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How I AI

How I AI

How I AI, hosted by Claire Vo, is for anyone wondering how to actually use these magical new tools to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. In each episode, guests will share a specific, practical, and impactful way they’ve learned to use AI in their work or life. Expect 30-minute episodes, live screen sharing, and tips/tricks/workflows you can copy immediately. If you want to demystify AI and learn the skills you need to thrive in this new world, this podcast is for you.

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Episodes

GPT-6 Astra is a banger - here’s everything I’ve built

I got early access to GPT-6 Astra: when I say this model broke through tasks I couldn’t crack with 5.6 Sol or Fable, I mean it specifically: the ChatPRD product intelligence feature, building 3D games, the hardware hack, and a handful of one-shot coding projects I’d tried and failed on repeatedly.

What you’ll learn:

Why Astra’s computer use feels different, and which production tools I’m trusting it withThe one feature I’d thrown every model at for six months, and what finally got it to 90%How I’m using browser use for QA, not building, and what it found that I would’ve missedWhy I think UI is genuinely back, and what that means for SaaS and MCPsThe hardware hack I’d been chasing since GPT-5.5, and how Astra finally cracked itWhat Astra built me in Blender in one shot, and why 3D is my new capability benchmarkThe AIM-style Mac app Astra made in one shot, and what it signals about desktop development nowAn honest take on speed, cost, and whether Astra is worth making your daily driver

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) GPT-6 Astra overview

(03:44) Browser/computer use test on my CRM

(09:08) Flora thumbnail generation

(13:00) Browser use for QA

(15:20) Coding: ChatPRD product intelligence feature, finally one-shotted

(18:36) Hardware hack: Divoom MiniToo CLI and live streaming display

(22:23) Building an AIM-style Mac app

(24:24) Blender and 3D assets: Barbie Bench and the kids’ family app

(28:52) Summary: what Astra is great at and what to try first

Tools referenced:

• GPT-6 Astra: https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra/

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex

• Flora (node-based AI image/video editing): https://flora.ai/

• Figma: https://www.figma.com

• Blender: https://www.blender.org

• GPT Image 2: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-image-2

• Divoom MiniToo: https://divoom.com/products/minitoo

• cxo.dev: https://www.cxo.dev/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-09-03
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Grok Bot vs. OpenClaw: How I replaced my entire agent stack

I’m running about 30 active agents at any given moment, and in this episode I break down my full Grok Bot setup: what it is, how it compares to OpenClaw, and the nine bots I’ve built for work and my personal life. We go deep on Chief (my chief-of-staff bot sweeping six inboxes and multiple Slack workspaces), TradBot (the family agent that prints a kitchen-table newspaper for my kids), two engineering bots handling my PR queue and SOC 2 compliance monitoring, Holly Helpdesk, and a handful of personal bots I didn’t expect to actually love. I also walk through how I migrated everything from OpenClaw, including the script I used to export and transplant each agent’s identity and schedule.

What you’ll learn:

The three primitives Grok Bot is built on, and why one of them changes what agents can actually doHow Chief, my general-purpose chief of staff, handles a scope I didn’t think a single bot could manageThe writing quirk I noticed immediately with the Grok model, and what I did about it before letting it near my inboxWhy I created a family agent, what it produces every morning, and the design principle I used that has nothing to do with a screenThe two engineering bots doing work I used to do myself, and how one of them handles compliance in a way that surprised meHow Holly Helpdesk started getting five-star reviews from customers who had no idea they were talking to a botThe personal bots I built mostly on a whim, and the one I now look forward to every Monday morning

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more

Hyperagent—Deploy fleets of agents that handle real work

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Why I migrated from OpenClaw to Grok Bot

(02:10) Grok Bot overview: the three core primitives

(07:41) Chief: my chief-of-staff bot

(11:51) OpenClaw vs. Grok Bot

(12:41) TradBot: my family agent

(19:51) LGTM the PR Closer

(22:03) Lockdown: SOC 2 control monitoring bot

(24:00) Holly Helpdesk: customer support

(26:58) Penny Pincher: subscription audit, insurance negotiation, Rolex shopping

(29:37) ShopZilla and Sylvie Style: personal shopping and wardrobe bots

(32:54) How to migrate your OpenClaws

(34:26) Final take

Tools referenced:

• Grok Bot (SpaceXAI multi-agent platform): https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot

• OpenClaw (previous agent platform): https://openclaw.ai/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-09-02
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How I turned Claude into a self-improving PM assistant | Daniel Blum (PM, Melio)

Daniel Blum is a product manager at Melio, a B2B payments company, and one of the most systematic thinkers I’ve had on the show when it comes to personal AI infrastructure. He’s spent the past year building a Claude- and Cowork-based productivity system that manages his Notion board, processes his Slack and email, and runs self-improvement loops every week without needing to be prompted. Beyond his own workflow, Daniel built and scaled a “Workstation” onboarding plugin that gets any Melio employee up and running with a personalized Claude setup in about 15 minutes.

What you’ll learn:

Why Daniel says the two rules that make any AI system powerful aren’t about the tool you pickHow his weekly prep automation fills an entire Notion board from scratch every Sunday, without his touching itThe morning brief feature that teaches Claude new internal terms on its own, so company jargon never slows it downWhy he describes Notion as “read-only” now, and what that says about how PM workflows are changingThe self-improvement loop that watches Daniel’s edits, spots recurring friction, and suggests new skills to buildHow he uses a skill called “Improve” to filter the endless flood of AI tips without drowning in themWhat he built to scale his personal system to every PM at Melio, and the UX lesson he learned the hard wayThe capability gap that’s still keeping him from running 100% of his work through Claude

Brought to you by:

Optimizely—Your AI agent orchestration platform for marketing and digital teams

Jira AI SDLC—Get your tokens’ worth with Jira

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Daniel’s background and the PM overhead problem he needed to solve

(03:30) His AI stack at Melio

(05:00) The two rules that make any AI system genuinely powerful

(06:00) The Notion board Cowork built for him (and manages on his behalf)

(07:30) How he contextualizes Claude with voice memos, links, and recurring updates

(09:00) His weekly prep automation

(11:00) His morning brief

(15:00) How Claude flags unknown internal terms and saves them to context

(17:30) Running 70% to 80% of his workday through Cowork

(19:00) Chrome connector vs. MCPs for tools without integrations

(20:00) The real ROI question: why the early weeks feel slow, and why you push through anyway

(25:00) Scaling the system to the team with the Workstation plugin

(26:30) The self-improvement loop

(31:00) How the Improve skill separates actually useful AI tips from the hype

(32:00) The Workstation onboarding flow, and the UX lesson from distributing “Spectacular”

(38:00) The 20% Claude still can’t do, and what changes when it can

(41:00) What Daniel spends his reclaimed time on

(42:30) Claude rage

Tools referenced:

• Claude: https://claude.ai

• Notion: https://notion.so

Other references:

• From a $6.90 newsletter to $3M API: How a non-coder built Memelord | Jason Levin: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-a-690-newsletter-to-3m-api-how?utm_source=publication-search

• How the founder of Morning Brew built a Claude content machine that never runs out of ideas and never sounds like slop | Alex Lieberman: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-founder-of-morning-brew-built?utm_source=publication-search

Where to find Daniel Blum:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blumd/

Website: https://www.imdanielblum.com

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-08-31
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I spent $20,000 on Devin in a month. Here’s what I learned | Ryan Carson (solo founder)

Ryan Carson is a five-time founder and the current solo founder of Untangle, a B2B SaaS platform for family law firms. Before Untangle, he co-founded Treehouse, an online coding education platform, and has spent the better part of two decades building and leading tech companies. He’s active on X, where he shares his solo founder journey in real time, including what he actually spends on AI tools each month.

What you’ll learn:

Why Ryan manages 15 concurrent Devin agents with a folder system and a piece of paper, not a dashboardThe Watchdog playbook: what he built to replace a customer success team across every law firm accountHow his LAN PR skill closes the loop on 40 daily PRs without a QA team reviewing a single oneWhy he moved off local agents almost entirely, and the one situation where he still reaches for CodexThe design workflow we’re both using: Claude Design into a Markdown spec, then Codex to build the real thingWhat he found when he got away from his computer and met a real customer, and why it changed his entire product directionHow he’s hiring his first engineer without a single phone screen or interviewWhy we both think more AI output is actually the wrong goal, and what to optimize for instead

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more

Jira AI SDLC—Get your tokens’ worth with Jira

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Ryan Carson

(02:55) Ryan’s update: Untangle, the divorce PMF pivot, and B2B growth

(07:35) Ryan’s current Devin stack: folders, P0 threads, and the paper list

(16:29) Watchdog playbook: account monitoring across every firm

(18:09) Managing agent decision fatigue: Ryan’s method vs. Claire’s

(20:32) Producing more output does not make a better product

(22:47) Using cloud agents for ops beyond just code

(25:14) When to use Codex vs. Devin vs. Claude Code

(27:15) Merge Mommy recap

(28:15) LAN PR skill: review loops, video walkthrough, and auto-merge

(30:20) Slack vs. Devin threads for async team communication

(35:58) Claude Design plus Codex for building a technical design system

(39:00) EA tools: Polly the OpenClaw vs. Claude Code on a Mac Mini

(42:09) Quick recap and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Devin (Cognition): https://www.cognition.ai/

• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex

• Claude Code/Claude Design (Anthropic): https://www.anthropic.com/claude

• OpenClaw (Claude-based desktop client): https://openclaw.ai

• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/

• BugBot (Devin’s built-in PR review): https://cursor.com/bugbot

• Sentry (error monitoring referenced in Watchdog): https://sentry.io/

• Ugmonk (analog to-do system): https://ugmonk.com/

Other references:

• Devin playbooks/skills documentation: https://docs.cognition.ai/

• Jack Dorsey/Buzz (async-first communication referenced): https://buzz.new/

• Merge Mommy (Claire’s Eve agent for PR risk scoring, deployed on Vercel): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/build-an-ai-code-review-bot-in-30

Where to find Ryan Carson:

X: https://x.com/ryancarson

Untangle: https://untangle.us

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-08-24
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I tested Grok Bot, Grok 4.6, and Cursor Origin - here’s my honest take

This week I’m doing a solo breakdown of everything xAI and Cursor have shipped recently, including Grok Bot, Cursor Origin, and the Grok 4.6 model. I set up five Grok Bots, ran Grok 4.6 through my Claire Weighted Index against GPT-5.6 Sol, Claude Sonnet 5, and Opus 5, and spent time actually using Origin as a GitHub replacement. Here’s what’s worth your attention, what’s overhyped, and where I’m personally putting my time.

What you’ll learn:

The one Grok Bot feature no other agent platform has shipped yet, and why it made me actually use the productWhat a week of real Grok Bot use revealed, and why I still reach for my OpenClawsWhether Cursor Origin is a GitHub replacement or just a pretty redesignWhere Grok 4.6 landed on the Claire Index, and the one category where it genuinely surprised me

Brought to you by:

Bolt.new—Turn your idea into a real product

Jira AI SDLC—Get your tokens’ worth with Jira

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Why everyone’s quietly switching to Grok

(01:52) Grok Bot overview and setup

(03:22) My 5 Grok Bots

(04:30) The killer feature: multi-account connectors

(06:07) Grok Bot’s virtual machine and how it actually works

(06:41) Experience overview

(07:35) What I don’t love about Grok Bot

(10:08) Grok Bot use cases and my honest verdict

(12:20) Cursor Origin: the agent-native GitHub replacement

(13:47) What Origin actually looks like in practice

(14:59) Why I’m not switching from GitHub yet

(17:42) What would get me to move over

(18:52) Grok 4.6 and the How I AI Vibe bench

(20:41) Claire Index results: where Grok 4.6 ranked

(23:03) Design evals: where Grok surprised me

(25:00) My conclusion and how I’m splitting my time now

Tools referenced:

• Grok Bot: https://x.ai/bot

• Cursor: https://cursor.com/home

• Cursor Origin: https://cursor.com/origin

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/

• GitHub: https://github.com

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-08-18
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How a solo founder used Codex and ChatGPT to launch a fashion brand without engineers | Yana Welinder

Yana Welinder is the solo founder of Yana Bana, an AI-native fashion brand built with AI as her technical co-founder, starting from hand-drawn sketches and ending with runway photos, CAD files for 3D printing, and a live Stripe-connected pre-order site—no engineers required. A former product leader, she brings an operator’s rigor to her creative process: her “fashion prompt” is a detailed spec covering silhouette, volume, fabric behavior, movement, and sound, and watching her use Codex plus computer use to navigate 3D design software that’s entirely new to her is a clarifying demo of what today’s toolset actually makes possible.

What you’ll learn:

How Yana uses a custom fashion prompt as a technical spec to get consistent, realistic, on-design outputsWhy ChatGPT Images 2.0 outperforms other models for fashion designHow she uses Codex plus computer use to operate CAD and fashion software she’s never personally learnedThe workflow for taking a garment from hand-drawn sketch to product photo, runway photo, and influencer shot in a single sessionHow she ran vendor outreach end to end using deep research and browser useHow she built a full e-commerce site with voting, databases, and Stripe integrationWhy she’s testing human patternmakers and Codex in parallel

Brought to you by:

Merge—Connective infrastructure for production AI

Jira AI SDLC—Get your tokens’ worth with Jira

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introducing Yana Welinder and Yana Bana

(02:38) Tour of the Yana Bana site

(05:20) The fashion prompt stack

(07:39) Live demo: generating a jacket from a prompt in ChatGPT

(10:01) Why Image Gen 2.0 beats other models

(11:51) The “prompt as spec” principle

(14:02) Iterating the design

(17:12) Using Codex and computer use to build CAD files in 3D software

(20:50) Vendor research, outreach emails, and Superhuman browser use

(23:34) Building the full e-commerce site

(27:40) Quick recap and what’s still hard

(30:05) How Yana prompts when AI pushes back

(31:15) Where to find Yana and how to vote on her garments

Tools referenced:

• ChatGPT (Images 2.0): https://chat.openai.com

• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex

• CLO 3D (fashion pattern software): https://www.clo3d.com

• Vercel: https://vercel.com

• GitHub: https://github.com

• Stripe: https://stripe.com

• Superhuman: https://superhuman.com

Other references:

• Ruth Asawa: https://ruthasawa.com

• SFMOMA (Ruth Asawa): https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/Ruth_Asawa/

Where to find Yana Welinder:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ywelinder/

X: https://x.com/yanabana

Website: https://www.yanabana.com

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-08-17
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Claude Code for normal people: skills, voice mode, and how to collaborate with AI

Grace Clarke is an AI educator and former marketing consultant who taught herself Claude Code earlier this year and built a curriculum out of the process. She now runs her entire service business on tools she’s built with Claude, including a pipeline operator, a proposal maker, and a Gmail replacement she created in under 30 minutes, and teaches individuals and teams to do the same.

What you’ll learn:

How to build an hourly pipeline in Claude that moves clients through your process automaticallyWhy Grace ditched traditional proposals for password-protected, interactive HTML documents built in ClaudeHow she uses a “voice guide” skill file so every Claude output sounds like her, not like AI slopThe two-step forcing function she teaches non-technical clients to build the muscle of opening ClaudeWhy she started building in Claude Code, then handed the work off to Cowork via a Markdown session fileHow she replaced Gmail entirely with a custom inboxWhy she teaches “intent engineering” instead of prompt engineering, and what that looks like in practiceHow she uses Claude on her phone, on walks, to track workouts and manage plants alongside client work

Brought to you by:

Bolt.new—Turn your idea into a real product

Hyperagent—Deploy fleets of agents that handle real work

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Grace’s background and why she started building with Claude

(04:48) The pipeline operator: what it is and how it runs her business every hour

(08:48) Building the muscle memory to use AI

(12:02) What goes into building a skill file (voice guide, proposal rules, versioning)

(13:50) How she built her proposal maker

(16:15) The voice guide: teaching Claude how she thinks, not just how she writes

(21:22) Live demo of the custom Gmail replacement built in Cowork

(30:44) Workout tracking, plant photos, and tiny daily Claude habits

(34:51) The biggest misconception holding people back from adopting AI

(38:36) What Grace does when Claude is not giving her what she wants

(40:38) Claude builds a proposal for Claire in real time

Tools referenced:

• Claude: https://claude.ai

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Netlify: https://www.netlify.com

• Google Forms: https://forms.google.com

• Google Sheets: https://sheets.google.com

• Google Cloud (for service accounts and custom connectors): https://cloud.google.com

Other reference:

• Stratechery by Ben Thompson: https://stratechery.com

Where to find Grace Clarke:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegclarke/

X: https://x.com/graceclarke

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-08-10
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Build an AI code review bot in 30 minutes with Vercel Eve

AI writes most of my code now, and that created a new problem: a PR queue I couldn’t keep up with. In this episode, I walk through how I built Merge Mommy, a Vercel Eve agent that reads every PR after checks pass, scores it across six risk dimensions, auto-approves the low-risk ones, and pings me in Slack for anything that needs a human. I built the whole thing in one Codex session, it’s SOC 2 compatible, and it’s already cleared my backlog.


What you’ll learn:

Why AI-generated PRs create a review bottleneck and why the answer isn’t reviewing all of themHow Intercom 5x’d PR approval speed and reduced revert rates by putting AI in the review loopWhy Vercel Eve is the simplest framework I’ve found for deploying AI agents in Slack and GitHubHow I built a full PR review agent in Codex with one prompt and a few steering turnsThe six components I use to score PR risk (blast radius, reversibility, data security, ops impact, verification gap, and change surface)How I used Chrome browser use to handle Slack bot and GitHub app configuration so I never had to click through setup screens manuallyWhy auto-approved PRs can be SOC 2 compliant as long as the process is auditable, queryable, and in your risk policyHow to set up Slack escalation so low-risk PRs become a two-click merge with no manual review

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app Enterprise Ready today

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) The PR review backlog problem nobody’s talking about

(02:35) Why you don’t have to review every AI-generated PR

(05:14) How Intercom built AI-approved PRs (and proved they’re safer)

(06:10) How the Eve framework works (directory, skills, channels, connectors)

(09:16) The Codex prompt I used to build the entire bot

(11:36) What the agent actually does: read, score, approve, or escalate

(13:07) Setting up your Eve agent

(15:47) The six-component risk scoring model

(17:23) Merge Mommy in action: three live PR examples

(21:10) Recap and how to build your own version

Tools referenced:

• Vercel Eve: https://vercel.com/eve

• Vercel AI SDK: https://sdk.vercel.ai/

• Vercel Chat SDK: https://chat-sdk.dev/

• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex

Other references:

• AI is approving our pull requests: Here’s how we made it safe: https://www.intercom.com/blog/ai-is-approving-our-pull-requests-heres-how-we-made-it-safe/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-08-05
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ChatGPT Codex Voice + browser + Sites: an expert’s AI workflow | Nick Baumann (OpenAI)

Nick Baumann is on the Developer Experience team at OpenAI, where he spends his days building with, testing, and communicating the capabilities of ChatGPT Codex and ChatGPT Work. In this episode, Nick walks me through several features that have launched or evolved recently: the new voice interface with its screen-reading orb, the Heartbeats automation system in ChatGPT Work on mobile, the live ChatGPT Sites deployment feature, and his personal use case for AI-assisted UGC video editing.

What you’ll learn:

How two-person voice chat worksHow Heartbeats workHow to build and deploy a live website with ChatGPT SitesHow to delegate a flight search, hotel booking, and expense report to Codex in a single voice conversation without opening a single app manuallyWhy ChatGPT Work on mobile is the most underutilized AI workflow for people already using the ChatGPT appHow to use a custom UGC Video plugin to feed 50 raw clips into ChatGPT, let it pull transcripts, pick the best takes, and assemble a finished vertical video overnight

Brought to you by:

Bolt.new—Turn your idea into a real product

Hyperagent—Deploy fleets of agents that handle real work

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Nick Baumann

(02:56) What’s new in Codex

(05:40) ChatGPT Work and Heartbeats

(06:40) Live Codex voice demo

(13:25) Latency vs. intelligence

(14:36) Quick recap

(15:04) Voice on mobile and the ChatGPT Sites workflow

(21:24) Live UGC video demo

(32:30) How I AI website results

(34:04) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• ChatGPT Codex: https://chatgpt.com/codex

• ChatGPT Sites: https://chatgpt.site

Where to find Nick Baumann:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nick--baumann

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-08-03
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From zero coding background to hardware hacker: How Cursor + a Raspberry Pi makes AI fun

Maddie Reese is a vibe coder, hardware tinkerer, and builder. She builds things at the intersection of software and hardware, including a thermal receipt printer that people around the world can message directly, a fully functional Twitter pager running on a Raspberry Pi, and a personal API that tells you her coffee order so you don’t have to ask. Maddie approaches hardware the same way she approaches software: dump the idea into Cursor, let it interview her, get a shopping list, triple-check the parts before buying, and build. She got her start after her dad introduced her to Lovable, and she locked herself in her room and didn’t come up for air.

What you’ll learn:

How Maddie built a thermal receipt printer that accepts messages from anywhere in the world using a Raspberry Pi and BluetoothHow to use Cursor’s agent view to brainstorm a hardware projectWhat belongs in a personal API and why agents, not just humans, will be the ones using itHow to read just enough code to do some damage, without needing to understand all of itWhy building for fun, not practicality, is the fastest path to actually shipping physical projects

Brought to you by:

Firecrawl—Power AI agents with clean web data

Customer.io—Build customer engagement campaigns from a single prompt

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Intro

(02:00) Maddie’s AI pill moment

(03:53) The thermal receipt printer: live demo and how it works

(11:10) The pager project

(17:23) Why she uses Cursor’s clean agent view instead of terminals and browsers

(19:05) The personal API: coffee order, pets, favorite snacks, and more

(22:57) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/

• Lovable: https://lovable.dev/

• Raspberry Pi: https://www.raspberrypi.com/

• Resend: https://resend.com/

• Cloudflare Workers: https://workers.cloudflare.com/

• Supabase (Conduct database referenced): https://supabase.com/

• Twitter/X API: https://developer.x.com/

• Spoke pager network: https://www.spoke.com/

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/

Where to find Maddie Reese:

Website: https://maddiedreese.com

Message her directly: https://maddiedreese.com/message

X: https://x.com/maddiedreese

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-27
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Claude Opus 5 review: this model is brilliant (but annoying)

I’m tired of new models. Every week there’s a new benchmark, a new frontier intelligence claim, a new thing to test. But here we are, because Opus 5 just dropped and I’ve had real hands-on time with it, so you’re getting the honest version.

This is my full Opus 5 review: personality analysis, live benchmark results from my 7-model How I AI eval, and an actual verdict on whether I’m swapping it in. Spoiler: the answer surprised me.


What you’ll learn:

Why I think we’ve hit an intelligence overhang and what that means for which model variables actually matter nowHow Opus 5’s “neurotic” personality showed up in real coding sessions, including a merge conflict it refused to touchWhat I learned from asking both Opus 5 and GPT‑5.6 Sol “who’s smarter, you or me?”Where Opus 5, GPT‑5.6 Sol, Sonnet 5, and Gemini 3.1 Pro actually landed on the HIA benchmark leaderboardThe one use case where Opus 5 earned straight 5s from meMy actual plan for using Opus 5 going forward

In this episode, I cover:

(00:00) Opus 5 is here

(03:15) First impressions

(06:12) Opus 5 vs. GPT‑5.6 Sol personality comparison

(14:39) Claude Slop: the verbosity problem and why it makes my blood boil

(16:55) How the How I AI benchmark works (7 models, 6 tasks, blind scoring)

(18:30) Live benchmark results: the leaderboard reveal

(23:25) My verdict and how I’ll actually use Opus 5

Tools referenced:

• Claude Opus 5:

• Anthropic blog: https://www.anthropic.com/news

• GPT‑5.6 Sol: https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/

• Sonnet 5: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5

• Gemini 3.1 Pro: https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/pro/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-24
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Computer & browser use in Codex (5 real examples)

Today I’m walking you through one of my absolute favorite AI features right now: browser and computer use via Codex (the ChatGPT desktop app). I use this every single day, personally and professionally, and I wanted to share the specific workflows I’ve built, the moments that surprised me, and the mental model that makes it actually click.

What you’ll learn:

How browser use and computer use work, and why the Codex desktop app plus Chrome extension is the combo I rely onHow I use Codex to QA my onboarding flow, including exhaustive mobile testing I would never do manuallyWhy under-prompting frontier models gets better results than detailed step-by-step instructionsHow my husband EJ Lawless’s persona-impersonation trick surfaces friction points I can’t see as the builderHow I use browser use to get through my LinkedIn inbox without touching it myselfHow I had Codex shop Free People’s sale and add 10 medium items to my cart (breastfeeding-friendly and Hawaii-ready)How computer use can control iPhone mirroring so your Mac can technically operate your phoneThree more computer-use shortcuts: filling annoying forms, creating Google Sheets mid-workflow, and managing router

Brought to you by:

Runway—The creative AI platform for images, video and more

Hyperagent—Deploy fleets of agents that handle real work

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Intro

(01:46) What browser use and computer use actually are

(03:08) Why I use Codex specifically and how the desktop app plus Chrome extension works

(04:15) Use case 1: QA testing my onboarding flow

(10:41) Results: 11 issues, one high-severity blocker, one Google Sheet with screenshots

(12:10) Use case 2: persona testing

(18:20) Use case 3: LinkedIn inbox, hands-free

(20:37) Use case 4: AI personal shopper

(23:47) Rapid-fire uses: forms, iPhone mirroring, router access from out of state, Google Docs

(26:50) Wrap-up

Tools referenced:

• Codex (ChatGPT desktop app): https://openai.com/codex

• Claude desktop app: https://claude.ai/download

• Monologue (voice dictation for AI): https://monologue.app

• iPhone mirroring (Apple): https://support.apple.com/en-us/111775

• Google Sheets: https://sheets.google.com

Other references:

• Jesse Genet episode (How I AI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/5-openclaw-agents-run-my-home-finances?utm_source=publication-search

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-22
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How the founder of Morning Brew built a Claude content machine that never runs out of ideas and never sounds like slop | Alex Lieberman

Alex Lieberman co-founded Morning Brew in college and grew it into one of the most-read business newsletters in the world before selling it to Business Insider. Now he’s the co-founder and co-managing partner of Tenex. In this episode, Alex explains why distribution is becoming a durable moat, why founders and teams need to “climb Cringe Mountain,” and how he rebuilt his content process around AI without letting it produce generic slop. He walks us through every step of his Content Machine live: an Oracle that scans internal systems and the internet for content spikes, an interview panel that pulls out his real ideas, voice and style files that keep drafts sounding like him, an editorial council that scores and revises posts, and a lessons loop that learns from his feedback.

What you’ll learn:

Why the blank page is the biggest friction point in content creation, and how an AI Oracle eliminates itHow to map your current workflow before you add any AIHow Alex built a six-step Content Machine in Claude that goes from idea spike to publishable postWhy the interview step (not the drafting step) is where AI slop actually comes fromHow to codify your voice in a Markdown file so an AI drafts in your register, not the internet’s averageWhy your employees are your most underleveraged marketing channel right nowHow the Tenex Creator Cup turned content creation into a team sport with a $5,000 prize pool

Brought to you by:

Firecrawl—Power AI agents with clean web data

Customer.io—Build customer engagement campaigns from a single prompt

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Alex Lieberman

(02:35) Why Alex built a content machine

(06:56) Alex’s thoughts on AI slop

(09:00) Mapping the workflow from scratch

(13:24) The six-step Content Machine setup

(23:11) Live demo: Oracle, Interview Panel, and Writer’s Council in action

(30:38) Employee advocacy: the Tenex Creator Cup and $5K prize pool

(36:45) Lightning round: great engineers, AI use cases, slop fixes

Tools referenced:

• Claude / Claude Code (Anthropic): https://claude.ai

• Wispr Flow (voice-to-text transcription): https://wisprflow.ai

• Notion: https://notion.so

• Linear: https://linear.app

• Slack: https://slack.com

Other references:

• Morgan Housel: https://www.morganhousel.com

• David Perell: https://perell.com

• Shaan Puri / My First Million podcast: https://www.mfmpod.com

• Gary Vaynerchuk: https://garyvaynerchuk.com

Where to find Alex Lieberman:

X: https://x.com/businessbarista

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lieberman/

Tenex: https://www.tenex.co/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-20
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This solo builder runs 24/7 local AI on his own hardware | Alex Finn

Alex Finn is an AI builder, YouTuber, and the creator of Vibe Code Academy, a community for people learning to build with AI tools. He runs one of the most ambitious local AI setups I’ve come across: three Mac Studio 512 GB machines, a DGX Spark, and a custom RTX 5090 build, all coordinated through a fleet dashboard he built himself. He’s spent five months figuring out which local models belong on which machines, how to wire them to Claude Code loops, and how to get a software factory running without babysitting it.


What you’ll learn:

How Alex chose between a Mac Studio (512 GB unified memory), DGX Spark, and RTX 5090, and what each is actually good forWhy Tailscale is worth installing even on a single machine, and how it lets one agent manage your entire hardware fleetHow the build loop and review loop in Claude Code workHow to allocate tasks by machine and modelWhy unlimited local inference changes the use-case math in a way a $20 cloud subscription never canWhat OpenClaw and Hermes are each best suited for, and why Alex runs five agents total with failover baked in

Brought to you by:

Runway—The creative AI platform for images, video, and more

Jira Product Discovery—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Intro

(02:58) Alex's hardware stack

(03:48) What "ambient AI" means

(04:15) Alex's red-pill moment with OpenClaw

(07:04) Mac Studio vs. DGX Spark vs. RTX 5090

(13:24) How to set up local models with no technical knowledge (Tailscale + OpenClaw/Hermes)

(17:16) Fleet control dashboard: assigning 24/7 tasks across machines

(20:42) Local models as security scanners feeding Claude Code

(22:25) How Alex allocates GLM 5.2, Qwen 3.6, and Ornith 1.0 by task

(24:28) OpenClaw vs. Hermes: the honest comparison

(26:55) The software factory: build loop, review loop, rocket emoji

(31:55) Lightning round: favorite hardware, favorite model, prompting style

(34:46) Where to find Alex

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/

• Hermes: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/

• Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/

• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex

• GLM 5.2 (z.ai): https://huggingface.co/zai-org/GLM-5.2

• Qwen 3.6 (Alibaba): https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

• Ornith 1.0: https://github.com/deepreinforce-ai/Ornith-1

• Gemma 4: https://huggingface.co/collections/google/gemma-4

• Playwright (browser testing): https://playwright.dev/

• Vercel (preview deploys): https://vercel.com/

Other references:

• DGX Spark (Nvidia): https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/products/workstations/dgx-spark/

• Mac Studio (Apple): https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/

• How to design AI agent loops: schedules, goals, and subagents in Claude Code and Codex: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-design-ai-agent-loops-schedules

Where to find Alex Finn:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-finn-1848684a

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexFinnOfficial

X: https://x.com/AlexFinn

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-13
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GPT-5.6 Sol vs. Claude Fable: Why OpenAI’s new model crushes my benchmark

GPT-5.6 Sol is back, and I ran it through my full How I AI vibe benchmark against GPT-5.6 Terra, Luna, Claude Fable 5, and Sonnet 5 across five categories: PRDs, prototypes, wireframes, debugging, and agentic voice. Sol won by a meaningful margin on my Claire Weighted Index (70% my taste, 30% Terminal Bench 2.1), and I also tested two use cases I can't stop thinking about: building a gamified homework tracking app for my kids in one shot with Codex, and browser automation with Chrome that burned through 500 LinkedIn replies while I did literally nothing.

What you’ll learn:

How I scored five AI models (including GPT 5.6 Sol, Fable 5, and Sonnet 5) using my “Claire Weighted Index” benchmark across PRDs, prototypes, code, and agentic voiceThe difference between GPT-5.6 Sol (Terra) and Sol for PRD writingHow Fable’s precision and pedantry made it harder to collaborate with, and the exact moment Sol broke through where Fable got stuckWhy Sonnet 5 is still my go-to for agentic voice in OpenClaw, even after this whole benchmarkHow I used GPT-5.6 Sol in Codex to build a fully gamified homework tracking app for my kids in one shotThe video editing use case that saved me hours clipping a talk I gave at Cursor’s eventHow to use Codex plus GPT-5.6 and Chrome for browser automation, and why this is my single most-loved use case right now

In this episode, I cover:

(00:00) Intro

(01:10) The three GPT-5.6 models: Sol, Terra, Luna

(02:17) Pricing: Sol vs. Fable API costs

(03:24) The How I AI benchmark

(05:03) Claire-weighted Index results

(07:00) Per-task winners: prototypes, PRDs, agentic voice

(11:59) What Claire actually rewards

(13:20) Full-fidelity prototype side-by-sides (Sol vs. Fable)

(17:45) Wireframes

(18:19) Agentic voice

(19:15) Where Sol is better than other models

(23:56) Gamified kids’ homework app, built in one shot

(28:02) Fable’s pedantry problem and how Sol broke through it

(31:49) Two bonus use cases: video editing and browser use

(35:08) Final summary and model recommendations

Tools referenced:

• GPT 5.6 (Sol, Terra, Luna): https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001325-a-preview-of-gpt-56-sol-terra-and-luna

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex

• ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

• CapCut: https://www.capcut.com/

• Math Academy: https://www.mathacademy.com/

Other references:

• Cursor event where Claire spoke on the future of PM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CAFK-rc26A

• ChatPRD blog (where benchmark outputs will be published): https://www.chatprd.ai/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-09
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What a harness is and how to build one with Claude Agent SDK

Everybody is saying, “It’s not the model, it’s the harness,” but almost nobody stops to explain what a harness actually is. So I did. I built one live on the show: a Sentry bug-debugging harness for my company ChatPRD, using the Claude Agent SDK, a custom terminal UI built with the Ink library, and opinionated adapters for Sentry, Linear, GitHub, and Vercel. The harness handles evidence gathering, root-cause analysis, and follow-up artifact creation, all without me needing to type “dear agent, please fix this bug” ever again. I also walk through the architecture, share the code structure, and give you the exact process I used so you can build your own harness for any repetitive, structured workflow in your business.

What you’ll learn:

What a harness actually isWhen to build a harness versus when to stick with a general-purpose tool like Claude Code or CodexHow to encode specific permissions into a harnessThe three components every harness needsHow I used GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus to build the harness code itself (and where they both initially resisted)How to structure the artifacts your harness produces so the whole team can use the output

Brought to you by:

Bolt.new—Turn your idea into a real product

Customer.io—Build customer engagement campaigns from a single prompt

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) What is an AI harness?

(03:19) When to build a harness

(04:33) Why Claire picked bug triage

(06:00) Why not just use Claude Code?

(07:48) Demo: The custom harness interface

(11:04) Architecture: runs, tasks, tools, and artifacts

(13:44) Building it with Codex and Claude

(15:08) Code map and file layout

(16:51) A look at the code

(19:18) The live investigation result

(21:01) How to build your own harness

Tools referenced:

• Claude Agent SDK (Anthropic): https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview

• Claude Sonnet 4.6 (model used inside the harness): https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6

• Claude Opus (used to build the harness): https://www.anthropic.com/claude/opus

• GPT-5.5 (Codex, used to build the harness): https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-5/

• Ink (terminal UI library for Node.js): https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink

• Sentry (error monitoring): https://sentry.io/

• Linear (project management): https://linear.app/

• GitHub: https://github.com/

• Vercel: https://vercel.com/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-08
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How I run autonomous coding agents from my phone with OpenAI Symphony + Linear | Alessio Fanelli (Kernel Labs)

Alessio Fanelli, founder of Kernel Labs and co-host of Latent Space podcast, walks us through two very different AI workflows: (1) a fully autonomous coding setup using OpenAI Symphony + Linear, where Linear acts as a state machine and Symphony manages agents through the whole dev lifecycle with zero babysitting; (2) Codex with browser access searching eBay for underpriced Pokémon cards—autonomously browsing, extracting PSA certificate numbers, and flagging deals on $10K–$20K cards for his San Carlos card shop, Merlin Games.

What you’ll learn:

Why “agent manager” is a better mental model than “agent prompter”Why local Mac Minis don’t scale, and what a cloud VPS unlocksHow to wire Symphony and Linear together as an agent state machineHow to track token costs per task (and what 221 million tokens buys you)What Glimpse does, and why better agent senses extend autonomous runsWhy your CLAUDE.md probably needs a full purge, not more instructionsHow Codex scouts underpriced $10K Pokémon cards on eBay at scaleThe new category of small business that AI just made possible

Brought to you by:

Firecrawl—Power AI agents with clean web data

Jira Product Discovery—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Intro

(02:24) Prompter vs. agent manager

(04:31) Live demo: Symphony + Linear

(09:31) Setting up Symphony

(14:15) Purging your skills files

(18:06) The benefits of this system

(19:10) Demo: Using Codex to hunt for Pokémon cards

(24:17) The benefit of AI for small businesses

(28:23) Lightning round

Tools referenced:

• OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codex

• OpenAI Symphony (open-source framework): https://github.com/openai/symphony

• Linear (project management/agent state machine): https://linear.app

• PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) grading: https://www.psacard.com

• TCGplayer (card pricing): https://www.tcgplayer.com

• eBay (used for card price scouting): https://www.ebay.com

Other references:

• Meta Ray-Ban glasses: https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses

• The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar: https://www.amazon.com/Monk-Riddle-Creating-Making-Living/dp/1578516447/ref=sr_1_1

• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0451208633

• AS Roma (football club Alessio and Claire are both fans of): https://www.asroma.com/en

Where to find Alessio Fanelli:

X: https://x.com/FanaHOVA

Latent Space podcast: https://www.latent.space/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-07-06
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Sonnet 5 review: I ran 64 generations to find out if it's worth it

I’ve been testing every major frontier model release since the start of the year, and when Anthropic dropped Sonnet 5, I wanted more than a vibe check. I got tired of one-off tests I couldn’t repeat or compare over time, so I built something better: the How I AI Bench, a repeatable eval harness I constructed live using Claude Code while recording this episode. I ran Sonnet 5 blind against four other frontier models (Sonnet 4.6, Opus 4.8, GPT-5.5, and Gemini 3 Pro) across PRD quality, prototype generation, agentic task completion, and agent personality. The results were not what I expected.

What you’ll learn:

What Anthropic claims Sonnet 5 improves over Sonnet 4.6, and where the benchmark data actually backs that upHow I built the How I AI Bench in under 45 minutes using Claude Code, starting from my own stored session historyWhy I combined human vibe scoring (70%) with LLM as judge scoring (30%) instead of trusting either aloneHow to set up a local HTML scoring page so you can rate AI outputs on gut feel and export those scores as JSONWhich model I recommend for PRDs, which for complex prototypes, and which for chatting with an agent daily

Brought to you by:

Runway—The creative AI platform for images, video and more

Hyperagent—Deploy fleets of agents that handle real work

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Sonnet 5 is out

(01:55) What Anthropic claims

(04:02) Why I’m done with one-off vibe checks

(05:05) Building the How I AI Bench live with Claude Code

(07:42) The scoring system

(10:43) Agent voice eval

(11:57) Quick recap

(13:58) Results: The How I AI index leaderboard

(21:21) What I’m improving for the next run

(22:16) Generating a Claire-weighted index

(23:53) Model-by-task recommendations

Tools referenced:

• Claude Sonnet 5: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5

• Claude Opus 4.8: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-8

• GPT-5.5 (OpenAI): https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-5/

• Gemini 3 Pro (Google DeepMind): https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/pro/

• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/

Other references:

• SWE-bench Pro (agentic coding benchmark referenced): https://www.swebench.com/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-30
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No Figma. No Jira. No docs. How Gusto built a new product line with Claude Code | Eddie Kim (CTO)

Eddie Kim is the co-founder and CTO of the payroll and HR platform Gusto, which just crossed $1 billion in revenue and serves more than 500,000 small businesses. Recently he did something most CTOs don’t: he went back to writing code. With three other engineers and one designer, Eddie built Gusto Cofounder, a net-new AI product, from zero code to a tier-one launch in 10 weeks. He walks through how that team actually worked, why they threw out nearly every process, and how anyone can copy the approach.

What you’ll learn:

The trash-can method: how to write, review, and delete a full PR as a product decision instead of a planning docThe two-tool agent stack behind Gusto CofounderThe exact “perma-Zoom” setup that replaced standups, retros, and Slack threads for 10 weeksHow a designer with no engineering background hit the 94th percentile for shipping codeThe eval-first workflow Eddie uses to fix real customer bugs with Claude CodeHow a non-technical leader can prototype an idea to win buy-in, then carry it all the way to production-quality code

Brought to you by:

Magic Patterns—Prototypes that look like your product

Jira Product Discovery—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Intro: five people, 10 weeks

(02:38) The origins of Cofounder

(08:32) Inside the 10-week build process

(12:50) Building with no PMs

(14:38) The “trash can” method

(17:15) The stack architecture

(19:10) Shipping to production from day one

(22:03) How a designer became a top engineer

(29:05) Demo: Cofounder over text and Slack

(31:45) Demo: running a real payroll

(36:26) Live coding with evals in Claude Code

(39:39) Recap: prototype, small team, permission

(43:17) Lightning round

(48:44) Where to find Eddie and Cofounder

Tools referenced:

• Gusto Cofounder (early access/waitlist): https://gusto.com/cofounder

• Claude Code (Anthropic): https://claude.ai/code

• Cloudflare Workers: https://workers.cloudflare.com/

• Vercel AI SDK: https://sdk.vercel.ai/

• DX (engineering analytics): https://getdx.com/

• Wispr Flow (voice-to-text): https://wisprflow.ai

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/

Other references:

• Gusto (the main product, “Gusto Classic”): https://gusto.com

• Mindbody (referenced as customer data source): https://www.mindbodyonline.com/

Where to find Eddie Kim:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edawerd/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-29
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GLM 5.2: why I’m replacing Opus in Claude Code with this new model

I put GLM 5.2, the open-weight coding model from Z.AI, through four real tasks inside my actual codebase: a codebase architecture audit, a UI redesign, and a 45-minute autonomous bug-hunting session pulling from Sentry and Vercel logs. Total cost: $3.36 for roughly 6 million tokens, a prioritized bug-fix dashboard I’m actually shipping from, and a landing page redesign that matched Chat PRD’s design system on the first try.

What you’ll learn:

What “open-weight” actually means and why it matters for cost and vendor independenceHow to connect GLM 5.2 to Cursor and Claude CodeHow it performs on codebase exploration and autonomous architecture summarization in a real production Next.js appWhether GLM 5.2 can match an existing design systemHow the model handles a 45-minute long-running autonomous taskWhere GLM 5.2 stumbled The actual cost breakdown

Brought to you by:

Mercury—Radically different banking loved by over 300K entrepreneurs

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) What open-weight models are and why GLM 5.2 is worth testing

(01:38) GLM 5.2 model overview

(04:02) Capabilities and benchmark results

(06:02) How to set up GLM 5.2 in Cursor

(08:37) How to set up GLM 5.2 in Claude Code

(11:04) Live test 1: codebase exploration and architecture audit on ChatPRD

(12:43) Live test 2: generating an HTML architecture and roadmap page

(16:37) Live test 3: redesigning the How I AI landing page in Cursor

(20:57) Live test 4: 45-minute autonomous task, pulling Sentry errors and Vercel logs

(22:35) Where it struggled

(23:49) My verdict on the output

(25:23) Cost breakdown

Tools referenced:

z.ai: https://z.aiGLM 5.2: https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.2OpenRouter: https://openrouter.aiCursor: https://cursor.comClaude Code: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-codeSentry: https://sentry.ioVercel: https://vercel.com

Other references:

SWE-Bench Pro leaderboard (coding benchmark scores referenced in episode): https://www.swebench.comFrontier Suite and Post-Train Bench (additional benchmarks cited): https://scale.com/leaderboardUse Claude Code with OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/docs/cookbook/coding-agents/claude-code-integration

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-24
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How Claude Mythos found a 15-year-old bug in Mozilla Firefox | Brian Grinstead

Brian Grinstead is a distinguished engineer at Mozilla, where he’s worked on Firefox and the web platform since 2013 (he joined to help launch Firefox DevTools). Recently he and his team pointed an agentic bug-finding pipeline at Firefox—a codebase with tens of thousands of files and tens of millions of lines of code—and shipped a record month of security fixes. The viral chart everyone saw gave the credit to Anthropic’s new Mythos model. Brian’s take is that the harness and pipeline did just as much of the work, and he walks through exactly how it runs and how anyone can build a starter version.

What you’ll learn:

How to build a basic bug-finding harness by running Claude Code or Codex with one prompt and the -p flag, no SDK requiredWhy pointing an agent at a whole codebase fails, and how an LLM judge can score and rank files before you spend any computeHow a verifier subagent kills false positives by catching the agent when it cheatsThe goal-loop pattern: give an agent a tightly scoped problem, a clear pass/fail signal, and let it retry far past the point a human would quitWhy teams that already invested in fuzzing, CI, and dev tooling are so far aheadHow to weigh model versus harness, and why Brian splits the credit close to 50-50How a non-engineer can reuse the same score, verify, and fix the loop for design quality, conversion rate, or tech debtWhy AI-generated patches still can’t ship on their own, and where humans stay in the loop

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Metaview—The agentic recruiting platform for winning teams

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Brian Grinstead

(02:43) The viral chart: Firefox Security Bug Fixes by Month

(05:32) How the custom harness works

(10:22) Goal loops and guardrails

(14:45) How they built it

(16:55) Real bugs, including a 15-year-old one

(23:00) Open-sourcing it

(26:26) Why humans still review every fix

(32:30) Live demo and prioritizing files

(40:18) Mobilizing the team and recap

(42:33) Lightning round

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Claude Agent SDK: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview

• Codex: https://openai.com/index/openai-codex/

• OpenAI Agent SDK: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/agents

• VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/

• Docker: https://www.docker.com/

• Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/

• Address Sanitizer: https://github.com/google/sanitizers

• RLBox: https://rlbox.dev/

Other references:

• Mozilla Bug Bounty Program: https://www.mozilla.org/security/bug-bounty/

• Mozilla GitHub: https://github.com/mozilla

Where to find Brian Grinstead:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgrins/

GitHub: https://github.com/bgrins

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-22
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How to design AI agent loops: schedules, goals, and subagents in Claude Code and Codex

I break down every loop type from scratch—what a heartbeat, cron, hook, and goal loop actually are, when each one fits, and the five things any effective loop needs before it touches production. Then I build two live loops: a daily aging-PR reviewer in Claude Code that schedules itself at 10:15 a.m. and spins off its own subagents, and a weekly skills-identification loop in Codex that spawns goal-based subagents to validate its own output in real time.

What you’ll learn:

The plain-English definition of a loop—and why it’s just an automated prompt, not a scary new paradigmThe four loop types (heartbeat, cron, hook, and goal) and when each one actually fits your workflowHow to think about loop design using the “onboarding an employee” mental modelThe five things every effective loop needs: work trees, skills, plugins/connectors, subagents, and state trackingHow to build a scheduled PR-review routine in Claude Code that babysits aging PRs and alerts your teamHow to set up a weekly skills-identification automation in Codex that spawns its own validating subagentsWhy goal-based loops are the hardest to write well—and where most people burn tokens for nothingThe two warning signs that your loop is going to get expensive before it gets useful

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Runway—The creative AI platform for images, video, and more

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Prompts are out and loops are in

(02:30) Defining a loop

(03:03) The four ways to automate a prompt: heartbeat, cron, hooks, and goals

(06:03) Five things every effective loop needs

(09:26) The “onboarding an employee” framework for designing loops

(11:58) Live build #1: Daily aging PR loop in Claude Code

(17:08) Subagents inside loops

(19:00) Live build #2: Weekly skills identification loop in Codex

(22:57) Watching subagents spin up in real time

(25:28) Warning signals around loops

(27:31) What listeners are doing with loops

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Codex: https://chatgpt.com/codex

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/

Other references:

• Claire’s article “Why OpenClaw Feels Alive Even Though It’s Not”: https://x.com/clairevo/article/2017741569521271175

• Addy Osmani’s article on loop engineering: https://addyosmani.com/blog/loop-engineering/

• Using Goals in Codex: https://developers.openai.com/cookbook/examples/codex/using_goals_in_codex

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-17
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How Braintrust uses AI agents, evals, and CI to ship better software | Ankur Goyal

In this episode, I sit down with Ankur Goyal, founder and CEO of Braintrust, the AI evals and observability platform used by teams like Notion, Stripe, Vercel, and Zapier. This one is for the senior engineers, staff engineers, VPs of engineering, and CTOs in my audience. We get into how coding agents can take on deeply technical architecture and infrastructure work that no single human engineer could tackle before, and then we demystify evals so you can use them to make your AI products better without touching the implementation.

What you’ll learn:

How Ankur uses Codex to run week-long benchmark experiments across database indexes, column store formats, and execution engines to speed up slow queriesWhy he argues there’s no excuse to skip rigorous benchmarking now that agents can run them tirelesslyThe “agent line” framework: how to decide which decisions, directions, and interactions you can hand off to an agentHow I think about the practical vs. theoretical quality of AI on hard technical problems, and why human attention decays on tedious workWhy evals are the modern version of a PRD, and how to encode “what good looks like” so a model can figure out the “how”How to build a scoring function live and let an agent improve your prompt inside a safe playgroundHow Ankur turned his designer David’s taste into a repeatable eval so quality scales beyond one personWhy fixing your CI is the highest-leverage way to speed up engineering velocity

Brought to you by:

Guru—The AI layer of truth

Persona—Trusted identity verification for any use case

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Ankur Goyal

(03:00) Using AI agents for database optimization

(06:10) Running exhaustive benchmarks with coding agents

(09:03) Why staff engineers are wrong about AI limitations

(11:30) The “agent line” framework for delegation

(14:00) Ankur’s workflow: running 4 to 6 concurrent agents

(17:16) Technical setup: foreground agents, background agents, and cloud environments

(20:32) Spending time with AI tools

(23:06) Demystifying evals

(26:02) Live demo: Building an eval for documentation answers

(30:20) The alternative to evals: vibe checks and whack-a-mole

(32:09) Capturing designer taste in scoring functions

(33:13) Quick recap

(33:44) Managing velocity and throughput

(35:40) Why CI/CD investment is critical for AI-accelerated teams

(37:30) Ankur’s prompting strategy when agents fail

(39:10) Closing thoughts and how to connect

Tools referenced:

• Braintrust: https://www.braintrust.dev/

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex/

• GPT 5.4: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-5.4

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

Other references:

• GPT 5.5 just did what no other model could: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/gpt-55-just-did-what-no-other-model

• Paul Graham’s Maker vs. Manager Schedule: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

• tmux: https://github.com/tmux/tmux

• Chris Tate at Vercel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ctatedev/

Where to find Ankur Goyal:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankrgyl/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-15
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Claude Fable 5 review: what the new Mythos model gets right (and very wrong)

Claude Fable 5 is the first Mythos-class intelligence model to be generally available, and I got early access to test it before launch. In this episode, I walk through what Anthropic is promising, what actually stood out when I used it on real work, and where I think it fits in your AI stack.

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction: Fable 5 is finally here

(00:31) What Anthropic says about the model

(05:14) Token-intensive by design

(06:28) Safety classifiers and the new fallback concept

(07:46) Is this or is this not Mythos?

(08:30) New product launches: Managed Agents and more

(09:20) Crushing benchmarks

(09:55) What it’s actually like to use (the good and the bad)

(11:40) Test 1: product graph spec

(12:56) Test 2: designing a skills registry

(14:04) Conservative on execution

(14:43) Test 3: multi-agent orchestration

(15:39) My takeaways

Tools referenced:

• Claude Fable 5: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5

• Claude Managed Agents: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/overview

Other reference:

• SWBench Pro benchmark: https://www.swebench.com/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-09
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Shopping with Claude: How to find quality brands, automate returns, and buy things that last 100 years | Nicole Ruiz

Nicole Ruiz is a writer and parent who has built a comprehensive AI-powered shopping system to help her family buy high-quality, long-lasting items while avoiding the noise of drop-shipping brands, paid ads, and poorly made products. She writes an interview series on Substack about how technology is changing the household.

What you’ll learn:

How to build a Claude Project with custom instructions for vetting brands based on heritage, craftsmanship, and return policiesThe shopping criteria that help surface century-old manufacturers over trendy direct-to-consumer brandsHow to use Claude to search through trusted vendor websites that have terrible UXWhy AI actually helps small artisans and heritage brands compete against Amazon’s infrastructureHow to use Claude Cowork to automate returns by finding receipts in your email and drafting refund requestsThe technique for getting Claude to analyze whether a brand is legitimate or just a drop-shipping operationHow to shop within a specific budget or with gift cards using AI assistance

Brought to you by:

Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows

Metaview—The agentic recruiting platform for winning teams

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Nicole and AI-powered shopping

(02:29) The problem

(04:55) Building a Claude Project for household purchasing

(07:44) The “anti-to-do list” concept for reducing mental overhead

(10:30) Shopping for a can opener: the system in action

(15:53) How AI helps century-old brands with terrible websites

(18:45) Processing returns with Claude Cowork

(25:06) Using gift cards strategically

(26:33) Vetting brands

(29:40) Recap, lightning round, and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• Claude Cowork: https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-cowork

Other references:

• Boston General Store: https://bostongeneralstore.com/

• L.L.Bean: https://www.llbean.com/

• Manufactum: https://www.manufactum.com/

• 5 OpenClaw agents run my home, finances, and code | Jesse Genet: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/5-openclaw-agents-run-my-home-finances

• From a $6.90 newsletter to $3M API: How a non-coder built Memelord | Jason Levin: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-a-690-newsletter-to-3m-api-how

Where to find Nicole Ruiz:

X: https://x.com/nwilliams030

Substack (The Third Oikos): https://www.thirdoikos.com/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-08
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Gemini Omni: Clone yourself with AI in under 15 minutes

In this experimental episode, I document my real-time attempt to create an AI avatar of myself using Google Flow and the new Gemini Omni video generation model. I walk through the entire process—from scanning my face with my phone to generating a complete one-minute hype video for the podcast, all in about 15 minutes.

What you’ll learn:

How to create an AI avatar using Google Flow in under five minutesWhy video AI tools unlock creative possibilities for people with zero video production skillsThe step-by-step process of generating a full storyboard using AI as your creative producerHow to use character consistency features to generate multiple video scenes with the same avatarThe uncanny-valley moments you’ll encounter when your AI clone doesn’t quite nail emotions or physicsHow to stitch together AI-generated scenes into a complete video using built-in editing tools

Brought to you by:

Merge—Connective infrastructure for production AI

Jira Product Discovery—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Getting started with Google Flow and Gemini Omni

(01:38) The avatar creation process: scanning and photo capture

(02:55) Using Flow to brainstorm a hype video storyboard

(06:59) Generating the first video scene with the avatar

(08:41) Troubleshooting: accidentally generating images instead of videos

(09:32) Generating all seven scenes for the complete video

(11:37) Reviewing the avatar videos

(13:13) Stitching the videos together in the browser-based editor

(14:32) The complete How I AI hype video

(15:32) What worked and what didn’t

(19:04) Final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Google Flow: https://labs.google/fx/tools/flow

• Gemini Omni: https://gemini.google/overview/video-generation/

• Veo 3: https://deepmind.google/technologies/veo/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-03
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Building an iPhone app with zero technical skills | Bryce Rattner Keithley

Bryce Rattner Keithley has spent her career in talent and recruiting, working with technical leaders but never writing a line of code herself. Yet she managed to build Daily Hundred—a fitness app featuring custom AI-generated videos of anthropomorphic animals demonstrating exercises—and ship it to the App Store before her software engineer friends. Using Replit, Claude, Gemini, and a relentless beginner’s mindset, Bryce proves that in the AI era, execution is no longer the constraint on good ideas.

What you’ll learn:

How to build and ship an iPhone app using Replit without any coding knowledgeThe step-by-step process for creating custom AI-generated workout videos by combining Gemini images with real exercise footageHow to use Claude as your technical architect and Claude Code as your software engineerHow to navigate App Store submission requirements (including fixing rejection feedback)Why being hyper-literal in your prompts unlocks better AI resultsWhy a beginner’s mind is actually an advantage when building with AI tools

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Metaview—The agentic recruiting platform for winning teams

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Bryce and Daily Hundred

(04:48) Building with Replit

(06:16) The beginner’s mindset advantage

(11:17) Creating anthropomorphic animals

(22:55) Moving from static image to video

(27:15) The floating genie and other anthropomorphic animal generations

(30:46) Shifting from web app to App Store submission

(36:24) User feedback

(37:41) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Replit: https://replit.com/

• Lovable: https://lovable.dev/

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/

• Higgsfield: https://higgsfield.ai/

• Kling: https://kling.ai/

• Railway: https://railway.app/

• TestFlight: https://developer.apple.com/testflight/

Other references:

• How a 91-year-old vibe coded a complex event management system using Claude and Replit | John Blackman: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-a-91-year-old-vibe-coded-a-complex

• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: https://www.amazon.com/What-Got-Here-Wont-There/dp/1401301304

• How Women Rise: https://www.amazon.com/How-Women-Rise-Holding-Careers/dp/0316440124

• A Whole New Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Whole-New-Mind-Right-Brainers-Future/dp/1594481717

• How to Win Friends and Influence People: https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034

Where to find Bryce Rattner Keithley:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brycerattner/

GitHub: https://github.com/brk-bot/

Daily Hundred on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daily100-fitness-challenge/id6762108062

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-06-01
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Claude Opus 4.8 is here. Is it as good as they say?

I got a few hours of early-access testing with Anthropic’s newly released model Opus 4.8. I walk through real coding, design, and strategy tasks across Claude Code and Claude Cowork, and give you my unfiltered view on what impressed me and what didn’t.

What you’ll learn:

Where Opus 4.8 excels: greenfield prototypes, one-shot features, and fast executionWhere it struggles: the last 10%, edge cases in existing codebases, and hallucinationsHow Opus 4.8 compares to Opus 4.7 on business strategy workWhy I’m still reaching for Opus 4.7 on data-heavy strategy and roadmap workThe new features shipping alongside the model: dynamic workflows with parallel subagents and effort control in Claude.ai and CoworkThe prompting and harness strategy I’d use to get the most out of it

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Opus 4.8 

(00:44) Benchmark performance and pricing

(01:53) First coding test: Building a prototyping tool

(03:00) Where it failed: The last 10% problem

(03:27) The hallucination problem

(04:23) Testing Opus 4.8 on existing codebases

(05:24) The ambition test: Building games for a 9-year-old

(07:03) Business strategy test: 4.7 vs 4.8

(08:23) The roadmap test

(09:17) Final verdict

References:

• System Card: Claude Opus 4.8: https://cdn.sanity.io/files/4zrzovbb/website/c886650a2e96fc0925c805a1a7ca77314ccbf4a6.pdf

• Introducing Claude Opus 4.8 on X: https://x.com/claudeai/status/2060042702150930686?s=20

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-28
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The Codex feature that works while you sleep

In this 30-minute episode, I walk through my favorite feature in Codex: the /goal command. I show how Goals transform AI from a turn-based assistant that needs constant ‘what’s next?’ prompting into an autonomous agent that can work for hours on complex, multi-step tasks. I share three real examples: eliminating thousands of Sentry errors, cleaning 3,900 emails down to 68, and organizing hundreds of Linear tasks.

What you’ll learn:

What Goals are and how they differ from standard promptsHow I used /goal to eliminate hundreds of error logs in my codebase over a five-hour autonomous runThe non-technical use cases that make Goals incredibly powerful: cleaning up 3,900 emails in under four hours and organizing hundreds of project management tasks in LinearHow to write effective /goal prompts with measurable outcomes, verification methods, and constraintsWhen not to use Goals and what makes a strong versus weak GoalWhy Goals represent a fundamental shift in how we work with AI, from babysitting the model to managing it

Brought to you by:

Mercury—Radically different banking loved by over 300K entrepreneurs

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:50) What is /goal and when should you use it?

(02:45) The difference between prompts and Goal-based loops

(04:06) Claire’s first five-hour 45-minute autonomous coding task

(05:05) How to manage a Goal lifecycle: view, pause, resume, and clear

(06:06) How to write strong goals: outcomes vs. outputs

(07:34) The six components of effective Goals

(08:57) Example: Reducing P95 checkout latency with /goal

(09:36) Demo: Using /goal to eliminate Sentry errors in ChatPRD

(13:18) Demo: Burning down Vercel API errors

(17:28) Non-technical use case: Cleaning 3,900 emails with /goal

(21:24) Demo: Using /goal to clean up Linear project tasks

(24:41) When not to use /goal

(26:10) Why /goal changes everything

Tools referenced:

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex/

• Sentry: https://sentry.io/

• Vercel: https://vercel.com/

• Linear: https://linear.app/

Other reference:

• OpenAI blog post “Using Goals in Codex”: https://developers.openai.com/cookbook/examples/codex/using_goals_in_codex

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-27
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How the engineer behind Claude Cowork actually uses Claude | Felix Rieseberg (Anthropic)

Felix Rieseberg is the engineering lead for Claude Cowork and Claude Code Desktop at Anthropic. He previously spent five years at Slack building developer tools. In this episode, Felix demonstrates how he uses Claude to solve real-life problems: analyzing floor plans to build interactive 3D house walkthroughs, automatically tracking promises he makes on Twitter, and building a $20 hardware device that physically approves Claude actions with a button press.

What you’ll learn:

How to use Claude Cowork to turn a 2D floor plan into an interactive 3D walkthrough where you can move furniture aroundThe “go one abstraction layer up” philosophy: why you should never manually enter data Claude can find itselfHow to use your email as an inventory database for furniture, clothing, and personal purchasesWhen to use Opus vs. Sonnet 4.6 (hint: it’s about how well you can scope the problem, not technical complexity)How live artifacts work and why they’re powerful for dashboards that refresh with real-time data from your connectorsThe product philosophy behind making latency delightfulHow to build your own $20 hardware device using Claude Code (no hardware experience required)Why Felix never reads the code Claude writes and judges it purely on output

Brought to you by:

Magic Patterns—Prototypes that look like your product

Guru—The AI layer of truth

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Felix Rieseberg

(02:40) Felix’s role at Anthropic

(03:25) The multiple tabs in Claude and why they exist

(05:55) Using Claude Cowork to design a new house using floor plans

(09:52) When to use Opus versus Sonnet 4.6

(12:37) Building an interactive 3D furniture planner

(14:30) Using your email as a source of truth for personal inventory

(15:58) The anti-to-do list: going one abstraction layer up

(23:14) Introduction to live artifacts

(26:02) Building a personal dashboard with live data

(28:37) Being polite to Claude (and why it matters for your humanity)

(30:28) Claude interaction tips

(32:33) Looking at the daily dashboard

(33:55) How live artifacts work with connectors

(35:02) Redesigning the dashboard

(37:55) The biggest gap: people don’t know what problems AI can solve

(41:52) The reverse interview

(42:30) Making latency delightful through asynchronous design

(44:05) The redesigned dashboard

(45:28) AI should free up your creative energy

(46:44) Building a $20 hardware Claude buddy

(52:33) Why kids are magical AI users

(54:30) Recap and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Claude Cowork: https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-cowork

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Claude for Chrome: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/chrome

• Claude Desktop: https://claude.ai/download

• Live Artifacts: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14729249-use-live-artifacts-in-claude-cowork

• Connectors (Spotify, Gmail, Calendar, Notion): https://claude.ai/settings/connectors

• Slack: https://slack.com/

Where to find Felix Rieseberg:

Website: https://felixrieseberg.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixrieseberg/

X: https://x.com/felixrieseberg

GitHub: https://github.com/felixrieseberg

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-25
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What launched at Google I/O 2026 (30-minute day 1 recap)

Today is day one of Google I/O 2026, and I walk through every major announcement live—from the new Gemini 3.5 model family to Anti-Gravity 2.0, Google AI Studio, Gemini’s consumer redesign, the Omni video model, Flow, Stitch, and Pomelli. I test them in real time and tell you exactly which ones delivered.

What you’ll learn:

How Gemini 3.5 Flash benchmarks against Claude and GPT models on speed and agentic coding tasksHow Anti-Gravity 2.0’s new features (projects, scheduled tasks, subagents, slash commands) compare to Codex and Claude CodeWhy the /grill-me slash command could be a more aggressive alternative to Claude Code’s clarification flow—and how to use itHow Google AI Studio’s new Workspace integration is designed to own the internal productivity app use caseHow Google’s new creative tools work in practice: Omni (video generation), Flow (cinematic video editing and character consistency), Stitch (streaming UI design with inline edits), and Pomelli (brand identity and asset generation)Why Google’s launch-to-availability gap is still a problem—and what to do when a featured product doesn’t actually work yet

Brought to you by:

Magic Patterns—Prototypes that look like your product

Thoughtspot—Build AI-powered analytics into your product

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Google I/O 2026 day 1 overview

(01:47) Gemini 3.5 flash

(04:19) Antigravity updates

(06:32) CLI test and agent features

(07:59) Core agent features released today—May 19th, 2026

(09:43) New slash commands

(11:20) Antigravity test results and takeaways

(12:25) AI Studio updates

(13:52) Access issues

(15:20) Gemini redesign

(17:24) Gemini image gen test

(19:16) Omni (video generation)

(22:56) Flow (cinematic editing)

(24:31) Avatar creation test

(26:45) Pomelli and Stitch

(31:13) Recap and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Gemini 3.5 Flash: https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/

• Antigravity: https://antigravity.google/

• Google AI Studio: https://aistudio.google.com/

• Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/

• Omni (video generation): https://gemini.google/overview/video-generation/

• Google Flow: https://flow.google/

• Stitch: https://stitch.withgoogle.com/

• Pomelli (Google brand tool): https://labs.google.com/pomelli/about/

Other references:

• Google I/O 2026 announcements: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/sundar-pichai-io-2026/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-20
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HTML is the new Markdown: How Anthropic engineers are building with Claude Code | Thariq Shihipar

Thariq Shihipar is an engineer at Anthropic working on the Claude Code team. He’s spent the past several months experimenting with HTML as a replacement for Markdown in planning and implementation workflows, discovering that richer visual formats lead to better human engagement—and, ultimately, better products. In this episode, filmed at Anthropic’s Code with Claude event in San Francisco, Thariq demonstrates how to use HTML artifacts to create interactive plans, build throwaway UIs for specific problems, and maintain living design systems that travel with your codebase.

What you’ll learn:

Why HTML has replaced Markdown as the ideal format for AI agent communication and planningHow to brainstorm in HTML to get visual mockups and interactive demos instead of text listsThe technique for building throwaway micro-UIs to edit specific parts of your planHow to create a living design system in HTML that lives in your repo and travels with every projectWhy “complexity has to earn its keep” and how HTML helps you stay in the loop without over-constraining ClaudeThe prompting technique that gives Claude flexibility while ensuring that you get what you needWhy 99% of your AI-generated tokens should go to planning, interfaces, and communication—not production code

Brought to you by:

Celigo—Intelligent automation built for AI

Persona—Trusted identity verification for any use case

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:39) HTML as the new Markdown

(04:30) The compute allocator mindset

(05:51) How HTML makes specs more engaging

(06:48) Demo: Brainstorming in HTML with Claude Code

(09:24) From brainstorm to full implementation plan

(11:20) Prompting philosophy: Trust Claude but give it constraints

(13:50) The future of PRDs and tech specs

(18:16) Making HTML specs editable

(20:23) The abundance mindset

(24:17) Just-in-time documentation and throwaway software

(25:39) Using plans as artifacts for implementation

(26:39) Demo: Living design systems in HTML

(30:16) Adding comments and annotations to HTML plans

(31:42) Recap: The HTML workflow

(32:21) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Claude Design: https://claude.ai/design

• AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• GitHub: https://github.com/

Other references:

• Anthropic Code with Claude event: https://claude.com/code-with-claude

• SpaceX partnership announcement: https://www.anthropic.com/news/higher-limits-spacex

• Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Where to find Thariq Shihipar:

Website: https://www.thariq.io/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thariqshihipar/

X: https://x.com/trq212

GitHub: https://github.com/ThariqS

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-18
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Spec-driven development: The AI engineering workflow at Notion | Ryan Nystrom

Ryan Nystrom is a software engineer at Notion. He joined in December 2024 after Notion acquired Campsite, the team communication platform he co-founded with Brian Lovin. At Notion, he’s been a core builder of Notion AI and the Custom Agents feature launched in February 2026. He manages a team of six to seven engineers while still writing code himself, currently running Project Afterburner, a push to cut Notion’s CI time to a quarter of its current duration.

What you’ll learn:

How to build a Notion AI custom agent that auto-generates your daily standup pre-read by pulling from Slack, GitHub, Honeycomb metrics, and yesterday’s meeting transcriptHow to configure subagents and MCP integrations within Notion AIHow Notion’s internal “Boxy” system lets engineers @mention Codex from within Notion comments and get a full pull request with screenshots in 20 minutesThe spec-first development workflow: dictate an idea into Whisper, have Codex format it as a proper spec, commit it to the repo, and let the agent implement and verify it autonomouslyWhy fast CI is absolutely critical in the age of AI coding agentsHow to prompt AI coding agents to defend their reasoning under pushbackWhy engineering managers and even senior executives should keep writing code

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Ryan Nystrom

(02:48) How AI has upended 12+ years of the same working routine

(04:30) Project Afterburner: Notion’s push to cut CI time to a quarter

(09:00) Why high-frequency, high-quality meetings beat lower-frequency standups

(11:10) How automated context surfaces every engineer’s work equally

(12:15) Why cutting meeting prep is a burnout protection mechanism

(14:26) The case for engineering managers writing code

(16:13) Inside “Boxy”: Notion’s internal VM-based background agent system

(20:30) Old World vs. New World code review

(24:51) Prompting Codex from Notion comments

(29:20) The emotions around code review

(31:01) Quick recap

(32:00) Spec-first development: writing and checking agent specs into the repo

(35:10) The spec as changelog: version control for how a feature actually works

(37:53) How engineers’ roles are evolving

(39:00) Lightning round

(45:21) Where to find Ryan

Tools referenced:

• Notion AI: https://www.notion.com/product/ai

• Notion Custom Agents: https://www.notion.com/blog/introducing-custom-agents

• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex

• Claude Code (Anthropic): https://claude.ai/code

• Honeycomb (observability + MCP): https://www.honeycomb.io

• Whisper (OpenAI voice transcription): https://openai.com/research/whisper

• Slack: https://slack.com

• GitHub: https://github.com

Other references:

• How Stripe built “minions”—AI coding agents that ship 1,300 PRs weekly from Slack reactions | Steve Kaliski (Stripe): https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/stripes-ai-minions-ship-1300-prs-weekly-from-a-slack-emoji

• Notion 3.3 Custom Agents launch (February 24, 2026): https://www.notion.com/releases/2026-02-24

Where to find Ryan Nystrom:

X: https://x.com/ryannystrom

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryannystrom/

GitHub: https://github.com/rnystrom

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-11
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Code with Claude: The 5 biggest updates explained

Claire breaks down the biggest announcements from Anthropic’s “Code with Claude” event and what they actually mean for builders shipping AI products today. From scheduled AI routines to outcome-based agents, multi-agent orchestration, and new memory systems, Claire walks through the features she’s most excited to use immediately—and how they could reshape the future of agentic software.

What you’ll learn:

How Claude Code routines let you automate recurring workflows on schedules or webhooksWhat “Outcomes” are and how rubric-based agent grading worksHow multi-agent orchestration enables specialized AI teams with different roles and toolsWhy Anthropic’s new “Dreams” memory system matters for long-term agent behaviorWhy increased Claude Code usage limits are a bigger deal than they soundHow Claire thinks about building practical agentic products today

Resources:

• Code with Claude: https://claude.com/code-with-claude

• Claude Code Routines Docs: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/routines

• Define Outcomes Docs: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/define-outcomes

• Dreams Docs: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/dreams

• Multi-Agent Docs: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/multi-agent

• Managed Agent Webhooks Docs: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/webhooks#supported-event-types

• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex

• GitHub: https://github.com

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-07
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Quests, token leaderboards, and a skills marketplace: The elite AI adoption playbook | John Kim (Sendbird)

John Kim is the co-founder and CEO of Delight.ai, a customer experience platform that’s transforming how companies deploy AI. But what makes John’s story fascinating isn’t just his product; it’s how he’s turned his entire company into an AI-native organization. His marketing team built a fully functional e-commerce swag store with Stripe integration in days. His sales team built their own CRM tools. His recruiting team automated their entire workflow. And it’s all tracked, measured, and celebrated through an internal platform called Automators.

What you’ll learn:

How Sendbird’s marketing team built a fully functional swag store with Stripe integration in a day (with no engineering support)How the Automators platform works—an internal marketplace where anyone can request AI tools and engineers (or AI agents) can build themHow to create secure, compliant templates so non-technical teams can ship to production safelyHow Sendbird built a token usage dashboard with five tiers (beginner through AI God) and why tracking the smoothness of the curve matters more than the totalWhy visible leadership usage is the most powerful adoption signalWhy Sendbird rewrote job descriptions to prioritize curiosity, agency, and energy over years of experienceHow John uses AI for his own learning

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

ThoughtSpot—Build AI-powered analytics into your product

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to John Kim

(02:45) The Delight.ai swag store built by marketing in two days

(05:51) The before times: when fun had to earn its place on the roadmap

(07:55) Demo: The Automators platform and quest system

(13:47) The AI Engineer for Internal Operations role

(16:06) Demo: The company-wide skills marketplace

(17:19) Treating AI adoption as a product

(18:43) Real wins: team-level and campaign examples

(21:51) Why SaaS isn’t dead—it’s being rebuilt internally

(23:46) Demo: The token tracking dashboard

(26:32) Measuring without fear: setting expectations, not punishments

(28:54) Quick recap

(30:51) Personal AI use cases: endless knowledge at your fingertips

(36:15) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex

• Obsidian: https://obsidian.md

• GitHub: https://github.com

• Stripe: https://stripe.com

Other references:

• Jason Levin (CEO of Memelord) on How I AI: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-a-690-newsletter-to-3m-api-how

• Konami Code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code

• Andrew Huberman’s podcast: https://hubermanlab.com/

• Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/

Where to find John Kim:

X: https://x.com/doshkim

Instagram: https://instagram.com/dosh

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doshkim/

Company: https://delight.ai

Delight.ai Spark Conference (May 7, SF): https://delight.ai/spark

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-06
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The internal AI tool that’s transforming how Stripe designs products | Owen Williams

Owen Williams is a design manager at Stripe who built Protodash, an internal AI-powered prototyping platform that lets designers and PMs create high-quality Stripe dashboard prototypes without writing code. What started as a bundle of Cursor rules and React components evolved into a full web-based prototyping studio that runs in dev boxes, complete with design review modes, variant testing, and AI-powered iteration. Surprisingly, PMs now use Protodash just as much as designers, fundamentally changing how Stripe approaches prototyping, design reviews, and engineering handoffs.

What you’ll learn:

How Stripe built an internal AI prototyping tool using Cursor rules, MCPs, and their design systemWhy “blurple slop” happens when designers use generic AI tools—and how to fix itThe architecture behind Protodash: React router, design system components, and MCP integrationsHow Stripe prototypes in dev boxes so designers never have to worry about local setupWhy “demos, not memos” transformed Stripe’s design review cultureHow Stripe built design review modes, variant testing, and AI annotation directly into your prototyping toolWhy internal tools don’t need to be production-grade to be transformative

Brought to you by:

Celigo—Intelligent automation built for AI

Cursor—The best way to code with AI

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Welcome and intro to Owen Williams

(02:19) The “blurple slop” problem with AI design tools

(03:50) Protodash: an internal vibe-coding tool for Stripe prototypes

(05:26) Why an engineering background helped Owen lower the bar for designers

(07:55) The Cursor rules that taught the Stripe design system

(09:04) Running prototypes on dev boxes vs. locally

(10:30) “Demos, not memos” and rewiring design reviews at Stripe

(14:50) Building Protodash Studio: a browser-based wrapper for prototyping

(19:04) Live demo: variants, line charts, and remixing prototypes in browser

(21:02) Self-testing prototypes that take screenshots and check their work

(23:20) Multiple variant features

(26:08) The annotate-for-AI button for in-canvas feedback

(27:21) Design review mode: comments, summaries, and AI follow-up

(29:39) Why building internal tools beats buying off-the-shelf

(32:50) PMs as the surprise power users of Protodash

(35:20) Live demo: a Black Friday/Cyber Monday pet store dashboard

(42:03) Lo-fi modes, monospace fonts, and “Comic Sans for WIP” at Shopify

(44:45) Quick recap

(45:35) The Radar prototype that changed engineering handoff

(49:08) Lightning round and final thoughts

Blog & detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:

Stripe’s Owen Williams on Killing ‘Blurple Slop’ with an Internal Prototyping Studio: http://chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/stripe-owen-williams-on-buildling-internal-prototyping-studio

↳ How To Connect a Design System to an AI Code Editor for High Fidelity Prototypes: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-connect-a-design-system-to-an-ai-code-editor-for-high-fidelity-prototypes

↳ Streamline Design Reviews with an AI-Powered Prototyping Studio: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/streamline-design-reviews-with-an-ai-powered-prototyping-studio

↳ Build a Personal AI App to Track Purchases and User Manuals: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/build-a-personal-ai-app-to-track-purchases-and-user-manuals

Tools referenced:

• v0: https://v0.app/

• Cursor: https://cursor.com/

• Claude Code: https://www.claude.com/product/claude-code

• Claude Design: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-design-anthropic-labs

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Stripe Radar: https://stripe.com/radar

• Balsamiq: https://balsamiq.com/

Where to find Owen Williams:

X: https://x.com/ow

Website: https://owenwillia.ms/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owenpwilliams

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-05-04
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From a $6.90 newsletter to $3M API: How a non-coder built Memelord | Jason Levin

Jason Levin is the CEO and founder of Memelord, an AI-powered meme creation platform that helps brands and individuals create contextual, trending memes. He started Memelord as a $6.90-per-month newsletter sending subscribers to a Google Slides deck, grew it to $100K ARR on Bubble without hiring engineers, then raised $3M to build it into an API-first product.

What you’ll learn:

How Jason grew Memelord from a $6.90/month newsletter to $100K ARR without writing a single line of codeWhy “no UX is the best UX” and how agents are becoming Memelord’s primary usersThe mandatory vibe-coding rule for his marketing team and how it unlocks unprecedented creativityWhy free tools are the new PDF downloads and how they’ve generated hundreds of thousands of emailsJason’s hardware hacking projects, including a bedside keyboard that creates Linear tickets without waking his wifeWhy AI can be funny (but humans are still funnier) and which model is the funniestThe philosophy of building hyper-personalized software just for yourself

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Persona—Trusted identity verification for any use case

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Jason Levin and Memelord

(04:28) Demo: Agentic meme creation with OpenClaw

(06:55) “No UX is the best UX”—building for an agent-first future

(08:35) How Memelord started as a $6.90 newsletter with Google Slides

(12:35) Building to $100K ARR on Bubble with 395 workflows

(15:20) Demo: Free tools section that generates hundreds of thousands of emails

(17:59) Why Cursor is perfect for non-technical founders

(20:20) Let your marketers cook—or watch them leave

(24:19) Commit graph that shows the vibe-coding inflection point

(25:25) Tools: Claude, Gemini, Linear, PostHog

(28:19) Build weird stuff in the real world

(33:24) Creative AI use cases

(39:56) Using OpenClaw for calendar analysis

(43:37) Can AI be funny? Which model is funniest?

(45:26) Memes are not slop

(46:45) What Jason doesn’t use AI for

(48:12) Final thoughts

Blog & detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:

How I AI: Jason Levin’s Workflows for Agentic Memes, Vibe Coding, and Hardware Hacking: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/jason-levins-workflows-for-agentic-memes-vibe-coding-and-hardware-hacking

↳ Build a Custom Bedside Keyboard for Idea Capture with Raspberry Pi and ChatGPT: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/build-a-custom-bedside-keyboard-for-idea-capture-with-raspberry-pi-and-chatgpt

↳ Build Free Marketing Tools as Lead Magnets Using AI Code Assistants: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/build-free-marketing-tools-as-lead-magnets-using-ai-code-assistants

↳ Automate Meme Marketing with an AI Agent and OpenClaw: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/automate-meme-marketing-with-an-ai-agent-and-openclaw

Tools referenced:

• Memelord API: https://memelord.com/api

• Cursor: https://cursor.com/

• Bubble: https://bubble.io/

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/

• Grok: https://grok.x.ai/

• Linear: https://linear.app/

• PostHog: https://posthog.com/

• Zapier: https://zapier.com/

Other references:

• Diego Zaks—“The best UX is no UX”: https://x.com/diegozaks/status/1966526522136649980

• Sam Lessin: https://wlessin.com/

• “Stop giving me advice”: https://stopgivingmeadvice.com

• Memelord free tools: https://memelord.com/tools

Where to find Jason Levin:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamjasonlevin

Instagram: https://instagram.com/iamjasonlevin

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamjasonlevin/

Memelord: https://memelord.com

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-04-27
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GPT 5.5 just did what no other model could

In this mini episode, I break down OpenAI’s new GPT 5.5 and GPT 5.5 Pro after weeks of early testing. I walk through three real jobs I threw at the model:  building an app for me to teach my second grader more advanced subtraction concepts, tackling a tech debt problem in the ChatPRD codebase, and hacking into a proprietary Bluetooth pixel display that every other model had failed me on. My verdict: higher intelligence, better efficiency, and genuinely autonomous long-running loops that change what I think is worth tackling.


What you’ll learn:

How I think about GPT 5.5 Pro’s pricing vs engineering time, and when I believe the “intelligence tax” is worth payingWhy I treat GPT 5.5 as a developer model first, and why I couldn’t find a consumer use case that justified its intelligenceThe exact prompt pattern I use to unlock a long-running autonomous subagent loopHow I got a near-six-hour autonomous run to one-shot 98% of edge cases in a migration over millions of chat threads and drop my Sentry error rate to the floorWhy I’m now throwing GPT 5.5 at tech debt, flaky tests, and security backlogs firstHow I combined a Bluetooth packet sniffer and GPT 5.5 to reverse-engineer a proprietary pixel speaker after Claude Code and GPT 5.4 both gave upHow I use the /personality command inside Codex to swap the default “baked potato” tone for something I actually enjoy working with

In this episode, I cover:

(00:00) Introduction to GPT 5.5 testing

(00:40) What is GPT 5.5 and how much does it cost?

(03:23) Testing GPT 5.5 in ChatGPT: the intelligence overhang problem

(07:12) Moving to Codex: where GPT 5.5 really shines

(16:01) Hacking a Chinese Bluetooth speaker

(21:47) Final thoughts on GPT 5.5’s intelligence and efficiency

Tools referenced:

• GPT 5.5 and GPT 5.5 Pro: https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-5/

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Sentry: https://sentry.io/

• Divoom MiniToo: https://divoom.com/products/minitoo

Other references:

• OpenAI Codex Security: https://openai.com/index/codex-security-now-in-research-preview/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-04-23
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What Claude Design is actually good for (and why Figma isn’t dead, yet)

In this mini episode, I do a full walkthrough of the AI design tools that dropped in April 2026: Anthropic’s new Claude Design, OpenAI’s GPT Images 2.0, and Google Labs’ open-source DESIGN.md format. I import a full design system from Lenny’s Newsletter, build a landing page, turn my own article into a polished deck, generate a brand kit for ChatPRD, and run a personal color analysis from a photo.

What you’ll learn:

How Claude Design handles design system imports and whether it can actually replace FigmaThe three best use cases for Claude Design: marketing landing pages, slide decks, and creative redesignsWhy ChatGPT Images 2.0 is a breakthrough for brand kits and layout workGoogle’s new DESIGN.md standardThe practical limits of AI design tools (spoiler: you’ll hit credit limits fast)

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Rippling—Stop wasting time on admin tasks, build your startup faster

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Welcome and what’s in the spring 2026 AI design drop

(01:45) Claude Design overview

(03:05) Importing Lenny’s Newsletter design system into Claude Design

(04:06) How Claude Design structures a design system

(05:42) Google Labs’ DESIGN.md standard

(06:41) Building Lenny Doc, a PRD generator landing page using the Lenny design system

(09:44) Why the three-variation output is Claude Design’s smartest UX choice

(10:20) Hitting the Claude Design limit and paying $200 to keep going

(11:05) Where Figma still wins

(13:20) Reviewing Lenny Doc

(16:19) Turning an Open Claude article into a branded slide deck

(17:57) The ’90s GeoCities “Lenny’s Product Zone” redesign

(19:44) Claude Design recap

(20:15) ChatGPT Images 2.0 and what makes it the first “thinking” image model

(21:25) Generating a multi-page brand kit for ChatPRD and iterating with reference images

(23:43) Personal color analysis demo

(26:02) Recap

Detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:

• How I Put Claude Design and GPT Images 2.0 to the Test: Building Landing Pages, Slides, and Brand Kits: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/claude-design-and-gpt-images-2-building-landing-pages-slides-and-brand-kits

• How to Generate a Professional Brand Kit with GPT Images 2.0: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-generate-a-professional-brand-kit-with-gpt-images-2-0

• How to Convert an Article into a Polished Slide Deck with AI: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-convert-an-article-into-a-polished-slide-deck-with-ai

• How to Build a High-Fidelity Landing Page with Claude Design: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-build-a-high-fidelity-landing-page-with-claude-design

Tools referenced:

• Claude Design: https://claude.ai/design

• ChatGPT Images 2.0: https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-images-2-0/

• Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com/

Other references:

• Google’s DESIGN.md: https://stitch.withgoogle.com/docs/design-md/overview

• Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/

• Jamie Gannon “How I AI” episode on reference styles: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/mastering-midjourney-how-to-create

• Brand prompt inspiration: https://x.com/riomadeit/status/2046682442791071787

• Figma team “How I AI” episode on design systems: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-figma-to-claude-code-and-back

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-04-22
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How Intercom 2x’d their engineering velocity in 9 months with Claude Code | Brian Scanlan

Brian Scanlan is a senior principal engineer at Intercom, where he’s led the company’s transformation to AI-first engineering. In just nine months, Intercom doubled their R&D throughput while maintaining code quality, with 100% of engineers—plus designers, PMs, and TPMs—now shipping code via Claude Code.


What you’ll learn:

How Intercom doubled their merged PRs per R&D employee in just nine months using Claude CodeThe telemetry infrastructure they built to measure AI adoption and quality across hundreds of engineersWhy they built a skills repository with hooks that enforce engineering standards automaticallyHow they’re preparing their product for an agent-first world with CLIs, MCPs, and ephemeral APIsThe permission and accountability framework that enabled rapid AI adoptionWhy backlog zero is now achievable and what that means for engineering culture

Brought to you by:

Celigo—Intelligent automation built for AI

Cursor—The best way to code with AI

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Brian Scanlan

(02:40) Why Intercom went all-in on AI for both product and engineering

(05:01) The breakthrough moment with Opus 4.6 and Christmas break 2025

(07:02) Demo: Intercom’s merged PRs per R&D head

(12:50) Agent-first work as a fundamental reimagining of technical workflows

(14:27) The cost tradeoff: treating AI spend as an investment

(16:47) Measuring quality

(21:22) Demo: Shipping a redirect in the Rails monolith with Claude Code

(24:03) Creating a custom PR skill

(26:33) Building a software factory with predictable quality standards

(30:15) Telemetry infrastructure: Honeycomb for skill usage tracking

(32:10) Session data collection and personalized usage insights

(36:08) Quick overview

(39:20) Walking through Intercom’s skills repository

(42:16) Deep dive: The flaky spec skill and how it reached 100x capability

(46:44) The “and then” workflow for building comprehensive skills

(52:31) The live website and overview of workflows

(53:32) How internal AI experience informs customer product decisions

(56:18) Making SaaS products agent-friendly with CLIs and helpful hints

(01:03:49) Why conversion drop-off is invisible in agent-driven workflows

(01:05:28) Lightning round and final thoughts

Detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:

• How Intercom Doubled Engineering Output: Brian Scanlan's 4 AI Workflows for Claude Code: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/how-intercom-doubled-engineering-output-brian-scanlan-ai-workflows-for-claude-code

• Design an Agent-Friendly CLI to Automate SaaS Product Onboarding: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/design-an-agent-friendly-cli-to-automate-saas-product-onboarding

• Build a Self-Improving AI Agent to Automatically Fix Flaky Tests: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/build-a-self-improving-ai-agent-to-automatically-fix-flaky-tests

• Automate High-Quality Pull Request Descriptions with a Custom AI Skill: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/automate-high-quality-pull-request-descriptions-with-a-custom-ai-skill

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Cursor: https://cursor.com/

• Honeycomb: https://www.honeycomb.io/

• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/

• Fin AI: https://www.intercom.com/fin

• Vercel: https://vercel.com/

Other references:

• Intercom GitHub Repo: https://github.com/intercom

• Google API Go Client Repo: https://github.com/googleapis/google-api-go-client

Where to find Brian Scanlan:

X: https://x.com/brian_scanlan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scanlanb/

Company: https://www.intercom.com

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-04-20
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Claude Cowork 101: How to automate your workday without touching code | JJ Englert (Tenex)

JJ Englert leads community enablement at Tenex. In this episode, JJ provides a complete zero-to-one tutorial on Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s desktop tool that sits between simple chat and full terminal-based coding.


What you’ll learn:

How to create your first Claude Cowork project by connecting a folder on your computer and building context over timeThe “brain” file strategy: how to create a preferences document that Claude reads every time to understand who you are and how you workWhy one-click connectors to Gmail, Slack, Notion, and Google Calendar unlock AI that actually does work instead of just suggesting itHow to analyze your sent emails to build a writing skill that perfectly matches your tone and styleThe sub-advisory-board technique: spinning up three AI agents with different personas to review your work from multiple perspectivesHow to set permissions for each connector so Claude only drafts (never sends) or always asks before taking actionThe scheduled-task workflow that creates a morning debrief by reading your email, Slack, and calendar every day at 7:30 a.m.Why projects with shared memory beat individual chat threads for consistent, high-quality AI outputs

Brought to you by:

Tines—Start building intelligent workflows today

Cursor—The best way to code with AI

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to JJ Englert

(02:48) What Cowork is and who it’s for

(05:49) Getting started: Opening the Cowork tab in Claude Desktop

(07:04) Understanding projects as folders on your computer

(07:54) Creating your “brain” file, with working preferences and context

(10:24) Demo: Building a daily operating system project from scratch

(12:18) How to prompt Cowork when starting a new project

(14:54) Understanding the project interface and shared memory

(18:37) Setting up connectors to Gmail, Slack, Google Calendar, and other tools

(21:00) Using connectors to analyze your emails and build personalized writing skills

(24:21) Creating a thinking-partner skill for decision support

(26:18) Cowork vs. OpenClaw

(27:18) Building a sub-advisory skill with multiple AI personas for feedback

(34:03) Advanced skill example: Multi-step newsletter creation with research and evaluation

(36:08) Setting up scheduled tasks for morning debriefs

(37:57) Going beyond one-off tasks with AI

(41:00) Progressive trust and the tradeoff of information for productivity

(44:08) Different use cases beyond work productivity

(46:08) Lightning round

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Wispr Flow: https://whisperflow.ai/

• Monologue: https://www.monologue.to/

• Domo: https://www.domo.com/

• Pencil.dev: https://pencil.dev/

• Remotion: https://www.remotion.dev/

• Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.com/

• Notion: https://notion.so/

Other references:

• Get Started with Claude Cowork: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13345190-get-started-with-cowork

Where to find JJ Englert:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv2ovDhYVtlJw4QMidLFP8Q

X: https://twitter.com/jjenglert

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jj-englert-a08836a6/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-04-13
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I built a custom Slack inbox. It was easier than you’d think. | Yash Tekriwal (Clay)

Yash Tekriwal is the head of education at Clay. A self-described hyper-optimizer, Yash has built multiple custom productivity applications using Perplexity Computer and OpenClaw to manage his overwhelming daily workflow—including a Slack digest system that categorizes over 150 daily notifications into actionable priorities, and a consolidated news/email/Slack dashboard that serves as his personal command center.


What you’ll learn:

How Yash built a custom Slack digest that categorizes 150+ daily notifications into action-required, need-to-read, and FYI bucketsWhy Perplexity Computer beats Claude Code and Codex for building personal productivity appsHis “anti-to-do list” framework: spending an hour daily automating tasks you never want to do againHow to use AI for deterministic tasks (APIs, structured data) vs. subjective tasks (categorization, summarization)Why the SaaS apocalypse narrative is wrong—and why we’re about to see an explosion of micro-softwareHow his team uses Perplexity Computer to prototype design systems and communicate with cross-functional partners

Brought to you by:

Guru—The AI layer of truth

ThoughtSpot—Build AI-powered analytics into your product

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Yash

(02:38) The burden of 150 daily Slack notifications

(05:45) When to use AI for tasks vs. building deterministic code

(06:38) Building the Slack digest with OpenClaw

(11:33) Introducing Perplexity Computer and the visual dashboard

(14:28) Three reasons Perplexity Computer beats Claude Code

(16:14) Using connectors to automate meeting follow-ups across Notion and Asana

(18:21) The Kanban-style Slack dashboard

(20:15) The long tail of customer requests and the future of micro-software

(24:09) The anti-to-do list framework

(26:21) Building a consolidated news, email, and Slack digest

(29:48) How Perplexity Computer handles authentication and deployment

(31:46) Team use case: Prototyping persona-based learning journeys for Clay University

(35:49) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Perplexity Computer: https://www.perplexity.ai/computer/new

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/

• Discord: https://discord.com/

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex/

• Asana: https://asana.com/

• Airtable: https://airtable.com/

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Vercel: https://vercel.com/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

Other references:

• Slack: https://slack.com/

• Notion: https://www.notion.so/

• Superhuman: https://superhuman.com/

• Clay University: https://www.clay.com/university

• Kanban boards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board

Where to find Yash Tekriwal:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yashtekriwal/

X: https://x.com/yash_tek

Company: https://www.clay.com/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-04-08
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I gave Claude Code our entire codebase. Our customers noticed. | Al Chen (Galileo)

Al Chen is a field engineer at Galileo, an observability platform for AI applications, where he works on the front lines with enterprise customers asking highly technical questions. Despite never having held an engineering role, Al has built a system using Claude Code to query Galileo’s 15 separate repositories, combine that with Confluence documentation and customer-specific quirks, and deliver hyper-personalized answers that would otherwise require constant engineering support.


What you’ll learn:

How to use Claude Code to query multiple repositories simultaneously for customer supportWhy code is often a better source of truth than documentationHow to combine repository context with Confluence and Slack using MCPsThe “customer quirks” system that creates hyper-personalized deployment guidesHow to build virtuous loops that turn single customer questions into scalable knowledgeWhy information organization matters less in the AI eraA simple 16-line script (written by Claude Code) that pulls the latest main branch across all your repositories to keep your context currentHow to reduce engineering interruptions to near-zero by empowering customer-facing teams to query the codebase directly

Brought to you by:

Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows

Tines—Start building intelligent workflows today

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Al Chen

(02:50) The problem: documentation wasn’t enough

(04:23) Pulling 15 repos into VS Code

(06:03) How Claude Code queries the entire codebase

(08:00) Why current code beats documentation

(08:31) The pull script that keeps everything updated

(09:54) Opening projects at the multi-repo level

(11:40) Live demo: answering deployment questions

(13:25) The customer quirks system

(15:00) Living in chaos: why organization matters less now

(17:03) Competing on customer experience, not just product

(18:20) Should customers be able to query the code directly?

(20:05) Where humans still add value

(25:46) Using AI for reactive Slack support

(29:16) The “and then” workflow discovery

(32:07) Scaling processes across the team

(34:07) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/

• Pylon: https://usepylon.com/

• Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

Other references:

• Slack: https://slack.com/

• Kubernetes: https://kubernetes.io/

• Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/

• Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/

Where to find Al Chen:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thealchen/

Company: https://www.rungalileo.io

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-04-06
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How to turn Claude Code into your personal life operating system | Hilary Gridley

Hilary Gridley is an entrepreneur, former product leader, and new mom who previously appeared on the podcast discussing AI for managers. She returns to share how she's transformed her approach to personal productivity using Claude Code as her primary tool for managing both professional work and life admin. Hilary demonstrates her "anti-system system"—a philosophy that prioritizes simplicity over complex setup, allowing AI to learn preferences through observation rather than upfront configuration.

What you’ll learn:

How to capture to-dos instantly using a simple iPhone back-tap shortcut that requires zero app switchingThe “10x impact framework” for deciding what tasks to automate versus where to invest your human effortHow to use Claude Code’s observation capabilities to build a preference file that improves over time without manual setupWhy the “yappers API” (talking about what you’re doing while working) eliminates the need for complex OAuth integrationsA workflow for breaking down overwhelming tasks into 10-minute first steps that actually get completedHow to create Claude Skills by simply describing problems rather than writing code or following tutorialsTechniques for using “recording mode” to demo workflows without exposing personal information

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app Enterprise Ready today

Lovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AI

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Hilary Gridley

(02:43) The opportunity cost of time as a new mom and entrepreneur

(07:11) Philosophy of the anti-system system

(08:05) Demo: Planning your day with Claude Code

(10:00) Setting up simple iPhone shortcuts for task capture

(11:48) How Claude organizes reminders and learns preferences automatically

(16:19) Breaking down overwhelming tasks into manageable first steps

(23:40) The yappers API: talking to Claude instead of building integrations

(25:28) Daily logging and observation patterns

(27:45) Quick summary

(30:50) The power of screenshots

(32:55) 10x impact framework for automation decisions

(37:51) Applying the framework to different career stages

(39:29) Building a “recording on” skill for anonymizing demos

(44:11) Building a returns tracking skill from scratch

(48:31) Building the muscle memory to reach for AI tools

(50:18) Where to find Hilary

Tools referenced:

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/

• iPhone Shortcuts: https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/welcome/ios

• Cursor: https://cursor.sh/

Other references:

• Figma file Hilary demo’ed: https://www.writerbuilder.com/howiai

Where to find Hilary Gridley:

Substack: https://hils.substack.com/

Website: https://writerbuilder.com

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-03-30
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How Stripe built “minions”—AI coding agents that ship 1,300 PRs weekly from Slack reactions | Steve Kaliski (Stripe engineer)

Steve Kaliski is a software engineer at Stripe who has spent the past six and a half years building developer tools and payment infrastructure. He’s part of the team that created “minions”—Stripe’s internal AI coding agents, which now ship approximately 1,300 pull requests per week with minimal human intervention beyond code review. In this episode, Steve demonstrates how Stripe engineers activate development work from Slack and leverage cloud-based development environments for parallel agent workflows, and demos machine-to-machine payments where AI agents transact autonomously with third-party services.


What you’ll learn:

How Stripe’s “minions” write 1,300 pull requests per week with minimal human interventionWhy a good developer experience for humans creates better outcomes for AI agentsThe critical role of cloud development environments in unlocking AI-powered engineering velocityThe machine payment protocol that lets AI agents spend money to accomplish tasksThe code review strategy for handling thousands of agent-written PRsWhy non-engineers at Stripe are starting to use minions to ship codeThe future of software businesses built primarily for agent consumers

Brought to you by:

Optimizely—Your AI agent orchestration platform for marketing and digital teams

Rippling—Stop wasting time on admin tasks, build your startup faster

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Steve

(02:39) Stripe’s minions and their effect on Stripe as a whole

(04:42) Why activation energy matters more than execution

(05:44) What is a minion? The technical architecture

(06:52) Demo: Activating a minion from Slack with an emoji

(09:04) Why good developer experience benefits both humans and agents

(11:22) Walking through the agent loop and system prompts

(13:42) Why Stripe chose Goose as their agent harness

(16:00) The role of Stripe’s developer productivity team

(17:15) Why cloud environments unlock multi-threaded AI engineering

(21:14) One-shot prompting: from Slack to shipped PR

(22:04) How Stripe handles code review for 1,300 AI-written PRs weekly

(23:44) Non-engineers using minions across the company

(24:53) Demo: Planning a birthday party with Claude and machine payments

(32:15) Quick recap

(35:08) The future of ephemeral, API-first businesses for agents

(36:36) Lightning round and final thoughts

Detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:

• How Stripe's AI 'Minions' Ship 1,300 PRs Weekly from a Slack Emoji: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/stripes-ai-minions-ship-1300-prs-weekly-from-a-slack-emoji

• How to Build an Autonomous AI Agent That Pays for Services to Complete Tasks: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-build-an-autonomous-ai-agent-that-pays-for-services-to-complete-tasks

• How to Automate Code Generation from a Slack Message into a Pull Request: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-automate-code-generation-from-a-slack-message-into-a-pull-request

Tools referenced:

• Goose (AI agent harness): https://github.com/block/goose

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Cursor: https://cursor.sh/

• VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/

• Slack: https://slack.com/

• Browserbase: https://browserbase.com/

• Parallel AI: https://www.parallel.ai/

• PostalForm: https://postalform.com/

• Stripe Climate: https://stripe.com/climate

Other references:

• Stripe machine payments: https://docs.stripe.com/payments/machine

• Blue-Green Deployment: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/BlueGreenDeployment.html

• Git worktrees: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree

Where to find Steve Kaliski:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevekaliski

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-kaliski-079a7710/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-03-25
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How Microsoft's AI VP automates everything with Warp | Marco Casalaina

Marco Casalaina, VP of Core AI Products and AI Futurist at Microsoft, demonstrates how he uses AI tools to automate administrative tasks that typically consume valuable time. Rather than using Warp as a coding assistant (its primary marketed purpose), Marco leverages it to manage Azure resources, scan documents, compress videos, and more. He shows how these “micro-agents” can reduce friction in everyday workflows, allowing him to focus on higher-value activities. Marco also demonstrates how Microsoft 365 Copilot and ChatGPT can create triggered workflows that respond to emails or check for information on a schedule, highlighting how the line between consuming and building AI agents is blurring.


What you’ll learn:

How to use Warp to manage Azure resources and assign permissions without navigating complex web interfacesTechniques for automating document scanning and processing directly from the terminalMethods for analyzing and compressing video files using AI-generated FFmpeg commandsHow to create simple rules that dramatically improve AI performance for specialized tasksWays to build triggered workflows in Microsoft 365 Copilot that automatically respond to emailsHow to configure ChatGPT to perform scheduled tasks like checking for new contentStrategies for creating consistent AI interactions using AutoHotkey shortcuts

Brought to you by:

Rovo—AI that knows your business

Lovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AI

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Marco Casalaina

(02:14) Why Marco chose Warp for administrative tasks

(03:57) Demo: Using Warp to manage Azure resources and permissions

(06:00) How CLI tools eliminate GUI friction for complex tasks

(07:18) Creating rules to improve AI performance for specialized tasks

(10:28) Demo: Document scanning automation

(13:00) Combining odd and even pages using a Python automation

(15:04) The value of ephemeral AI solutions vs. permanent tools

(17:12) Video compression using FFmpeg commands

(20:22) The concept of “ad hoc agents” for specific tasks

(22:31) Demo: Creating triggered workflows in Microsoft 365 Copilot

(25:51) Demo: Setting up scheduled tasks in ChatGPT

(27:17) How AI automation changes time management

(29:14) Teaching AI skills to the next generation

(30:30) Strategies for improving AI performance with AutoHotkey

Detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:

• How Microsoft's AI VP Automates Everything with 5 Micro-Agent Workflows: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/microsofts-ai-vp-automates-everything-with-5-micro-agent-workflows

How to Create an Automated Meeting Scheduler with Microsoft • 365 Copilot: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-create-an-automated-meeting-scheduler-with-microsoft-365-copilot

• How to Scan and Merge Two-Sided Documents into a Single PDF with AI: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-scan-and-merge-two-sided-documents-into-a-single-pdf-with-ai

• How to Automate Azure User Role Management with AI in the Terminal: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-automate-azure-user-role-management-with-ai-in-the-terminal

Tools referenced:

• Warp: https://www.warp.dev/

• Microsoft Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us

• Azure CLI: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/

• Microsoft 365 Copilot: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

Other references:

• NAPS2: https://www.naps2.com/

• PyPDF2: https://pypdf2.readthedocs.io/

• FFmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/

Where to find Marco Casalaina:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcocasalaina/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-03-23
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From journalist to iOS developer: How LinkedIn’s editor builds with Claude Code | Daniel Roth

Daniel Roth, editor in chief at LinkedIn, went from business writer to iOS app developer, without ever learning how to code. Using Claude Code, Daniel built and shipped multiple production-ready iOS apps to the App Store, including Commutely, a personalized train-tracking app for New York commuters.


What you’ll learn:

How to set up a dual-agent Claude Code system (builder + reviewer)Why being a “picky customer” is the right mindset for non-technical buildersHow Daniel prioritizes features using AI-ranked impact vs. build timeWhy saving everything as Markdown files creates long-term contextThe importance of branch-based development—even when AI writes the codeHow Daniel ships to the App Store without formal engineering experienceHis end-of-day “What did I drop the ball on?” Copilot workflow

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Vanta—Automate compliance and simplify security

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Daniel Roth

(02:46) Daniel’s AI development workflow overview

(05:56) Using Claude to prioritize feature ideas

(08:58) Building vs. marketing

(09:47) Creating a retention plan for his app

(10:38) Introducing Bob the Builder and Ray the Reviewer

(13:50) How Bob and Ray work together to build features

(14:37) Why Daniel focuses on learning the process

(16:34) The importance of using branches for development

(17:39) Managing AI agents like managing a team

(21:12) Navigating the App Store

(23:06) Being a “picky customer” rather than a PM

(25:00) Testing in Xcode and shipping to the App Store

(28:14) Quick recap

(30:00) Creating terminal aliases with Claude

(31:38) Demo of his Commutely app

(32:10) Using Copilot to manage work responsibilities

(35:05) How Daniel talks to AI without personifying it

Tools referenced:

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Cursor: https://cursor.sh/

• Xcode: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/

• Canva: https://www.canva.com/

• Microsoft Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/

• Terminal: https://support.apple.com/guide/terminal/welcome/mac

• Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/

Other reference:

• Commutely (iOS app): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/commutely/id6755789873

Where to find Daniel Roth:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielroth1/

Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/forward-deployed-editor-7378272989982683137/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-03-16
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From Figma to Claude Code and back | Gui Seiz & Alex Kern (Figma)

Most teams are still passing static design files back and forth, and most Figma files are already out of date by the time they reach engineering. Gui Seiz (designer) and Alex Kern (engineer) from Figma walk through the exact workflow their team uses to bridge that gap with AI, live onscreen. They demo how to pull a running web app directly into Figma using the Figma MCP, edit it collaboratively, and push it back to code. The old linear waterfall workflow is gone. What replaces it is a fluid, bidirectional loop where design and code inform each other in real time.


What you’ll learn:

How to use Figma’s MCP to pull production code directly into Figma filesA workflow for pushing design changes from Figma back into your codebase using Claude Code without manual CSS adjustmentsHow to export multiple code states (like all five states of a signup flow) into Figma so designers can work with what actually exists in productionWhy AI has shifted design work upstream to planning and downstream to craft, eliminating the rushed middle phase of executionHow to create custom skills that automate pre-flight checks, lint fixes, and CI monitoring before pushing code to productionHow to structure your codebase so AI can write 90% of your code more effectively

Brought to you by:

Optimizely—Your AI agent orchestration platform for marketing and digital teams

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Gui and Alex from Figma

(02:56) How AI has transformed Figma’s internal workflows

(05:17) The collapse of linear design-to-code workflows

(07:28) Demo: Pulling production code into Figma using MCPs

(10:49) Using Figma for precise design manipulation and team collaboration

(14:10) Demo: Pushing Figma designs back into code with Claude Code

(16:06) How AI has changed the role of software engineers

(18:43) The shift to upstream planning and downstream craft

(22:31) Demo: Exporting multiple code states back into Figma

(25:23) Synchronous vs. asynchronous collaboration with AI

(28:00) Eliminating design and engineering toil with AI

(29:03) Demo: Custom skills for automating pre-flight checks

(34:06) Code first or design first?

(35:24) Using AI to learn and explore codebases

Tools referenced:

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• From Claude Code to Figma: Turning production code into editable Figma designs: https://www.figma.com/blog/introducing-claude-code-to-figma/

• Codex: https://codex.ai/

• Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code

• Buildkite: https://buildkite.com/

Other references:

• Balsamiq: https://balsamiq.com/

Where to find Gui Seiz:

X: https://x.com/guiseiz

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guiseiz/

Where to find Alex Kern:

X: https://x.com/kernio

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderskern/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-03-11
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Mastering Midjourney: How to create consistent, beautiful brand imagery without complex prompts | Jamey Gannon

Jamey Gannon is an AI creative director who specializes in creating consistent, beautiful brand imagery using AI tools. In this episode, Jamey demonstrates her streamlined workflow for generating cohesive brand assets using Midjourney, Nano Banana, and other AI image tools. She walks through her process of creating mood boards, using style references, developing personalization codes, and strategically iterating to achieve a consistent aesthetic. Rather than relying on complex prompts, Jamey shows how visual references and strategic shortcuts can produce better results with less effort.


What you’ll learn:

How to create effective mood boards that communicate your desired aesthetic to AI image generation toolsWhy style references (SREFs) often produce more consistent results than general mood boards in MidjourneyA systematic approach to testing and refining your visual styleHow to use personalization codes in Midjourney to develop your own unique aesthetic preferencesTechniques for combining image references, style references, and minimal prompting to achieve consistent brand imageryA workflow for using Nano Banana to fix specific elements in Midjourney-generated images without extensive editingHow to package and deliver your brand imagery system to clients so they can continue generating consistent assets

Brought to you by:

Vanta—Automate compliance and simplify security

Lovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AI

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Jamey Gannon

(02:31) Creating mood boards as the foundation for AI image generation

(08:45) Using SREFs for better consistency

(11:15) Test prompts for evaluating style consistency

(12:33) The iterative process of creating and refining images

(24:28) Combining techniques for consistent brand imagery

(28:25) Scaling out your aesthetic across different subjects

(35:48) Using Nano Banana for targeted image refinements

(38:23) Creating realistic AI self-portraits for content

(43:04) Building a visual reference library for inspiration

(46:50) Troubleshooting techniques when AI isn’t cooperating

Tools referenced:

• Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com/

• Nano Banana: https://gemini.google/overview/image-generation/

• Flora: https://flora.ai/

• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/

• Cosmos: https://www.cosmos.so/

Other reference:

• Style references (SREFs) in Midjourney: https://docs.midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/32180011136653-Style-Reference

Where to find Jamey Gannon:

Website: https://www.brand-sprints.com/links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameygannon/

X: https://x.com/jameygannon

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jameygannon

Maven Course (get 10% off with this link): https://bit.ly/4b18RfM

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-03-09
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How Coinbase scaled AI to 1,000+ engineers | Chintan Turakhia

Chintan Turakhia is Senior Director of Engineering at Coinbase, where he’s led the transformation of a 1,000-plus-engineer organization to embrace AI tools at scale. When tasked with rewriting Coinbase’s self-custody wallet into a consumer social app in just six to nine months, Chintan turned to AI as a force multiplier. His team has achieved remarkable efficiency gains, including reducing PR review times from 150 hours to just 15 hours, and dramatically compressing the cycle from user feedback to shipped features.


What you’ll learn:

How to drive AI adoption in large, established engineering organizationsThe “speed run” technique that got 100 engineers to push 70 PRs in 15 minutesHow to identify and replicate the behaviors of AI power usersWhy engineering leaders must get hands-on with AI tools to drive adoptionHow to build custom AI agents that integrate with your existing workflowsThe metrics that actually matter when measuring AI’s impact on engineering velocityHow to compress the cycle from user feedback to shipped features

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Rovo—AI that knows your business

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Chintan

(02:38) How Coinbase approached rewriting their app with AI assistance

(08:00) The importance of leadership conviction and hands-on demonstration

(10:30) The “PR speed run” technique that transformed team adoption

(17:57) Measuring success

(19:20) Demo: Real-time feedback-to-feature implementation

(23:14) Using Cursor to analyze AI adoption patterns

(33:15) Quick recap and appreciation

(36:00) Demo: Building a live feedback capture system using AI transcription

(40:50) Using custom Slack bots to automate engineering workflows

(47:10) Advice for driving AI adoption within your organization

(50:00) Personal use case: AI for wine selection based on taste preferences

(55:23) Lightning round and final thoughts

Tools referenced:

• Cursor: https://cursor.sh/

• Linear: https://linear.app/

• Slack: https://slack.com/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

• Claude: https://claude.ai/

• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot

Other references:

• Coinbase: https://www.coinbase.com/

• React Native: https://reactnative.dev/

• How custom GPTs can make you a better manager | Hilary Gridley (Head of Core Product at Whoop): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-custom-gpts-can-make-you-a-better-manager

Where to find Chintan Turakhia:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chintanturakhia/

X: https://x.com/chintanturakhia

Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet): https://base.app/

Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

2026-03-02
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