My name is Masaki Hirokawa — I develop iOS and Android apps independently while doing art projects in different countries around the world.
When people ask if I use AI tools, I always want to answer "yes, but here's how" — because the ways I use Claude don't quite match the tutorials and demos I see online.
Yes, I use it for code. But honestly, the more surprising discoveries have come from using Claude as an artist and as someone working across cultures. Here's what I've actually found.
Writing Artist Statements in English
This was my first real revelation.
Writing a concept statement in Japanese feels natural. But writing an artist statement in English for a gallery overseas or an international competition — that's an entirely different challenge. Literal translation rarely works; the nuance shifts or disappears entirely.
What I started doing: writing the concept in Japanese first, as if I were just talking through my ideas. Something like: "This series started with a desire to create breathing room in the deeply personal space of a phone wallpaper — a place where a stranger's emotions might quietly resonate."
The English Claude gives back isn't a translation — it's a reinterpretation for how that idea would be expressed in an English-language art context. When it offered "a liminal space for resonance," something clicked. That phrase captured what I was doing without overstating or understating it.
I always revise the final version myself. But having a starting point that already understands the cultural register I'm aiming for has made the whole process feel far less daunting.
Preparing Multilingual App Store Descriptions
Any indie developer who's tried to localize their App Store copy into more than two languages knows this pain. English and Japanese alone take time. Add French, German, and Spanish, and you're deep into copy-paste territory that's easy to rush through.
My shift with Claude wasn't "translate this" — it was more like "help me adapt this for that audience." I'd write the Japanese description first, then write the English myself, then ask Claude to adjust the English for, say, the German App Store — keeping the tone gentle and calm, because it's a healing wallpaper app.
What surprised me was how much the tone instruction actually changed the output. "Keep it gentle" came through in word choice and sentence rhythm, not just vocabulary. I can't claim perfect localization for every language yet, but I'm reaching it with more intentionality than before.
Understanding My Own Code from Six Months Ago
Solo development has a particular challenge: your past self is a stranger.
I started asking Claude to explain my own Swift code as if I were reading it ten years from now and had no memory of writing it. This sounds silly, but it turned out to be genuinely useful.
The unexpected part: while explaining the code, Claude would sometimes surface issues I hadn't noticed. "This section works as expected, but if [edge case], it may produce an error." When that happened with a specific piece of logic I'd written quickly, I remembered dealing with almost the exact bug months earlier.
There's no colleague to code-review my work. Claude isn't perfect at this either — it occasionally misreads intent or overcomplicates things. But it gives me a second perspective I wouldn't otherwise have.
Finding Language for a Creative Series Still in Progress
Have you ever had a rich, complex idea in your head that evaporates the moment you try to put it into words?
I started dumping raw creative keywords into Claude mid-process. Things like: "light in darkness but not hope — more like loneliness, the place where digital and nature overlap, silence, wallpaper as canvas." Not sentences — fragments.
Asking "what concepts do you see here? Give me a few interpretations" led to surprising territory. I'd respond with "not quite — closer to this," and we'd push further. Sometimes Claude would name something I'd been circling around without naming. That naming helped me make decisions in the work itself.
This isn't outsourcing creativity. It's more like using conversation to excavate what's already in my head.
Thinking Through Cultural Context for Global Presentations
Making art internationally has taught me that the same work needs to be framed differently depending on where you're showing it.
In Japan, framing a piece around the smartphone wallpaper as a cultural form resonates — it's an intimate, understood space. In Europe, that context needs more explanation, but framing the work around "the phone screen as a modern interior space" tends to land differently and often better.
I've started asking Claude: "If I were explaining this piece to an audience in [country or region], what context would help them understand it?" The answers aren't always perfectly accurate, but they consistently offer angles I hadn't thought to consider. At minimum, they prompt me to do more targeted research.
What These Five Uses Have in Common
Across all of these, Claude works best not as a tool that gives me answers, but as a place to think things through. In creative work especially, the right answer isn't predetermined. You have a direction, but the best form hasn't emerged yet. Claude is a useful thinking partner in that space.
The one thing I keep returning to: when I use the output directly without making it my own, something feels off. It's not my work anymore. So my practice is to treat Claude as an extension of my own thinking — not a replacement for it. The last judgment is always mine.
If you're curious whether Claude Pro is worth the upgrade for work like this, this honest comparison of free vs. Pro might be useful. And if you want to automate recurring tasks alongside your creative workflow, Cowork's scheduled tasks feature is worth exploring.