With Sharetribe, you can set up your marketplace no-code and then expand its functionality with code. Sharetribe supports AI-assisted development on top of the Sharetribe Web Template (the app that powers your no-code marketplace).
AI-assisted development (also known as vibecoding) can help a non-technical founder customize their marketplace fast. It's not a solution for everything: for complex customizations, the help of an experienced developer is still recommended. However, for smaller, more straightforward customizations, it can speed up time to launch or help you ship features your users have been asking for.
So, if you have experience with AI-assisted coding or are interested in trying it out, follow this tutorial to set up a local development environment, push your code to GitHub, and set up a development instance in Render. And of course: customize your marketplace with code.
You can use the AI coding tool if you prefer. The Sharetribe skills plugin is set up to work with Codex, Gemini and Cursor. However, this tutorial is written for the Claude desktop app specifically. Our support may not be able to assist in great detail with other tools, but the tutorial can still be helpful for setup with other tools as well!
A few things to know before you dive in
AI-assisted development can genuinely help non-technical founders customize their marketplace but it's good to go in with the right expectations.
AI makes mistakes: AI coding tools can produce code that looks right but doesn't work or give different answers to the same question on different days. Always test your changes carefully.
If you hit a wall, hire an Expert: If things start breaking in ways you can't diagnose, a Sharetribe Expert can take over and help you move forward safely.
Once you go live with code customization, you no longer automatically get Sharetribe updates: Template updates are added automatically to no-code marketplaces. Custom-code marketplace need to update their template code separately. Template updates involve careful merging of changes across many files. Expert help is strongly recommended for template updates.
Test carefully before going live with customizations: Nothing you do in your development environment affects your live marketplace directly. However, when pushing changes to your live marketplace, it will affect the experience for actual users. So be careful when releasing updates to your live marketplace, especially when touching payments, user authentication, or private data.
Prerequisites
Make sure you have the following set up:
Download and install the Claude desktop app. The Claude desktop app is available for both macOS and Windows. Download it from claude.ai and sign in with your Claude account.
Create a Claude account (if you haven't already). You'll need at least a Pro plan to use the Code tab features required for this tutorial.
Set up a development environment in Console (if you haven't yet).
In the top left corner of Console, click on the box that says "Test". This opens the environment dropdown.
Click to enable a Dev marketplace.
In the modal that opens, confirm enabling the Dev environment.
This takes you to the development environment home page. It will have your setup from your Test marketplace automatically.
Now it's time to set up a local development environment on your computer and connect it to this development environment.
Tip! Share this tutorial with a different AI tool (if not Claude) and ask it to adapt the steps for its own UI.
Step 1: Install the Sharetribe Development Plugin in Claude
Open the Claude desktop app and click the Code tab at the top of the window.
In the prompt area, click the + button below to the prompt input.
Select Plugins from the menu that appears.
Choose Manage connectors (or Manage plugins if that is an option for you).
In the sidepanel, under Customize, choose Plugins.
In the panel that opens, click Add in the top right corner. Choose Add marketplace.
Choose Add from a repository.
In the panel that opens, enter
sharetribe/skillsorhttps://github.com/sharetribe/skillsin the URL input box. Click sync.
The Sharetribe skills plugin is now added as a plugin, but not yet installed. Open the plugin and click Install.
This installs the Sharetribe Development Plugin. It includes the skills Claude needs to help you get your Sharetribe development environment up and running. Once installed, open a new conversations and type /reload-skills in the Claude chat to activate it in your current session.
Step 2: Set up your development environment
There’s a selector for Chat, Cowork, and Code in the top left corner of your Claude desktop app. Choose the tab Code.
Set your Environment to Local using the selector above the prompt area. This tells Claude to work with files on your own computer.
Set your Project folder to the directory where you want to install the Sharetribe template (or create a new empty folder for it first).
Under the prompt area, there’s a Permission mode selection (it may say Accept edits, Ask permission, or something similar). Set it to Ask permissions. This way Claude will show you each change before making it, which is recommended when you're getting started.
Type /start in the prompt box and press Enter. Claude will ask what you'd like to do based on the plugin's instructions. Start with: "Set up the template locally for the first time" and follow the instructions from there.
During setup, you'll need the following credentials:
Sharetribe client ID and client secret. Find them in your Sharetribe Console under Advanced → Applications. Make sure you're in the development environment.
Stripe sandbox publishable key. Find it in your Stripe Dashboard under Developers → API keys. Make sure you're in sandbox mode.
Mapbox access token. Only needed if your marketplace uses location features (map search page and/or listing location/pickup).
Claude will walk you through each step. When it asks you to run a terminal command, you can use the integrated terminal built into the Code tab. Open it with Ctrl+` or from the Views menu in the session toolbar. If any step is unclear, ask Claude to explain further or give you more detailed instructions.
Important: Never paste your client secret or Stripe secret key directly into the Claude chat. These should only be entered in your terminal (Sharetribe Client Secret) or in Console (Stripe secret key).
Step 3: Set up GitHub and deploy to Render
Once your local development environment is successfully installed, Claude will ask what you'd like to do next. If you want to only make local changes for now (for example, if you're only experimenting) you can move straight on to Step 4.
If you want a staging environment online that's shareable with others, connect your code to GitHub and then deploy to a staging environment on Render. Claude will help you with both.
Start with the GitHub setup. This is necessary for setting up a staging environment in Render. Tell Claude you want to "Connect your code to GitHub". Once that's done, move to "Deploy to a staging environment on Render".
After setting up a staging environment in Render, you can also switch your dev environment marketplace domain to your Render URL.
A note for Windows users: Some Git and terminal operations behave slightly differently on Windows. If Claude suggests a command that doesn't work, describe the error and mention you're on Windows, and Claude will adapt the instructions accordingly.
If any step is unclear or something doesn't work, describe the problem or error to Claude and it will most likely be able to instruct you further.
Step 4: Start customizing
It's time to tell Claude what you want to build or change in your marketplace.
Tell Claude what you want to achieve. Claude will ask you clarifying questions to more accurately build what you need. You could ask it to, for example:
Change the font of the marketplace
Build a "Favorite listings" feature
Modify the listing creation form to better fit your needs
Add an email notification to a key part of the user flow that's not available out of the box
When customizing your marketplace with code, you can still make changes and updates in Console. For example, even if you customize your signup page, you can still add user fields in Console in the development environment. However, be mindful that some customizations will affect your freedom to edit settings in Console. For example, if you make updates to your transaction process, you can no longer make updates to that listing type in Console, as your custom flow now supports functionality that is not available in the no-code setup.
Tips for working with Claude
Ask Claude to plan before building. You can set the permission mode to Plan mode in the session toolbar. This has Claude map out its approach in steps before making any changes. Once you're happy with the plan, switch to Auto accept edits or Ask permissions to execute it.
Work in small chunks, like adding one specific feature at a time. Smaller, focused prompts tend to produce better results than large, open-ended ones.
If something breaks, describe the problem or error message to Claude and ask it to troubleshoot. If you want to undo the changes entirely, ask Claude to walk them back. You can also use the diff view: click the +12 -1 indicator in the session to review exactly what changed file by file before things went wrong.
Editing large JSON files can use a lot of credits. Editing or translating large files like the marketplace text (translation) JSON can use a lot of credits. You can ask Claude to point you to the right place to edit the texts in Console.
Things to be aware of
Claude can and does make mistakes. Always test customizations carefully. Check edge cases and test the mobile experience as well.
Customized marketplaces don't receive new Sharetribe features automatically. Unlike no-code marketplaces, your custom codebase needs to be manually updated to include new Sharetribe template features. In most cases, this requires a developer. You can always skip updates that aren't relevant to your marketplace, but it's good to be aware of this before you start customizing heavily.
Be especially careful with anything touching payments or user authentication. Bugs in the transaction process or login flow can have real consequences for your users and your business. These areas deserve extra scrutiny and possibly a professional review before going live.
Step 5: Going live
Before you publish your customized marketplace, it's worth taking time to test and review properly. A broken experience at launch is hard to recover from.
Testing checklist
Before subscribing to an Extend plan and going live with your customizations, go through all the key user flows end to end:
Sign-up
Listing creation
Search
Transaction and messaging
User account management, including adding payout details
Pay particular attention to the flows you customized, and don't forget the mobile experience. Responsive issues are easy to miss when working in a code editor.
If you set up a staging environment in Render (Step 3), share it with a few people who weren't involved in building it and ask them to try your dev marketplace with fresh eyes.
Then, click to "Go live" in Console and upgrade to the Extend plan! After that, follow the instructions for setting up a live marketplace (a production environment).
Do you need to hire an Expert before launching?
This depends on what you've built and what's at stake. Here's a rough guide.
Hiring a Sharetribe Expert for a code review is worth considering if:
Your marketplace handles real payments and you've made customizations to the transaction process
You've modified anything related to user authentication or data privacy
You're launching to a sizeable audience and can't afford downtime or bugs post-launch
The customizations you made are extensive or touch many parts of the codebase
You have no technical experience yourself and are unsure about launching
You can consider skipping an Expert review if:
You're technical enough to review your work yourself (or have someone in your team who is)
Your customizations are limited to design and copy changes (fonts, colors, text)
You've added front-end features that don't interact with payments or private user data
You're doing a soft launch to a small, early-adopter audience and have time to fix issues as they come up
Ready to get started? Go to Console and set up your development environment!