0:00She's thinking there's someone behind the computer messaging her back.
0:02She's like, no, no, there must be someone there.
0:04And I'm being really annoying to them.
0:06You can't look dumb in front of the AI.
0:08I never would have touched a terminal before.
0:09I shipped something to production.
0:12So if every idea that you want to explore is, this is a company I'm going to start, it's too much pressure.
0:16I can build a crappy version of that thing in like an afternoon.
0:20And I can throw it away.
0:21Like people on Twitter at labs are always like, oh, it's kind of a skill issue.
0:25That's on you as the company and the product.
0:27I actually want to spend more time on my computer with my agent all the time.
0:31Okay, so you're in town, you gave a talk yesterday at Stanford.
0:35What was the talk about?
0:37How I build and play with AI, so just like how less technical people can build stuff, like what my process kind of looks like, yeah, kind of where I get ideas from and like how it's not that hard and it's like people think that it needs to be more technical, like need to know how to be more like an engineer or think like an engineer, but just think it's the wrong framing.
0:58It's just like you can ask anything and do anything, so that's what you should just try and do.
1:04And then you figure out your own process along the way and tweak it and like take inspiration from other people and yeah, just figure it out.
1:10Like what is your version of working with AI look like and feel like?
1:14Because it's not, it doesn't have to be like everyone else's.
1:17And so what was like the response to that?
1:19Like what did, what did people say afterwards?
1:22I think, well someone came up to me and said, they loved how much I said play.
1:25Because I think everyone hears about all these important things that people are doing with AI and like changing the world with everything.
1:32And like you should use it for really good, useful stuff.
1:35But like to get to that useful stuff, you have to play around with it and you have to play around with it a lot to like feel it out and understand how like an agent works and understand how you want it to talk to you or like things like that.
1:47So I think it's all, it's odd because it's not a person.
1:51So it's not like, because I'm not technical, I would, I can ask AI really seemingly stupid questions about technical concepts that I would never dare speak to an engineer about.
2:03Like I would never ask them like about certain frameworks or like, why is it done this way?
2:07But like all day, every day, I'm just like, why is it done this way?
2:10Why can't it be done this other way?
2:11I just made up in my head that I assume could work technically.
2:15and I just think, yeah, playing around with it is like, you get good at the thing by doing the thing.
2:20So the more that you do the thing, you play around with it, you build stuff, you build like silly things.
2:26I think you just get a feel for how it works and how it can work with you.
2:30And like, I think you get more ideas by working on ideas.
2:34So if every idea that you want to explore is, this is a company I'm going to start, it's too much pressure.
2:42I think back in the no code days, I used to say, I think the same is true now.
2:45I think it's like, I used to say, if I had an idea for like my startup, I can't, I can't code, but I've got an idea for a startup.
2:53It's going to be Airbnb for dog homes.
2:54And I'm going to spend nine months learning how to be a programmer.
2:58I'm going to spend three, four months building this thing poorly and launch it and no one's going to give a shit.
3:06So I'm going to be very emotionally invested in that.
3:08Like that whole journey is like, I got to make this work and I'm going to make this work.
3:12But when it was no, when no code came around, I was like, I can build a crappy version of that thing in like an afternoon.
3:19I can realize that no one's going to use that thing that afternoon.
3:22And I can throw it away.
3:23I'm not like forcing that thing through and I can just move on to the next thing.
3:27And I think AI is what has made that like more real.
3:31Like you can actually build way better stuff now.
3:34And I think you can just constantly throw stuff away.
3:36I can throw so much stuff away.
3:37There must be so many dead projects on my, which are probably yours.
3:40So many things that you thought, I'm going to use this all the time.
3:43And then you just don't.
3:44But by the nature of doing that, you kind of figure out, or maybe there was something interesting there that I've now taken into a different thing.
3:51Or like I explore this one avenue and realize it actually really was a poor way to do things.
3:58What it sounds like is like you have this one exploratory mindset, which you're like, you don't really care if it is successful or not.
4:08You treat it more of like, you're just like learning and you're playing with this thing.
4:12And you know, the classic, you know, you're building a toy for yourself that you want to like play with.
4:18What's like the most, like the recent toy that you've kind of built?
4:23Well, I just redid my personal site for like 15 million times.
4:29And part of that was like, I built this little mascot of the Ben’s Bites logo and I gave it arms and legs and I made it move around the page.
4:37And I saw a few people building these things.
4:41I think they're called rigs or jigs or both.
4:45And I used Josh Puckett's style kit.
4:47And I had like a bit of this little mascot animator thing.
4:52So like you can create a sequence, you can like move the arms, decide how fast you want it to run.
4:56And like how it just building like mini tools for myself to like just have this mascot on my home page.
5:04No, like real reason or like there's no economic value in what I've done.
5:10I can't do that except for myself.
5:12I've like, this is something different.
5:14And I think for something as plain as a personal site, like adding a touch like that, it's no longer feels like a waste of time or energy to like learn how to do that thing.
5:23Cause it's just like, this is what I'm thinking.
5:25I want to have like controls that I can move the arms about.
5:28And I just want to like, it can say weird and wonderful stuff.
5:31You can like throw it about the page.
5:34and you can just do that.
5:34And it just like works and it looks great.
5:37And I just feel again, kind of goes back to after building stuff, you think about the process of it and you just lots of this is building tools for you to build your own things.
5:51Like you can always just build a little tool that you use for like one job or it can be something that you use.
5:57Like anytime I now want to animate something like that, maybe I always go back to this thing.
6:01I probably won't, but I could, or I can build something similar to it.
6:04And like I've got some other things where it's like, when they're talking to agents, they've got their own terminology, talk about context, they talk about local hosts, all this kind of stuff.
6:14And there's all this stuff I now know, but at some point I didn't know any of these terms.
6:19So I built based on like Matt Pocock has his like AI coding, vocabulary, dictionary type site somewhere.
6:29And there's a site indexed.how I think it is.
6:32It's like another term, not like dictionary type site.
6:35And I was like, these two are kind of the idea that I like the idea of, let's build something, but make a visual for every single concept here.
6:42So when you click on it, you can see local host is this and has like a visual.
6:46It's just a way of being like, how do I become more technically, how do I understand the technical concepts better as agents are saying stuff to me that I can, I need to see things.
6:59I think this is why I can never learn to code.
7:00It's like, I need to see a system or a process and I can't visualize something in my head like code.
7:07But if I can see it, I understand it way better.
7:10So I'm often using like visual to do things like that and just use that little sites and even like design come up with like a new theme.
7:18I'm like, everything looks the same these days.
7:21How do I come up like just do a shuffleboard of just generate a brand new theme.
7:25So I can just think, oh, actually, I'll use that.
7:28What is it like the Swiss theme or like I can't even think of all the others now, but like retro theme pixel art, all that kind of stuff.
7:36Just like tools to give you other things to explore whilst building the things that you want to explore.
7:42And when you say like, hey, going, no, go back to the animator.
7:47Where are you actually, who are you prompting?
7:50Like, so it sounds like you're prompting an agent to help you kind of go through.
7:54Do you have a particular agent that you like to go to every time?
7:58Do you spread it across based on specific tasks?
8:01Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm a very promiscuous agent user.
8:05And it's whatever the flavor of the month is and it changes all the time.
8:08So I use like basically for any day to day stuff, like general asking questions or like just doing things or exploring ideas.
8:19I just really like complete clean context and knowing that whatever I've put in there is what it's going to pick up on or not.
8:27And then if I'm building something like that, I want it to actually be decent code and like done well, I use Factory.
8:35They get the most out of the models than I've seen anyone do it.
8:37And then like if it's other day to day stuff that I'm trying to do remotely, I use Codex app because I think the Codex app is the best app out there.
8:46But I also use the, there's a new app called BB.
8:51And I love that because you can use Codex, Claude, Pi, Factory.
8:54I built the Factory extension for that.
8:57So just like you can put all of them in one and it's a ChatGPT like interface.
9:03So I've been using that a lot actually over the Codex app recently and then just switching between Pi and Factory basically for everything.
9:10So previous guests mentioned the same thing, like they're obsessed with BB.
9:14I just think, I find it really interesting that like, it was almost like you could have, you could have argued that these harness, these harness apps are like the wrappers, whatever was giving shit to wrappers.
9:28And this actually turns out to be like, the harness piece is actually a really interesting thing that a lot of people are working on.
9:34And they think that lots of people are going to make choices based on a harness's capabilities and like how you can use it and what it supports.
9:43And like so many of us, especially who are working in all of this, we like to switch around all the time.
9:49We have multiple subscriptions to multiple different things.
9:52And like, do you want to keep thinking about, okay, where am I going to go for this?
9:55Or am I going to need to Claude Code?
9:57I'm going to use Codex or I'm going to go in the terminal, like where are all my threads?
10:01How do they sort of see each other?
10:02And just having that in one place is, it's been really helpful for me anyway.
10:07So you have it in one place, but still then how do you choose which model?
10:10So it sounds like Pi when you want clean context, you don't want anyone to like, you know, have their own framework or steering capabilities.
10:18But you want it when you know that you want to fully project, you know, start to finish, you're going to use factory, Droid, right?
10:25Like they have that system.
10:27And then do you ever use Claude or Codex?
10:29I never use the Claude harness.
10:31I just, I don't know what it is.
10:33Obviously like a skill issue or something, but I just can't get it.
10:38But I feel like the Opus 5.5 model and 4.5 and 4.6, they get me when I'm using them in Pi.
10:46So like, that's when I feel like I'm in my groove, the context is right.
10:50It's like, yes, yes, yes.
10:51Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:54Like we are just so together on this.
10:57And then I was using 5.6 Sol a lot since anything past 4.6 Opus really.
11:07And I just, I don't know, it's again, it's one of those, like, it doesn't get me visually or like, it doesn't get my taste.
11:12And I've tried lots of things and I know that lots of people say the same.
11:15So I think mostly for like creative or taste or visual, it's like Opus models seem to be where I jam the best.
11:25And then if it's just like, right, we got to do a load of data scraping or like, let's go and get to work on this stuff.
11:31Just throw it over to Sol and, and Astra.
11:34Astra I quite like actually.
11:35Astra medium has been a good model for me recently with even visual stuff actually.
11:41and then I had been playing around with GLM 5.3 and 5.3 flash because I just, there's something about speed.
11:48I think I heard this on the podcast yesterday, with, Alex from OpenRouter.
11:52I think it's the swyx, Latent Space podcast.
11:56and it was like speed almost makes it feel more intelligent, even if it's not intelligent.
12:00I think there's, there was something hearing that I was like, I think that's, that feels right for me.
12:04Cause I'm not someone who wants to like plan all day, set up all my agents, have them run all night.
12:09And then I'll review all the code in the morning.
12:10Like it's not gonna make any difference to me.
12:12I just want to know, like, are we working fast?
12:15Like, are we going towards something?
12:16I'm happy to be in there steering it.
12:18And I'd rather it be like, Ooh, not quite, not quite, but we'll revise on this rather than send your tasks, you go off and it's going to come back perfect.
12:26Like I want to kind of touch and feel it along the way.
12:28So you like being the human in the loop.
12:32And I, I don't know whether it's like, because I'm learning about it and I'm like, if I get better processes and skills and the system around it that I'm like, I know that my work's going to look as I want it to, but I rarely know what anything is going to look like or feel like until I'm really playing around with it.
12:48so I quite enjoyed using the GLM models actually recently.
12:52but yeah, I feel like for now, Opus is my go-to since I've been using it.
12:57And obviously 6.1 Sol came out yesterday.
12:59So I'm going to play around with that.
13:02cause also I want to, I want to like, I want to figure out my context.
13:07Like I know that the reason why I can't get certain things out of certain models is because of what I've got in my projects or what context I've got there or what skills or anything like that.
13:17So I want to get better at understanding that myself and like thinking more carefully about how I can steer certain models to behave a certain way.
13:26And like have that feeling of you get me, you get me all this time.
13:30That's a, it's a context thing.
13:32And I obviously there's some part of it is the model, but I think you can get there with context.
13:35And like, what can I do to get there?
13:37What I love hearing you say is like, not only are you trying to, understand the model, like understand the terminology and having kind of your own dictionary around stuff.
13:47And so you have a better sense you're creating like kind of a curriculum, but also just a repository for you to like lean on to, but for figuring out ways for the model to get you right.
13:58So you're understanding its language.
14:00It's understanding you.
14:02and the more you find sort of like commonalities that you feel like you'll be able to, or the context is you're referring to, you'll be able to move faster or get what you want quicker.
14:11Yeah. I think it's, it's gotta be the same for everyone in that.
14:15Like if you hired someone, if they just like got what you were saying and you've got what they were saying and you kind of, you're on the same wavelength.
14:21Like that's when you gel with someone, you're like, let's start a company together. Let's do whatever.
14:24Like I think it's even either party bringing an idea and thinking, it's like the yes and moment of like, oh yeah.
14:32And this and this instead of like oftentimes you'll work with an agent.
14:36And it'll say something just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, nothing like that.
14:39And then you'll say something else and it like over indexes on that and like sticks to it.
14:43And you kind of like, this isn't getting me in that like creative collaboration.
14:50So I think my terminology in the way that I'm looking at everyone's version of that might look different and like will feel different.
14:58And like the way that they communicate with the model will look different.
15:01Like some of my, there's going to be some version of like people talk about Claude-ish.
15:07Like I've got my own Ben agent ish language that like I speak and it speaks.
15:13and actually I was listening to again, a podcast.
15:15I've been in the car a lot recently.
15:17And there's, Matt was on Matt Pocock was on, The Pragmatic Engineer talking about, how he, in his projects, he like, he says, let's build up a glossary.
15:28And they have like a glossary.md.
15:31It's like all the words that are related to the things in this project.
15:33So it could be like, you're talking about a certain button and you're like, I always call it the whatever button, like the top down button.
15:40I don't know, making up words. Yeah.
15:42But like, if you're making up the words and the agent can see that these are the words we talk about for these specific things in the, in the project. Yeah.
15:49You can kind of just get a sense of like, Oh, actually it's not me saying one time I said a slider and now I actually mean the sheets or I mean the sidebar.
15:57Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
15:57It's like, you kind of just understand one way of thinking about one concept that you and the agent can get.
16:04And I think, I don't know, I want to play around with that a bit more.
16:07That's super fascinating. Cause I find that, agents themselves, when they delegate to sub agents, they create that glossary.
16:13Yeah. And they'll, they're like referring to is like arc one, arc two.
16:16And you're like, what, what is this referring to?
16:18Yeah. And then it's like, Oh, they have their own terminology that they've created in order to have that shared language.
16:24And so what you're saying is like, or what Matt's saying is like to start a project or when you have a project to create a shared language that you and the agent can speak.
16:34And so when you were talking about your Ben agent ish or like that language that you have, so are you creating, are you referring to this as a glossary MD or do you have your own, is it in your agents.md file?
16:45Like where are you creating this shared language?
16:48I'm not at the minute.
16:49I think I'm, I think my Benglish is like, I'm trying to talk in some technical terms that I know that the agent also understands, but also there's terms that I'm like, I know that the agent also understands.
17:04Oh, this is, should be a sidebar or a sheet, but like those kinds of things.
17:07I know I'm muddling up some and I'm, I'm saying some correctly.
17:12but I, I want to like listen to that podcast yesterday.
17:14I was like, I think I should do that a bit more and maybe think more carefully about a shared version of that, that I can take to other projects and not just one.
17:24But I think that's what I was trying to do with like the, with that, that kind of agent words page I built.
17:31I did a design, the design one too.
17:34The thing is, there's just so many, so many terms, so many things like different buttons.
17:38Like you might say it's an input box or it might say like the text box.
17:42There's all these different things that I'm like, I'm never going to be able to create the dictionary, like the full dictionary of something.
17:48So like, is there a way that you can think about those two things coexisting in the right, in the same way?
17:53Like, can you create some version of a glossary or shared language that doesn't have to completely cover every single component or like part of the stack that you're going to be talking about with your agent?
18:05And then how can that like go with you and carry with like, stay with you as you go through different projects?
18:13because yeah, I'm in this weird, like Benglish version of how I talk to agents that I wouldn't recommend probably to anyone.
18:22So what, and right, you're not gonna, you're, what I hear you say is like, hey, don't copy me, create your own system that works for you.
18:30And recognize that, you know, the, the malleability of the software allows you to customize it to your personal needs.
18:38And so, you know, you can use something like a BB app or you can use something, you know, whatever agent you are using, but make sure that you're customizing to have like a shared language that feels like you're in flow and you, you're not fighting against each other.
18:52You're not talking past each other, but you have like kind of like a shared language.
18:55And I think, I think to me, this is what feels like the term software factories is kind of all about.
19:00So you're working on the system to be able to do the thing in that project.
19:05So that includes like all the different agent instructions, any skills, like all of these pieces, how do they all come together in like this utopia of like this perfect version of context that any work can be done well.
19:17And like hearing Matt talk about his glossary, he's technical in a way that I'll never be and understand there's different terms in a way that I never want to or need to.
19:28So like my version is always going to be different.
19:30So like looking at how someone else is doing it and saying cool, but just like the yes and it's like cool, but yeah.
19:37How do I make that kind of same, like the system shape feels good.
19:43So how can I adapt that?
19:44And like, what can I take from that, that maybe I don't like parts of his stuff, but I like others, like even his, he's got his grill me skill that started off really, really simple.
19:54It was like three or four lines of just text, like saying, do this.
19:58and I think that's been built out even further now.
19:59And I'm like, yeah, but I know he's building that for like more people who are developers or developer like, I'm like, actually, I preferred it when it was just like a few lines to say, if I ask you to grill me, ask me questions.
20:10And so we come to a shared understanding.
20:11So I just add that now to my agent instructions.
20:13So I always look at what are developers doing?
20:16What are other people doing that seemingly know what they're doing?
20:19And then what can I take and what can I pick apart from that and think, how do I adapt that and just make it my own version?
20:24Like, does it make sense?
20:27And let's try this way or like, let's test a different version of that.
20:31I think that's all like, I'm learning a lot about how other developers work.
20:36I'm learning a lot about like how to talk to agents.
20:38And then you're trying to like, just pull apart all these pieces, but playing around with each thing, tweaking it and saying like, is that better?
20:46Like, obviously you're going to go through a lot of tokens and all of swearing at your agent and all that kind of stuff.
20:51But like, that's part of like growing up with AI, I think these days is like, you've got to learn to use the system and the system is trying to learn, like learn you through the context that you're giving it.
21:01So like, that's part, that's, that is part of your job to figure out and like get right.
21:06Cause the agent can't just, it's the same, it's the same model for every single person.
21:11How can you expect it to go and like be perfectly aligned with what you're talking about and understand you and also me when we have very different ways that we think about everything and different projects, unless you figure out some way of like manipulating that somewhat, I guess.
21:29Yeah. I think what's, what's fascinating is that some people are okay with just like the median output of an agent. Right.
21:37And what you're saying, like, actually, no, I, I have particular taste.
21:40I have particular sort of like way that I want the output to look.
21:45And so how do I make sure that it does that every time as opposed to whatever, like out of the box, a Claude or a Codex gives you. Right. Yeah.
21:58Yeah. And I think it's, it might just be like how much you talk to it.
22:03Like, and some, there's some connection here with like AI slop writing.
22:07Like if you have seen enough AI writing, you smell it quicker than you would otherwise. Yeah.
22:14And like the more time you spend with agents, the more you kind of see like, oh, they're doing that shit again. They're saying this kind of stuff again.
22:21Yeah. And so I have certain lines in my agent instructions, like talk to me like I have ADHD, which is just like, basically make it way more concise and not just concise, like make it really just do this thing. Okay, great.
22:32And then there's the one of like, use, what is it?
22:37AS, ASD standard. Yeah. Simplified technical English.
22:42So I played around with that. And then, cause I think if you used to say you like, I'm not technical, use plain language or like speak to me like I'm not technical.
22:53It would be like, oh, so it's like a kitchen and fucking not that.
22:58Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
22:58Just talk to me like normal words basically. Yeah.
23:00Yeah. Play around with actually does just use normal words. Is that better?
23:06I think the models now like Opus 5.5, I think with saying just explain it to me simply doesn't do those analogies so much and actually explains it quite simply.
23:14So I might change the stand like simplified technical English line now for explain it to me simply. Yeah. And like, it's always just a constant, what do we change in the context that like, as the models change also this changes, which is frustrating, but yeah, it's not like a massive job to do, but I think it's yeah, just figuring it out every time.
23:33Yeah. Cause it's just a file, you know, it's literally a lot of text that I just changed.
23:37What's also fascinating with the, you know, the point you made around as you have new models are changing, sometimes you actually have to just like remove the entire skill or you have to remove the, and start fresh to just see what out of the box it does.
23:53Yeah. And then adjust it and tweak it. And you know, you didn't have to say like the, you know, you simplified technical language for Opus, 4.8, but you needed it, definitely needed it for five.
24:06Yeah. Right. And then now for five, five, you don't need it.
24:08Right. And so it's just kind of like when a new model comes out, you have to basically like fire it up, have a test project that you're going with.
24:17It's also like, we were saying earlier about what I was saying to you about, like, when people think about agents and like the non-technical use case and adoption of that, like people on Twitter at labs are always like, oh, it's kind of a skill issue.
24:32Like that's kind of on you. And it's like, no, it isn't.
24:34That's, that's to me, that's on you as the company and the product.
24:37Yep. Same with these models. Like, yes, I know that I have to do that.
24:42Why should I have to do that?
24:44The reason you have to have the instructions is because you're steering the thing in the first place.
24:49And like, if they've steered it out of that model, is that not something that they should be trying to, they just kind of say, check how your instructions work.
24:58Or they don't even really say that. I think it's just usually people who've said, I've been using this model for two weeks now and it's amazing.
25:03And like, what you have to do is remove all your skills and remove all of this.
25:06And it's like, there's no real clear path to every model release.
25:09Like, is there a tool?
25:11Is there something you can do to be like, how do my instructions now work in here?
25:15Yeah. Compared to like, I got into the groove with this for the last 10 days when this model was the top one.
25:20Now I got to change it for this one. And I don't know who that falls to, but I think expecting everyone in the world who's going to use an agent to like have to think about this thing is tough and like not the right way to be doing that.
25:37Yeah. So I actually say that's why most people don't interact with this stuff is because they'll try it and, you know, they're like, oh, there's a new 5.0, like Claude 5.0.
25:49And someone tested, they're like, oh, I tried it for writing and it sucks.
25:52Or like it speaks to me and I don't understand what it's saying.
25:56And then the likelihood of them picking it up again, if they have a full time job, like if they're doing the kids, they have something else is very low.
26:04And so they'll probably wait till like the 6.0 release.
26:08Right. And which is going to be what? In three months from now?
26:10Yeah. Six months from now. So I think that the amount of change that is happening, a normal person just can't.
26:18Yeah. Like if they, if they're going to have a tough time thinking about how much time am I going to spend trying to do something with an agent?
26:26That's like one thing. And then if you also expect them to like, well, actually first, before you do that, you have to spend a bunch of time figuring out how this agent and this model will work for you.
26:36So like doing that writing stuff, it's like, okay, first let me think about like the process and the system of this and I work on that piece, building the mini software factory version of like how to get good stuff out of this model.
26:47Then I can now start doing stuff with this model. Right.
26:49That's an unrealistic expectation for most people.
26:52Right. That's why I think that you have success of the factories and the cognitions and stuff like that.
26:58Cause they're like, Hey, we'll do the whole setup for you.
27:01Yeah. You just come with your, you know, the task at hand, right? They're trying to say like, once you already know what you're doing, don't worry about the setup.
27:08We'll kind of do that where the labs are not really doing that just yet.
27:12Yeah. I mean, they may like Claude Code’s harness.
27:15They have their own system prompts.
27:17So they are probably doing some like be a software engineer.
27:22Like we think about software engineers should be like this, but factory has their own version and other tools have theirs.
27:28That's why I do think there's going to be like, there's going to be so many agents and harnesses and like, you'll just take your stuff around to different ones.
27:37and it might be like, I'm surprised there isn't really writing harnesses.
27:41I guess there's like writing tools out there.
27:44Yeah. Which are kind of like this, I suppose, but I think it'd be interesting to see if they look a bit more like coding harnesses in the future.
27:54But even saying that out loud now, just literally thinking off the top of my head, I'm not sure what, what those things look like, but like, they seem like interesting things to explore.
28:03And I know now some point this week, I'll just be like, I'll mess around with like, is that anything? Yeah. Should I even bother? Yeah.
28:11Just doing something just myself.
28:13and even thinking about what I said about every time there's a new model.
28:18Okay. With my current instructions, do I just do like a blind test?
28:22I've run it through a bunch of the same prompts.
28:23So I know like generally this task is going to look like this way in this model that I like, test it on a bunch of different models and a bunch of different configurations.
28:31When the next one comes out, test it and then kind of vote on kind of doing your own evals.
28:36Yeah. Voting on, I like these ones.
28:38And it's like, well, this actually didn't include any of the skills.
28:41You know, like, okay, well maybe I don't need enough for this model.
28:44Like maybe there's things like that. You kind of, I would like think now of building a tool for myself to do things like that, I suppose.
28:54In terms of right now, so you find yourself kind of tinkering all the time, building a bunch of stuff with kind of coding agents.
29:03Are you messing around with the wave of now personal agents that people are playing with?
29:07I've played, I've played around with a few, a few aren't available in the UK.
29:11So I haven't played with Muse or Dots yet.
29:15and I just, I dunno, I just think of like the agents to folder for me.
29:20So it's like, I've got bytes is my folder.
29:22I'm on my computer, how to behave and who I am.
29:25Like some context on me is so factory can be my personal agent and so can PI and so can codex and so can Claude Code.
29:34Like do you have them doing personal tasks? Yeah.
29:37So I, so I just have it as like, that is my bytes is my personal agent.
29:42Okay. So like travel stuff, email stuff, like it's all there.
29:46And I always like start every project in that.
29:48And like, then if there's a proper repo, let's go and set it up in the repos folder and all that kind of stuff.
29:52But I, I don't know. I was saying this in my talk that I don't know if this is right for like how other people are going to do this or going to want to do this.
30:02But I like all this control. Like I like to know if a sentence in context is a reason why a model is doing something, I want to know that I can take it out or keep it in.
30:11But I find that important. Like there was, I had like a full file that was like, these are all my just like random ideas.
30:18So like it could be a different partnership model for Ben's Bites.
30:21And it's like, then when I'm trying to have a conversation with certain models and like, what can we do about different like ways to think about sponsors?
30:28Like, users are a bit mad or what can we do there?
30:32It's like, well, you've already got this set up.
30:34And I'm like, no, we haven't. No, no, no, no. This is just an idea.
30:36And I was like, you know, I'm going to delete that file from, like, it's not now mentioned in my agent's MD.
30:41And I kind of say like, do not read this file unless I, unless I tell you, you can read this file.
30:46And there's things like that, like using these personal agents.
30:51Like I had this with Grok Bot.
30:52I think I must've said something early on that now it is always steered in a certain way.
30:56It's like, forget that, Matt, forget that.
30:59That's not, that's not how I want you to do things.
31:01Yeah. And even the way it would talk. I'm like, I don't know if that's because it's built this way, or it's the model or whether it's like something I've told it.
31:09And I was hanging on to and I, where do I change that? I can't.
31:13So you find with your own personal folder, you can adjust it.
31:16Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, it's just, this is the folder with the context about me, any agent at any moment with any model, I can just open the same folder and point it there.
31:29Yeah. Yeah. And I just like to know what it's like, what's going into its memory.
31:32Like what do I actually want it to hold on to and not?
31:35Cause I had this, I set up the Andrej Karpathy LLM wiki before I had that system.
31:42And all the stuff it was saving, but there's so much memory theoretically about me.
31:48And I was just like, just keep holding onto the old shit.
31:51Like it keeps saying all the old stuff.
31:53It doesn't forget anything.
31:53And it's like in a context window, it can't determine what token is more important than another.
32:01So it kind of just regurgitates stuff and like, it's focusing on what the tokens are there.
32:05I'm like, okay, let's just stop reading memory.
32:07And then now I just don't even have that much memory.
32:09I'm just like, I'm just gonna have personal.
32:12This is my, my name.
32:13This is my wife's name.
32:14These are my kids' names.
32:16Like if I need more, then I'll add to it.
32:19So now I'm thinking about it that way.
32:21I think this is something with these personal agents of like, do you want one Jarvis like agent or do you want, this is your chief of staff.
32:31This is your money manager.
32:33And this is like, I like just the one, like if it's going to be money manager tasks, look at the money manager file.
32:41I think I would always start with or recommend to start with like, just the one.
32:44Start with one first because the more you push out all this stuff or like kind of leave it to the agent to like do the memory and anything like that.
32:52It's kind of lost and you don't know where anything is or how anything saved or how, how things work in.
32:57Not only that, you also get trapped into like a model, right?
33:02Where like a system, like if you're using, I don't know, I'm picking on Grok Bot and you have this like real, convoluted system where you have a money manager bot and you have another bot and then you share all this information and now you want to test out some other agent that has the same functionality, but like a better model.
33:19You can't because it's kind of locked in to that file system and that structure.
33:23Then you have to, you know, do some tricks where you're like, Hey, tell me everything you know about me and put together a report.
33:29Cause I'm transferring you to another agent.
33:31Have you seen those like exports?
33:32Like when anthropic, I think did this, when they were launching something, they created like a export from chat GPT.
33:39And there was like a prompt that you tell chat GPT, like tell me everything you know about me and then you can import it into Anthropic and they do both ways, right?
33:45Like there is no moat in that file system, but you can at least understand everything.
33:53That's that the context that you have.
33:56And you can build upon that even on the side where you, because once again, it's just a file.
34:01So you can read it in plain English and kind of edit it and customize it as your heart's desire.
34:07One of the first things I do with any of these personal agents is like, let me understand where and where, like, how do you, how do you save stuff about me?
34:17When do you save it and where does it go?
34:20And then is there a way, I think I did this with instinct and said, okay, for everything that you save about me, I want you to sync that with a file in Google Drive.
34:31So I know that the memory you've got about me is also in a file on Google Drive.
34:37So then I can go there and say like, forget all this kind of stuff and then do that.
34:40So I've been, I kind of just do that.
34:43I did it initially to start with like, how do I make my memory system better?
34:48Or like, think about my memory system and is that the right way to do it versus how these personal agents think that it should be done.
34:54And I was like, well, these are all in like weird different ways.
34:56And like, oh, can I see it?
34:57Like, no, you can't see it, you can't edit it.
34:58Okay, well, you can just sync it with Google Drive.
35:01You use Google Drive anyway.
35:02So like, let's just have a sync where it does that and updates it.
35:06That's super clever.
35:07I really like that hack where it's like, you can't have access to my file system, but I can clone it for you.
35:15I think you can just be like, well, right at the same time.
35:17Is there any diff between what you and Al have about me in this one?
35:20Like I've updated mine, like every day or something, like make sure mine overrides yours.
35:28And going back to like the one bot versus multiple, I think it's similar to think about like, if you went and you hired like 10 people on day one, that's a really fucking big job to like try and say, right, okay, hang on a sec.
35:41Like these are the things you need to know about this stuff.
35:44Don't worry about that a minute.
35:45So this is the stuff you need to know.
35:47And then like, let's try and do some of these tasks and I do that, but hang on a sec.
35:52And like, you've got to juggle all of that.
35:54It's a, there's a lot of context switching in your head and different task priorities.
35:59And there's memory for each one.
36:01And like, there's a lot to think about.
36:03Like, I don't like working with many people on my team.
36:07Like I don't like having a lot of people.
36:08I had like 15 at some point, back at Makerpad.
36:11And I was like, there's too many people.
36:14And then you have people problems.
36:16Now you have, you have agent problems.
36:18Like, oh, this agent stopped behaving or this one didn't talk to this other agent.
36:21Like you've got all of these.
36:22It's the same thing.
36:23So I was like, if there's one person I talked to, it's just easier for me to say like, there's a problem when this one is doing tasks with my email.
36:32So I know that that's just like a subfolder here.
36:34So like, that's where we need to figure out stuff.
36:37Like everything else is kind of the same.
36:39I don't need my marketing, like agent to act really cool and like hip and then I got this like really quiet developer bot somewhere.
36:53So it's like, it's like a lot of real, real people.
36:54But, so your, your, your system, you're trying to sort of just simplify the entire experience just for you to wrap your head around it, but then also for the portability of it.
37:04And then also the like inspect ability, like the, to debug kind of system.
37:10So you have agent flows on your email, like specifically or your marketing or like, how does that work?
37:18So the email is just like, just do labels and archive.
37:20I went through a whole process with emails.
37:23So I had superhuman for years.
37:25I paid every month for four or five years.
37:30I was like, well, I don't like, I don't want to be in my inbox.
37:34This is someone else giving me a job that I haven't asked to do and they put it on my list.
37:37It's like, I don't want to respond to all these emails.
37:41Luckily, I don't need to respond.
37:43I'm not in a job where I have lots of tasks to do and I've got to juggle lots of different people's priorities as mine.
37:51So I was like, okay, well, I don't want to use superhuman anymore, but I don't like the Gmail interface either.
37:55I don't want to spend time in the interface, but maybe I'll just build my own superhuman.
37:59I'll build it on top of Gmail.
38:01So I built it on top of the GWS CLI and I have a superhuman-like interface.
38:07And I was like, actually, I can manage my email here.
38:10And then I was going back to, I don't want to spend time in my email client.
38:15And actually, what do I really want from all this?
38:17I just want it to be labeled in archives.
38:18So actually, if I do go in or when I do go into my email, there's only three emails instead of 30.
38:25That's all I actually want.
38:26And actually, Gmail has all the labels and archiving stuff.
38:29So all I need is a file that says, these are the rules for how to label and archive my emails.
38:35So every hour, just check my inbox for unread or anything in my inbox, label it following the rules.
38:42And if it's a label that should always be in the archive, add it to my filters.
38:46So that now every Amazon receipt also gets added to the filter and never, ever shows up in my inbox again.
38:55That's actually what I wanted.
38:56And I think all of this, what you said at the start of this question was like, I am trying to get the simplest version of my setup.
39:05If I could just have one file with two lines of text in it, that's what I would have.
39:09Like I always want to think about what's the least amount of context to get it into the point where I'm like, this is great for me.
39:16Because also it's less to think about, less to think about changing.
39:21I just want it like the simplest.
39:22So the advice for people who are just getting started is just start with the simplest.
39:29I think you start with like, start with one line, then add two.
39:32It doesn't remember this about me.
39:33I'd add a second one.
39:34And I'll actually want it to do this.
39:35So like add a third.
39:36Does it need to have that?
39:37Can it be less words?
39:38Can it be a different way to do that?
39:41and then obviously there's things like skills, which again, it just prompts the load at a certain time.
39:48and with, I don't know, I'll go back and forth on skills, whether I want to have them, I have in my instructions to like when to call the skills.
39:55And I generally have them as like, don't auto invoke skills.
39:58Cause I want to know again, the control freak piece of like, I want to know when it's doing something.
40:03And like, was that because we use a skill that has all this text that I haven't actually read.
40:09So that's why something's happened.
40:10Like I want to understand all of these moments of like, how it happened and why it happened.
40:16And is that something that I can just take for myself?
40:18Or take out for myself.
40:21Do you find yourself setting this up for your wife, for anyone else, the family members, or, or you just feel like right now you're just in the mix yourself and just exploring.
40:32And it's really hard to like translate this for other people.
40:35I think like at the moment I'm still making sense of it, but I've been doing that now for two years.
40:43which is like in AI years, it's like 20 years.
40:45It's like the lifetime.
40:46But I'm trying to get to a point where I feel like if I can break it down as simply as possible for myself, then I'm in a better position to explain it simply for other people.
40:58Because if I go in to the talk yesterday was like, I have these agent instructions.
41:03So every agent acts like this.
41:05And then I've got my personal agent and like, I recommend starting with one instead of multiple and like, and then the skills and kind of leaving it there.
41:14But these again are students who are ready and like using Claude for work and stuff.
41:17So like doing stuff like what my wife is said to you earlier, like she's thinking there's someone behind the computer messaging in her back.
41:23She's like, but there must be someone there.
41:25And I'm being really annoying to them.
41:26I'm like, this is not how AI works.
41:27Don't worry about it.
41:29And I don't like, I don't know that she'll ever be like, she may be a lost.
41:35I remember when Google first started, I think one of my friends, like dad had the same response.
41:41He's like, Oh yeah, I talked to the Google guy all the time.
41:44He sends me his responses.
41:48I'm like, it makes them feel like, actually that's an easier way to frame it to like, think about what to ask and how to ask it.
41:55But like thinking that you're annoying the AI, because you're asking too many questions.
41:59That's like the opposite that I want people to think is like, yeah, ask it relentlessly.
42:03It's the most ever patient thing in the world that you can't, you can't look dumb in front of the agent, the AI.
42:11So yeah, I'm trying to like boil it down myself.
42:13And like a lot of this time over the last couple of years, like I spent some time at factory and I'm like, I shipped something to this.
42:21I was using a terminal interface for soap, like for a very long time where I'd never would have touched a terminal before.
42:28I tried before and I was just like, I can't do this.
42:32But like I worked on the team.
42:33I like, I shipped something to production as part of like the engineering team.
42:38I all passed it off.
42:38And I was like, who am I?
42:40what am I, what am I doing here?
42:41But like, I think you can just like do these things that you didn't think you can.
42:47And it's just figuring out how you understand all the pieces and how they all come together.
42:53And like, it's up to you to do a lot of that learning.
42:55But I think there are ways that maybe I can help to like try and break it down.
43:00I've been doing some of this on the newsletter recently, like building stuff, just random things.
43:05And as I'm talking about the kind of build process.
43:09is it separate email or it's.
43:10No, it's just, it's just on a Friday, I've done a different style of post over the last couple of months.
43:15So like things I've built that week.
43:17And like, this is kind of the journey of like, I asked, I sent this kind of prompt.
43:21You can just see that I'm like not prompting it.
43:23I'm just like saying, Hey, I've got a weird idea for this thing.
43:26And like speaking to it normally.
43:29and then as concepts come up, that's when I kind of might explain like, this is the agent looping here.
43:36Or like, this is the reason I use a sub agent because like I'm in this context window.
43:40I don't want to pollute the context here.
43:41So this sub agent task is going to be scraping data or like looking at a load of web searches.
43:47You don't want all of that in.
43:49You can't start kind of explain things that way, because I think that's how I learned a lot of this is like playing around with it and being like, cool.
43:57What's local host now?
43:58Like, what do you mean?
43:59Because I want to see this thing that you've built for me.
44:02Now I understand what that is.
44:03What do you mean my machine?
44:05What do you mean the machine?
44:06Cause like, again, there's all these different technical terms that different people use in different times.
44:13just like an as and when learning experience.
44:15And I think that matters because people don't want to think about agent instructions, personal agent skills, tools, CLI, MCP, like all of these things that like understand all the theory first.
44:27Context window, compaction, like understand all that before doing something with it.
44:33but I think that's where it's interesting with like all the personal agents that they kind of, they're making you not have to think about all of that.
44:40And just saying like, just, it'll learn about you and like do all that stuff itself.
44:44But then the use case of it is like go and book travel.
44:48It's like, I don't know.
44:52I don't know that that's also like getting them to a curious place of like, this is really interestingly better than Google or anything else I could do myself.
45:02Like how do I do stuff with a computer that I like couldn't do before instead of the agent is the thing that uses my computer now.
45:11It's like, but I can do like, I can do more fun, way more fun stuff now than I ever could.
45:17Because I like working on a computer.
45:19I'm not going to, I don't want to spend less time on a computer.
45:21I actually want to spend more time on my computer with my agent all the time.
45:26Cause now you can get more out of your computer than you could before.
45:29Explore anything at any moment.
45:30I can build anything I want.
45:33And I'm kind of learning along the way, but I think the framing of the personal agent is like, I'm here to do your computer tasks.
45:39So you can just like sit on your phone outside and do nothing.
45:43It's like, I don't know.
45:46They feel like mixed, mixed things there.
45:51That's like not the right frame that you want to have.
45:53You're saying like, you now have superpowers.
45:55Your computer is now giving you superpowers that you couldn't have done before.
45:58You know, unless you went to school or you studied textbooks or whatever it is.
46:01Now you don't need to read those textbooks.
46:02You can just say, Hey, where can we do this?
46:04And you see people creating games or creating like animations that you've never, you were never an animator before.
46:10Now you're rigging up like your own animations and stuff.
46:12So you could actually do more now that you could have done before.
46:17And you think that like personalized agents or just like, we'll, we'll take care of this stuff.
46:21It's like, no, that's the rudimentary stuff.
46:23yes, I go further, take care of it.
46:25But also whilst we're doing this other stuff, like I want to be, I want to do stuff in my email so that I can do other stuff in other areas and tinker on things.
46:35And like maybe there's some, I want to have my own email brief and the like, want to make a website for that.
46:40And like, Oh actually, what else can I bring into this?
46:41I can bring my Slack conversations.
46:43I can have like my Monday briefing document or whatever it would be.
46:48And not like that's that interesting, but like it's interesting for a lot of people who work.
46:53so right now, if you were to say the people who are working on computer for a living, like where do you think, you know, the stuff that you're doing today, like in two years from now, what do you think they'll finally come around to of like how they operate?
47:08I would like to believe that more people are going to build things for themselves.
47:14I also believe this back in 2017.
47:17When it was in the no code here and I was like, Oh, anyone can build anything.
47:22But the problem with no code was several things, I guess is one is there were limitations on the tools and really you were still learning the system of like my front end is on Webflow.
47:33So my backend is handled by Zapier.
47:35My database is handled by Airtable.
47:37And I'm like, I've learned the system, but I didn't learn the syntax.
47:41and then another problem was you have to, you have to have a threshold for pain.
47:47Like if you want to, you have to want to build something.
47:50And you can only get through that threshold of pain.
47:52If you want to build something that badly.
47:55Now that threshold is a lot lower, but there's still going to be many moments when it's like saying something, or it's, or it's like hit a bug or it's like hitting issues and something's happening and you're going to have to still go through the threshold of pain, but it's such a better, easier experience now than it ever was that you're not so much in the weeds.
48:20Like agents can always figure it out.
48:21It's just, you have to figure out how to talk to the agent to get it, to figure it out, or like find someone else's skill or see how someone else has done it.
48:29so I would like, I still like that ideology of like people should and will build tools for themselves.
48:37Like personal software, it can be for a thing that we're going to do in an hour.
48:42It could be something that I'm going to use every single day and it could change next month.
48:46And then I throw it away and build something else.
48:48Like you can, and you shouldn't like any idea you have is good enough to just try it anyway.
48:55And you get good at the thing by doing the thing.
48:56And you can't, yeah, you can just throw it away.
49:01Like if you can, why, why not?
49:03So I want, I mean, I'll just stick with that.
49:06Like that's what I, that's what I want people to do is realize they can build things themselves and they should get, you get more ideas by working on ideas all the time.
49:16And I think, yeah, I would like more people to think that way than thinking agents handle everything.
49:23We're just going to do like sit around doing podcasts all day, reading books, but like you can still do all of that stuff.
49:30Most of us are building cool shit.
49:31Like I think I, we, I've had this conversation with multiple people about like, is the web dead for humans?
49:39And like, are we going to be using websites and stuff?
49:40But I, I don't know on that because I've seen so much, so many more interesting websites built these days than I ever have.
49:49And like, I think you can make the argument of there's so much worse shit out there too.
49:55But I think that came around with like reading and writing.
49:58As soon as everyone can write, the volume has gone up.
50:01So there's going to be so much more shit, but the, so many more good, like so many excellent things are also produced.
50:09And I think the same is true with AI slop projects is like, I can build the animation, like any of these things before, like even with no code, there's no way that I could do any of this stuff.
50:20and a lot of my stuff might be slop, but like it's for myself.
50:24Like there's not mission critical systems happening through my software that need to happen.
50:29Like if there's a bug, cool, I'll just go and fix it.
50:32Or my agent will go and fix it.
50:35so, yeah, I just, I want people to just be more curious and like go through the threshold of pain.
50:41Like just play around with it.
50:42I just, yeah, I just don't want to be that serious.
50:44I think it's, yeah, don't expect computers going to handle everything.
50:51I don't need to work on a computer anymore.
50:52You should want to work more on a computer because it's way more interesting and way more fun now because you can do anything.
51:00On that note, just do anything.