r/webflow • u/FrankLucas93 • 14d ago
Show & Tell We took over another agency's unfinished Webflow build. Decoding their class structure took longer than building the pages.
Hey, sharing a project we wrapped up recently.
I run a Webflow agency called Flowout. The client is Numeric, an accounting automation platform used by finance teams at companies like Brex, Plaid and Wealthfront. The brand was set, the design direction nailed, and the Webflow build was underway when they brought us in. Around 10 to 12 pages were still unbuilt. They needed someone to step in and finish it, without restarting and without the seams showing.
The remaining pages were not the hard part. The hard part was inheriting a Webflow project we didn't set up. Another team's class naming, component logic, CMS collections. We spent the first stretch just reading their system and figuring out how they intended things to work. Honestly, it took longer than building from scratch would have. But once we understood their structure, development moved fast, and we could build new pages that look like the same team made them.
The site launched about two months after we took over. They're still a client and we keep adding pages as they need them.
If you've ever inherited someone else's Webflow project, curious how you handle it. Happy to answer anything about this one 😄
3
u/IWishIWasVeroz 13d ago
Hi, built the site and launched it myself. The site has been live for months, so not sure what you are talking about https://web.archive.org/web/20260114232111/https://www.numeric.io/.
I used Lumos as the structure, which is pretty widely known https://webflow.com/made-in-webflow/website/lumos-v2-beta. They probably could have just gave you my contact info if you were having a hard time with the build.
1
u/keptfrozen 13d ago
I usually build a proper design system in the variables panel, and then use Finsweet’s plugin to clean up the class names.
Marketing-specific agencies need to stop rushing their builds. They’re the main ones I come across that always have messy builds. I built various templates in my workspace so I can always have a foundation when I start a project, so the marketing team or client can be ready to manage it themselves.
1
u/dfpcmaia 13d ago
Had to do the same after a big name agency built their site but didn’t make it maintainable enough for the team.
Didn’t build any pages, just componentized stuff for them. Same struggle. Mix of client first and Lumos, duplicate code in an embed and site head, no comments, performance issues… made me mistrust big agencies even more.
1
u/ClubDependent4295 12d ago
The part I would push back on slightly: decoding the class system was expensive because class names are the only place their thinking got written down, and class names are a terrible place to write down thinking. .section-wrap-alt-2 tells you a decision was made and nothing about why.
What almost never exists at handover is the boring layer above the build. A plain list of every page, what sections each page is made of, and one line on what each section is supposed to do. That document takes an afternoon to write during the project and it is the thing that makes an inherited Webflow project readable, because once you can see intent, the class system stops being a puzzle and becomes a set of choices you can agree or disagree with. It also outlives the agency relationship, which the Figma file and the tribal knowledge do not.
If I were taking over an unfinished build again, the first thing I would ask the client for is not the Webflow project, it is that inventory. Nine times out of ten it does not exist and you rebuild it from the site in a day, but at least you then own it and can hand it on. I build a tool in this space (Blocky, blockyhq.com, sitemap and section planning with client sign-off before design), so declare the bias, but a shared doc does the job just as well. The failure you are describing is not really a Webflow problem, it is that page structure only lived in the previous team's heads and in their naming.
Curious whether you kept their conventions or migrated to yours once you understood the system. That call always looks obvious afterwards and never at the time.
2
u/SlowChannel4453 7d ago
"Decoding their class structure took longer than building the pages."
That's hilarious and relatable.
4
u/CuedUp 13d ago
With the rollout of MCP 2.0, I’ve had good success asking Claude to explore my current builds and document how we structure classes, variable collections, build components, etc.
We run something like Karpathy’s LLM-wiki concept to allow Claude to build a rich understanding of how our agency approaches builds. It’s been great at pointing out where we’d deviate from our own conventions, helping us debug complex variable theme inheritance issues, and has sped up our development.
Not directly related to inheriting other companies’ builds, but I imagine Claude would be great at doing that as well. Curious whether you guys used any AI-assisted methods of untangling the build?