I sit down with Frey Chu to go deep on how to use Claude Code to build AI-coded directories, specifically how to tackle the hardest part: getting valuable data. Frey walks us through three real-world directory examples (a funeral home directory, a senior living directory, and GasBuddy), we play a game guessing their traffic and monetization, and then he does a full live walkthrough of the seven-step process he used to build a luxury restroom trailer directory in four days for under $250. I also ask him about the future of directories in a world where LLMs are changing how people search.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

02:15 – What you’ll learn

03:00 – Directory Game:Parting(Funeral Home Directory)

05:42 – Directory Game: A Place for Mom (Senior Living Directory)

08:00 – Directory Game: GasBuddy (Crowdsourced Gas Price Directory)

12:32 – The Data Moat Thesis

14:02 – Luxury Restroom Trailers: The Niche Directory Demo

15:52 – Before & After: WordPress Directory vs. Claude Code Directory

19:04 – Cost Breakdown: Built in 4 Days for Under $250

21:23 – Step 1: Scraping Raw Data with Outscraper

22:25 – Step 2: Cleaning Data with Claude Code

23:27 – Step 3: Using Crawl4AI for Automated Website Verification

28:01 – Step 4: Enriching Trailer Inventory Data

31:33 – Step 5: Scraping & Verifying Images with Claude Vision

36:33 – Step 6: Amenities, Features & Filter Data

38:31 – Step 7: Service Areas

39:15 – Niche Directory Ideas: Dementia Care, ADA Bathrooms, Tap Water Quality

43:38 – For Naysayers: Is Building a Directory Worth It in 2026?

47:51 – LLMs, AI Search & the Future of Directories

Links Mentioned:

Outscraper: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/outscraper

Crawl4AI: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/crawl4AI

Key Points

• Data is the moat for any successful directory — and with Claude Code plus Crawl4AI, the hardest part (data cleaning and enrichment) is now dramatically faster and cheaper.

• Every successful directory helps people save time, save money, or make money — and price transparency is a massive, underserved opportunity across boring niches.

• Frey built a fully enriched luxury restroom trailer directory in four days for under $250, a process that would have taken 2,000+ hours of manual work.

• Monetization depends on the niche: lead generation, vertical SaaS, agency services, ads, debit cards, affiliate, and marketplace models all work.

• Directories remain strong in an AI search world because users browsing a directory are in the decision-making phase, especially in high-stakes niches like health, legal, finance, and senior living.

• Building a directory is one of the best playgrounds to learn Claude Code, SEO, and lead generation — even if the first one is just a learning exercise.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

FIND FREY ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://x.com/freychu

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FreyChu/featured

ShipYourDirectory: https://www.shipyourdirectory.com/

I sit down with Jonathan Courtney, host of Unscheduled CEO Podcast, to talk about the gap between building AI-powered products and actually making money from them. Jonathan walks through his four-step "Promoter Blueprint" — traffic, holding pattern, selling event, and conversion — and shows exactly how he uses Claude and Claude Code to execute each phase. This one is a wake-up call for any founder spending more time optimizing automations than promoting what they sell.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro and Welcome Back

04:13 – The Founder’s Real Job: Promotion, Period

09:23 – The Promoter Blueprint (Screen Share)

19:38 – Using AI with Promoter Blueprint

22:52 – Inside Claude: Jonathan's Claude Workflow

28:41 – Moving from Claude to Claude Code for Builds

30:55 – Building a $450K Webinar Campaign with Claude

37:30 – Scale Up, Abundance Over Efficiency

43:57 – Final Advice: Embrace Your Role as Promoter

Key Points

• A CEO's primary job is promoting the business — building is secondary to getting people in the door.

• AI tools become "procrastination machines" when builders optimize systems that have zero customers.

• Every revenue engine follows four phases: traffic, holding pattern, selling event, conversion (and a loop back).

• Claude projects combined with Claude Code create a fast workflow for going from research to a shipped marketing asset in under an hour.

• The current play is abundance and scale, using AI to run five campaigns instead of one, rather than cutting headcount for efficiency.

• Off-the-shelf solutions still beat custom builds in many cases — always ask before you spend three days vibe-coding something.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIAL

Unscheduled CEO Podcast: https://www.unscheduledceo.com/

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jicecream

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/

I sit down with James Dickerson, a growth marketer, Claude Code power user, and the mind behind The Boring Marketer, to watch him build an entire marketing system live from the terminal. James walks me through his full workflow: deep research with the Perplexity MCP, positioning angle discovery, direct response copywriting, landing page creation, lead magnet design, ad creative generation with Remotion, and traffic strategy — all inside Claude Code using stacked skills and MCPs. By the end, we have a conversion-ready funnel for a fictional AI marketing agency serving boring local businesses, and James shares the free playbook he created from a two-hour recorded session so listeners can replicate the process themselves.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro and Camera Setup Chat

02:57 – Episode Preview: Building a Vibe Marketing System

06:33 – Perplexity MCP for Market Research

08:13 – Live Demo: Researching an AI Marketing Agency Niche

09:48 – Positioning Angles Skill

11:34 – Direct Response Copywriting Skill

15:43 – Playwright MCP for Competitive Intelligence

17:37 – Keeping Your MCP Stack Simple (Perplexity, Firecrawl, Playwright)

20:59 – Anthropic's Front End Design Skill

25:51 – Remotion: Creating Video Ads from the Terminal

28:47 – Landing Page Review: "Boring Money" Agency

30:43 – Orchestrator Skill: Deciding What to Do Next

34:10 – Lead Magnet Skill

34:10 – Are Skills Underrated

39:08 – Claude Code Costs: $200/Month Max Subscription

42:03 – Live Lead Magnet Review

43:28 – Keyword Research and Traffic Strategy Skills

45:23 – The Evolution of Vibe Marketing

47:11 – Remotion Setup and Ad Creation Demo

54:47 – Final Ad and SEO Page Review

57:25 – Final Thoughts

Links Mentioned:

Vibe Marketing Playbook: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/vibe_marketing_playbook

Vibe Marketing Skills: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/Vibe_marketing_skills

Key Points

• Spending an hour on upfront research with the Perplexity MCP produces dramatically better marketing outputs than jumping straight into prompting.

• Skills are instruction manuals for your AI agent — the expert perspective you build into them (the last 10–20%) is what separates great output from generic AI slop.

• You can build a complete marketing funnel — landing page, lead magnet, ad creative, SEO content, and traffic strategy — in a single Claude Code session.

• Remotion lets you create programmatic video ads directly from the terminal at zero cost, in multiple formats, with custom branding.

• An orchestrator skill can guide you through what to do next, removing the "I have a landing page, now what?" paralysis.

• The same Claude Code environment where you build products can also ship your entire marketing system — research, copy, design, and deployment in one place.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

FIND JAMES ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://x.com/boringmarketer 

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

I sit down with Morgan Linton, Cofounder/CTO of Bold Metrics, to break down the same-day release of Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.3 Codex. We walk through exactly how to set up Opus 4.6 in Claude Code, explore the philosophical split between autonomous agent teams and interactive pair-programming, and then put both models to the test by having each one build a Polymarket competitor from scratch, live and unscripted. By the end, you'll know how to configure each model, when to reach for one over the other, and what happened when we let them race head-to-head.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

03:26 – Setting Up Opus 4.6 in Claude Code

05:16 – Enabling Agent Teams

08:32 – The Philosophical Divergence between Codex and Opus

11:11 – Core Feature Comparison (Context Window, Benchmarks, Agentic Behavior)

15:27 – Live Demo Setup: Polymarket Build Prompt Design

18:26 – Race Begins

21:02 – Best Model for Vibe Coders

22:12 – Codex Finishes in Under 4 Minutes

26:38 – Opus Agents Still Running, Token Usage Climbing

31:41 – Testing and Reviewing the Codex Build

40:25 – Opus Build Completes, First Look at Results

42:47 – Opus Final Build Reveal

44:22 – Side-by-Side Comparison: Opus Takes This Round

45:40 – Final Takeaways and Recommendations

Key Points

• Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.3 Codex dropped within 18 minutes of each other and represent two fundamentally different engineering philosophies — autonomous agents vs. interactive collaboration.

• To use Opus 4.6 properly, you must update Claude Code to version 2.1.32+, set the model in settings.json, and explicitly enable the experimental Agent Teams feature.

• Opus 4.6's standout feature is multi-agent orchestration: you can spin up parallel agents for research, architecture, UX, and testing — all working simultaneously.

• GPT-5.3 Codex's standout feature is mid-task steering: you can interrupt, redirect, and course-correct the model while it's actively building.

• In the live head-to-head, Codex finished a Polymarket competitor in under 4 minutes; Opus took significantly longer but produced a more polished UI, richer feature set, and 96 tests vs. Codex's 10.

• Agent teams multiply token usage substantially — a single Opus build can consume 150,000–250,000 tokens across all agents.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

Morgan Linton

X/Twitter: https://x.com/morganlinton

Bold Metrics: https://boldmetrics.com

Personal Website: https://linton.ai

I sit down with Matt Van Horn, creator of the "Last 30 Days" skill for Claude Code, as he demonstrates how this tool turns anyone into a real-time research expert. By pulling trending data from X, Reddit, and the web, Last 30 Days supercharges Claude Code prompts with current intelligence. Matt walks through live demos, from discovering popular rap songs to generating cold emails to building a Moltbot competitor, showing how non-engineers can ship products using AI tools with almost no coding background.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

01:39 – What Is "Last 30 Days"

03:29 – Live Demo: Most Popular Rap Songs

04:47 – Cold Email Frameworks Demo

07:04 – Growing an X Following Using Recent Data

07:49 – Researching Moltbot to Build a Competitor

08:26 – Best Practices for Last 30 days

09:26 – Growing an X Following Using Recent Data Results

11:17 – Best Practices for Webdesign Research

13:44 – Building an Enterprise Moltbot Clone Live

17:43 – Generating Figma Prompts and Nano Banana Images

21:54 – Advice for Non-Engineers Getting Started with Claude Code

Links Mentioned:

Last 30 Days Skill: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/last30days

Key Points

• Last 30 Days searches X, Reddit, and the web for content from the past month, creating highly optimized prompts for Claude Code.

• The tool requires Claude Code access, an OpenAI API key (for Reddit data), and an XAI key (for X/Twitter access).

• Matt demonstrates using minimal prompts to generate cold email frameworks, research trending topics, and kickstart new product builds.

• Compound Engineering serves as a planning tool to turn research into structured project roadmaps.

• Non-engineers can ship functional products by combining Claude Code with ChatGPT for troubleshooting errors via screenshots.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

Matt Van Horn

X/Twitter: https://x.com/mvanhorn

I sit down with Kevin Rose for a live screen share where he walks me through “Nylon,” a personal Techmeme-style news engine he vibe-coded to track AI and tech stories. He breaks down how he pulls from RSS, enriches articles with tools like iFramely, Firecrawl, and Gemini, then generates TLDRs and vector embeddings to cluster stories with real nuance. We dig into his “gravity engine,” an editorial scoring system that ranks stories by impact, novelty, and builder relevance. The bigger theme is simple: with today’s models and workflows, a solo builder can ship wild, high-leverage software fast, then refine by cutting features down to the few that matter.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro And What Kevin Plans To Demo

03:10 – Techmeme Breakdown And How Signal Gets Ranked

06:44 – RSS Sources, Ingestion, And The Article Pipeline

11:23 – Winner Selection: RSS vs iFramely vs Firecrawl vs Gemini

13:01 – Why iFramely And Firecrawl, Explained

16:37 – TLDRs, Vector Embeddings, And Why They Beat Keyword Search

19:49 – Task Orchestration With trigger.dev And Retries

24:58 – Clusters: Expanding With Search APIs And Discovery

27:07 – The Gravity Engine: Editorial Scoring Rubric

31:31 – Product Management: Gut, Iteration, And Cutting Features

34:53 – Synthetic Audiences And Personal Software

37:03 – What “Success” Looks Like

43:52 – Retention Mechanics And The Idea Browser Example

47:19 – “Blurred Presence” Blog Project From A 12-Year-Old Idea

50:34 – This the best time to build

51:55 – How To Work With Kevin, DIGG Reboot, And VC Today

Keypoints

• I watch Kevin’s end-to-end pipeline for turning messy RSS links into clean, enriched, clustered stories.

• Kevin uses a “winner” judge to pick the best source of truth per field (summary, main content, metadata).

• Vector embeddings plus clustering unlock meaning-level grouping that keyword search misses.

• trigger.dev gives durable background jobs, retries, and observability for a solo builder workflow.

• His “gravity engine” acts like an editorial layer that prioritizes novelty, impact, and builder relevance.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

Kevin Rose: x: https://x.com/kevinrose

personal website: https://www.kevinrose.com/about

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@KevinRose

I sit down with Kitze to unpack how he uses Clawdbot as a personal OS that runs across Discord, Telegram, and other chat surfaces. We walk through his one-gateway setup, persona-based bots, and the way he structures channels and threads to manage customers, home logistics, and engineering work. We also dig into the self-learning angle: giving an agent shell and network access so it can discover devices, build dashboards, and automate workflows end to end. We close with a lightning round of concrete examples you can adapt across your own life and business.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

01:42 – The Personal OS Idea

04:20 – Persona Design for Clawdbot

06:00 – Discord As The Control Center

08:23 – Self-Learning Through Shell And Network Access

09:23 – Discord Threads And Agent Workflows

10:13 – Platform Choices: Telegram, Discord, Slack

11:47 – Email Automation, Security, And Model Selection

15:07 – How Agents Change Work

18:00 – Lightning Round of Clawdbot use cases

27:09 – Spellbook: Variable-Driven Prompt Templates

29:15 – Closing Thoughts

Key Points

• I treat Clawdbot like a gateway that routes the same core agent into many persona shells for distinct jobs

• I keep work organized via Discord sections, channels, and threads so agent output stays searchable

• I lean on shell and network access to let the agent discover devices and ship automations that span apps, NAS, and smart home

• I use stronger models for high-trust surfaces like email and credentials, and I scope access gradually

• I prototype interfaces that turn prompts into parameterized forms so workflows stay reusable and fast

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

FIND KITZE ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://x.com/thekitze

Tinkerer Club: https://tinkerer.club

Personal Website:  https://www.kitze.io

I sit down with Alex Finn to break down how he sets up Moltbot (formally Clawdbot) as a proactive AI employee he treats like a teammate named Henry. We walk through the core workflow: Henry sends a daily morning brief, researches while Alex sleeps, and ships work as pull requests for review. Alex explains the setup that makes this work; feeding the bot deep personal and business context, then setting clear expectations for proactive behavior. We cover model strategy (Opus as “brain,” Codex as “muscle”), a “Mission Control” task tracker Henry built, hardware options, and the security mindset around prompt injection and account access.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

02:08 – Clawdbot Overview

03:33 – The Morning Brief Workflow

05:01 - Proactive Builds: Trends → Features → Pull Requests

07:27 – The Setup: Context + Expectations For Proactivity

09:38 – The Onboarding Prompt Alex Uses

12:05 – Hunting “Unknown Unknowns” For Real Leverage

12:43 – Using the right Models for cost control

14:18 – Mission Control: A Kanban Tracker Henry Built

17:16 – The future of Human and AI workflow

22:01 – Hardware And Hosting: Cloud vs Local (Mac Mini/Studio)

25:47 – The Productivity Framework

27:10 – The Possible Evolution of Clawdbot

28:53 – Security and Privacy Concerns

33:38 – Closing Thoughts: Tinkering, Opportunity, And Next Steps

Key Points

• I get the most leverage when I treat the agent like a proactive teammate with clear expectations and rich context.

• Henry delivers compounding value by shipping work for review (pull requests) based on trend monitoring and conversation memory.

• I separate “brain” and “muscle” by delegating heavy coding to Codex while using Opus for reasoning and direction.

• I track autonomous work with a dedicated “Mission Control” board so progress stays visible over time.

• I keep risk contained by controlling environment and account access, especially around email and prompt injection.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

FIND ALEX ON SOCIAL

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexFinnOfficial/videos

X/Twitter: https://x.com/AlexFinnX

Creator Buddy: https://www.creatorbuddy.io/

I sit down with Furqan Rydhan, a founding team member of Applovin and cofounder Founders Inc, as he walks me through Nebula, a Slack-like workspace where every channel holds an agent that can execute real work across the tools teams already use. We watch Nebula create and edit a Google Slides deck end-to-end, including generating an image and handling failures by retrying until it lands. Furqan shows how Nebula turns one-off work into repeatable “recipes” with scheduled triggers, like adding slides daily or publishing blog posts multiple times per day. We also talk about what “business-in-a-box” looks like in the AI era; where direction, taste, and quality loops become the edge as automation gets widely available.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro

01:51 –Building useful agents for real work

03:34 – Nebula: a Slack-like agent workspace

05:04 – Demo: Nebula creating a Deck with Google Slides

13:25 – The “business in a box” content dream (newsletters, affiliates, ads)

14:39 – Demo: Automate Blog Posting

15:52 – What stays valuable when everyone automates

21:23 – Agent workforce and Building quality loops

25:38 – Services and agencies: delivering work with fewer humans

28:53 – Final Thoughts

Key Points

• I watch Nebula run like “cloud code for everything else,” automating real work across tools and workflows.

• Agents turn one-time actions into repeatable systems via triggers and schedules.

• The interface mirrors Slack because work already lives in channels, threads, and context.

• Quality becomes the differentiator: critics, scoring, and iteration loops upgrade outputs over time.

• Service businesses and agencies scale faster when agents handle production-heavy tasks

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

FIND FURQAN ON SOCIAL Furqan's

X: https://x.com/FurqanR

Fuqan’s personal website: https://furqan.com

Nebula: https://www.nebula.gg

In this episode, I sit down with Boris, the creator of Claude Code and one of the key builders behind Claude Cowork, to unpack what Cowork actually unlocks and how people use it in the real world. He walks through a hands-on demo where Cowork organizes files, extracts receipt data, builds a clean spreadsheet, and even drives the browser to create and share a Google Sheet. We go deep on how “agentic” work feels different when the model takes actions across your computer, your browser, and your tools. Then I shift into Boris’s viral workflow for Claude Code: parallel sessions, plan-first execution, Claude.md as a compounding team memory, and verification loops that dramatically improve output quality.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro

03:26 – Cowork Overview

05:51 – Demo: Folder Access + Renaming Receipts

08:23 – Demo: Turning Receipts Into A Spreadsheet

10:52 – Demo: Google Sheets + Chrome Control

15:52 – Demo: Emailing The Sheet + Parallel Tasking

22:07 – Best way to start/use with Cowork

24:22 – Where will AI and Agents Go Next

28:44 – Boris’s Claude Code Setup

41:12 – The “Claude” Pronunciation Discussion

Key Points

• I use Cowork as a “doer,” not a chat: it touches files, browsers, and tools directly.

• I think about productivity as parallelism: multiple tasks running while I steer outcomes.

• I treat Claude.md as compounding memory: every mistake becomes a durable rule for the team.

• I run plan-first workflows: once the plan is solid, execution gets dramatically cleaner.

• I give Claude a way to verify output (browser/tests): verification drives quality.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/

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

FIND BORIS ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://x.com/bcherny

In this episode, I sit down with Professor Ras Mic for a beginner-friendly crash course on using Claude Code (and AI coding agents in general) without feeling overwhelmed by the terminal. We break down why your output is only as good as your inputs and how thinking in features + tests turns “vague app ideas” into real, shippable products. Was walks me through a better planning workflow using Claude Code’s Ask User Question Tool, which forces clarity on UI/UX decisions, trade-offs, and technical constraints before you build. We also talk about when not to use “Ralph” automation, why context windows matter, and how taste + audacity are the real differentiators in 2026 software.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

01:22 – Claude Code Best Practices

05:31 – Claude Code Plan Mode

09:30 – The Ask User Question Tool

14:52 – Don’t start with Ralph automation (get reps first)

16:36 – What are “Ralph loops” and why plans and documentation matter most

18:41 – Ras’s Ralph setup: progress tracking + tests + linting

23:48 – Tips & tricks: don’t obsess over MCP/skills/plugins

27:44 – Scroll-stopping software wins

Key Points

• Your results improve fast when you treat AI agents like junior engineers: clear inputs → clean outputs.

• The biggest unlock is planning in features + tests, not broad product descriptions.

• Claude Code’s Ask User Question Tool forces real clarity on workflow, UI/UX, costs, and technical decisions.

• If you haven’t shipped anything, don’t hide behind automation—build manually before using “Ralph.”

• Context management matters: long sessions can degrade quality, so restart earlier than you think.

Numbered Section Summaries

1. The Real Reason People Get “AI Slop” I frame the episode around a simple idea: if you feed agents sloppy instructions, you’ll get sloppy output. Ras explains that models are now good enough that the failure mode is usually unclear inputs, not model quality.

2. How To Think Like A Product Builder (Features First): Ras pushes a practical mindset: don’t describe “the product,” describe the features that make the product real. If you can list the core features clearly, you can actually direct an agent to build them correctly.

3. The Missing Piece: Tests Between Features: We talk about the shift from “generate code” to “build something serious.” The move is writing and running tests after each feature, so you don’t stack feature two on top of a broken feature one.

4. Why Default Planning Mode Isn’t Enough: Ras shows the standard flow: open plan mode, ask Claude to write a PRD, and get a basic roadmap. The issue is it leaves too many assumptions—especially around UI/UX and workflow details.

5. The Ask User Question Tool (The Planning Upgrade): This is the big unlock. Ras demonstrates how the Ask User Question Tool interrogates you with increasingly specific questions (workflow, cost handling, database/hosting, UI style, storage, etc.) so the plan becomes dramatically more precise.

6. Spend Time Upfront Or Pay For It Later: We connect the dots: better planning reduces back-and-forth, reduces token burn, and prevents “I built the app but it’s not what I wanted.” The interview-style planning forces trade-offs early instead of late.

7. Don’t Use Ralph Until You’ve Built Without It: Ras makes a strong case for reps: if you can’t ship something end-to-end yet, automation won’t save you—it’ll just move faster in the wrong direction. Build feature-by-feature manually first, then graduate to loops.

8. Practical Tips: Context Discipline + Taste Wins: Ras shares a few operational habits: don’t obsess over tools like MCP/plugins, keep context usage under control, and restart sessions before quality degrades. We wrap on a bigger point: in 2026, “audacity + taste” is what makes software stand out.

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