For a long time, custom digital signage came down to a hard choice. Drag-and-drop templates were quick but generic, and anything genuinely tailored — a live building directory, a branded lobby display, a screen that actually reacts to its surroundings — meant hiring a developer and waiting days for the result.
Our new Revel Digital webapp skill removes that trade-off. Working with an AI assistant like Claude, you simply describe the screen you want in plain English. The skill builds it for you — polished, professional, and ready for a TV — then publishes it straight to your Revel Digital account. No code, no design system to learn, no build process. Just a conversation that takes minutes.
To show what that looks like, we built a clean, professional building directory — date, time, live weather, and a tenant list grouped by floor — start to finish, simply by describing it.
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| Building directory app built entirely by Claude Code, ready to deploy. |
You describe it. The skill handles the hard parts.
The reason this works without a developer is that all the things a professional would normally have to get right are already built into the skill. You don't ask for them — they just come standard:
- It's automatically connected to your player. Every app the skill builds is wired to the Revel Digital player through our client SDK, with no setup on your part. That connection is what lets the directory show the screen's own local time and pull weather for wherever that screen physically sits.
- It looks right on a big screen. Text is sized to be readable from across a lobby, and the layout stays clear of the edges so nothing gets cut off on a TV — a detail that quietly ruins a lot of homemade signage.
- It meets accessibility standards. Section 508 and WCAG requirements are handled for you, which matters when signage is going into a public building.
- It matches your brand. Tell it your color and whether you want a light or dark look, and the whole app is themed to match.
You stay focused on what you want the screen to say. The skill takes care of how to make it look and behave professionally.
We built the directory by just asking
The starting point was a single, plain-language request — no technical terms required:
Create a building directory for our signage. Make it clean and professional with a dark theme. Show the current date and time and the local weather, and list the tenants grouped by floor.
That one description was enough. The skill came back with a complete, working directory — the layout, the live clock, the weather, the floor groupings, all in place. Live weather comes from Open-Meteo, a free weather service, automatically tied to each screen's location, so a directory deployed in one city shows that city's conditions with nothing extra to configure.
Refining is just more conversation
The first result was already usable, and improving it was simply a matter of saying what you wanted changed, with each version appearing in seconds:
Put the clock and weather together in the top corner.
Give each floor its own panel so it's easier to scan.
Actually, let's try it in dark mode.
No menus to dig through, no files to touch. If you can describe the change, you can make it — and because the brand and theme are built in, even a request like switching to dark mode keeps everything looking polished and readable.
Publishing straight to your screens
When the directory looked right, publishing it was one more sentence:
Publish this to my Revel Digital account.
Behind the scenes, the Revel Digital connector (our MCP server) handles that step right inside the same conversation. Moments later, the finished app shows up in your Revel Digital media library, ready to drop into a playlist and schedule to any of your screens — exactly like any other piece of content. There's no separate tool, no hand-off, no waiting.
The whole thing, by the clock
When you add it up, the time you actually spend is short:
- A first working app from one description — on screen in a matter of minutes.
- A few spoken-language tweaks to get it exactly right — seconds each.
- One sentence to publish it to your account.
The slow, expensive parts of a signage project — the design work, the development, the publishing setup — have all been folded into the conversation. What's left is mostly just deciding what you want the screen to say.
Why it matters
A building directory is a simple example on purpose, but the same approach covers far more: a wayfinding board, a menu, a meeting-room schedule, a live stats display, a donor wall. If you can picture it and describe it, you can have it on your screens that same day — looking like something a professional studio produced, without needing one.
And because the whole thing fits in a single conversation, trying an idea costs almost nothing. Spin one up, see it on a screen, keep it or move on — in the time it used to take just to schedule the first meeting.
From an idea to a polished app on your signage — in minutes, and entirely in your own words.
Demo
Getting set up
You won't be writing any code, but there's a short one-time setup that teaches Claude how to build Revel Digital apps and connects it to your account. You do this once. There are two ways to do it — pick whichever matches how you like to work.
Either way, you'll need a Revel Digital account and a paid Claude plan.
Option A: The Claude desktop app (recommended)
This is the friendliest path — everything happens in menus and a chat window, with nothing to type at a command line. Install the Claude desktop app, then:
- Add the webapp skill. Download
revel-webapp-skill.zipfrom the skill's Releases page. In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities → Skills, choose Upload skill, and select the ZIP. While you're there, make sure Code execution is turned on — that's what lets Claude build the app for you. - Connect your Revel Digital account. Open Settings → Connectors, click the + next to Connectors, and choose Add custom connector. Name it "Revel Digital" and paste in this address:
https://mcp.reveldigital.io/mcp. Click Add, then Connect — a browser window opens for you to log in to Revel Digital. That's the only sign-in step, and there are no keys or passwords to copy anywhere.
Now just start a new chat and describe the screen you want.
Option B: Claude Code (command line)
If you're comfortable with a terminal, Claude Code does the same thing with two short commands. Add the skill:
/plugin marketplace add RevelDigital/reveldigital-webapp-skill
/plugin install revel-webapp@reveldigital
(Later on, /plugin marketplace update reveldigital pulls the newest version.) Then connect your Revel Digital account:
claude mcp add --transport http reveldigital https://mcp.reveldigital.io/mcp
The first time it's used, a browser window opens for you to log in to Revel Digital — same one-time sign-in, no keys to store.
Whichever you choose, that's the whole setup. From here on, it's all plain language: describe the screen you want, refine it by talking, and ask Claude to publish it when it's ready.
Links
- Webapp skill: github.com/RevelDigital/reveldigital-webapp-skill
- Revel Digital: reveldigital.com
- Weather data: Open-Meteo
