Claude Draws Machines You Can Open: Is It REALLY Good?

I typed one sentence into Claude and got a machine I can turn round, open up and press. It's a free Claude skill called Colorfigures, made by April Zhu. I tested it on three everyday things: a click pen, a toilet cistern and a drip coffee maker. What you'll learn - What a Claude skill is, and what Colorfigures makes - How to download it, look inside it, and install it in Claude Code - What Claude does while you wait: it writes the object, then checks its own drawing from every side - How long each figure took, and what it would cost Honest trade-offs - It's slow: 25 to 70 minutes per figure in my tests - If you paid Claude for each use, each figure would cost about 6 to 12 US dollars (Claude Code's own estimate at list prices; I ran on a monthly plan, where it uses part of your limit) - The motion is faster than real life: the coffee brews in seconds, and the cistern refills about 4 to 5 times faster - My pen run stopped once before it finished, and I told it to carry on Timestamps 0:00 One sentence, a machine you can open 0:20 What Colorfigures is 0:49 How to make your own 1:28 How it works: it checks its own drawing 2:06 My three tests 3:28 The problems 3:46 What it means for you How to install it (Claude Code, Mac or Linux) 1. Download it, and look inside before you install: curl -fsSLO https://april-zhu.com/colorfigures/colorfigures.tar.gz tar -tzf colorfigures.tar.gz 2. Unpack it into your skills folder: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && tar -xzf colorfigures.tar.gz -C ~/.claude/skills 3. Restart Claude Code, type /colorfigures and describe your object in one sentence. My tests (1 November 2026, Claude Code 2.1.280, Claude Opus 5.5, one sentence each) - Click pen: "a click ballpoint pen: click it and show how the tip stays out until you click again". 25.2 minutes over two runs (it stopped once, and I resumed it). It uses a rotating cam, as many click pens do. - Toilet cistern: "a toilet cistern: press the flush and show how it knows when to stop filling". 30.7 minutes. A full flush sends 6.0 litres; a float rises with the water and shuts the fill valve at 7.8 litres. - Drip coffee maker: "a drip coffee maker: pour in water, switch it on, and show how the hot water climbs up to the coffee without a pump". 69.7 minutes. Steam bubbles lift the water up a thin tube, and a one-way valve stops it falling back. It found and fixed at least four of its own mistakes. - All three ran at the same time on one Mac, so yours may be faster. In every test, the way the machine works was right. Numbers used (checked 1 November 2026) - Times: each run's own working time from Claude Code (duration_ms) - Costs: Claude Code's own estimate per run at list prices (total_cost_usd): 7.81, 6.49 and 11.56 US dollars - Time split: about 15 minutes writing and 15 checking for the cistern; 39 writing and 30 checking for the coffee maker - The skill: 8 files, a 76 KB download; its drawing code and build script make no web requests (I searched them) Sources - Colorfigures skill page: https://april-zhu.com/colorfigures - Colorfigures demo (26 figures): https://april-zhu.com/colorfigures-demo - The figures in this video were made with Colorfigures (https://april-zhu.com/colorfigures) by April Zhu, MIT licence Which machine would you like to see opened up next? Tell me in the comments. Follow for more AI news, explained simply. #Claude #ClaudeCode #AI