a Code Monkey: You then turn to Claude to do the grunt work. You ask it to generate the components, the utility functions, & the boilerplate code. You review, edit, & integrate its output.
Iterate & Refine: You run the code, you test it, & you find the bugs & the rough edges. You go back to Claude with specific requests: "This component isn't updating correctly when the state changes, can you help me fix it?" or "This animation feels clunky, can you suggest a smoother easing function?"
Human Polish: You handle the critical business logic, the security hardening, & the fine-grained performance tuning. You are the final quality gate.
This iterative loop is incredibly powerful. It allows you to move at a speed that was previously unimaginable, focusing your brainpower on the hard problems of architecture & user experience, rather than the syntax of a
1
for
loop.
A Quick Word on Customer Interaction & Arsturn
Now, let's think about the "business" side of these advanced apps. Many complex web applications, especially B2B tools or e-commerce sites with 3D viewers, need robust customer support. If a user gets stuck configuring a 3D product or has a question about the interface, they need help now.
This is actually a perfect place to integrate another layer of AI. Instead of just using AI to build the app, you can use it to support the app. This is where a tool like Arsturn comes into play. Imagine you've built a sophisticated 3D product configurator for a furniture company. A user is on the site at 10 PM trying to figure out how to change the fabric on a sofa. They're stuck.
Instead of making them wait for an email response, you could have an AI chatbot, built with Arsturn, right on the page. Because Arsturn helps businesses create custom AI chatbots trained on their own data, this chatbot would know everything about your application. It could instantly answer questions like "How do I change the leg style?" or "What are the dimensions of this table?" This provides 24/7, instant customer support, improving the user experience dramatically. For a business, this isn't just about support; it's about engagement & lead generation. Arsturn helps businesses build these no-code AI chatbots to boost conversions & provide a personalized customer experience, right within the advanced app you just built.
The Verdict
So, can you build advanced React & Three.js apps using only Claude? If by "only" you mean without ever writing a single line of code yourself, then no. Not yet, anyway.
But can you use Claude as your primary coding partner to build these apps faster, more efficiently, & with a better understanding of the underlying technologies than ever before? ABSOLUTELY.
The future of development isn't about AI replacing humans. It's about AI augmenting them. It's a paradigm shift. We're moving from being line-by-line coders to being system architects & AI directors. Your value as a developer is no longer just in your ability to write code, but in your ability to think critically, solve problems at a high level, & effectively guide these incredibly powerful tools to create amazing things.
So, go ahead. Open up Claude. Start a new project. You might be surprised at what you can build.
Hope this was helpful & gives you a realistic picture of what's possible. Let me know what you think