Solo Developer Builds H-1B Visa Intelligence Tool with Claude Code

Tool Overview
H1B.Guru is a free web application that transforms raw US Department of Labor disclosure data into searchable intelligence for H-1B job seekers. The tool was built by a solo developer using Claude Code as the primary development assistant.
Core Features
- Search 800K+ LCA filings and PERM records with filters for employer, location, job title, and wage level
- Sponsor profiles showing filing statistics, approval rates, wage distributions, and green card activity
- Salary benchmarking by occupation and state
- "Ask Guru" AI chat that answers natural language questions about the data (e.g., "Find cap-exempt companies in Delaware")
Technical Stack
The entire application was built with Claude Code assistance:
- Python ETL pipeline that ingests raw DOL Excel files, performs entity reconciliation on messy employer names, and loads data into Neon Postgres
- FastAPI backend with async Postgres queries
- Next.js 14 frontend deployed on Vercel
How Claude Code Assisted Development
The developer reported that Claude Code was particularly valuable for:
- ETL Pipeline: Building probabilistic entity matching to handle dozens of spelling variations in employer names, creating a pipeline orchestrator with resume capability, and implementing edge-case handling for data nuances like amended filings and LCAs covering multiple workers
- Frontend Development: Generating the entire UI including filter modals, infinite scroll, responsive tables, sidebar components, and dark mode implementation based on rough descriptions
- API Layer: Writing parameterized SQL generation for the Ask Guru feature (where the LLM generates a query specification rather than raw SQL to prevent injection), implementing streaming SSE architecture, and creating sponsor statistics aggregation queries
The developer noted that most features went from idea to deployed in a single session, and the project took approximately 2 days for core development plus 2 additional days for marketing preparation. The tool is available at https://www.h1b.guru with no signup or paywall required.
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
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