The Last Mile of Making AI Useful | Backchannel 01
Kelly, Nat and Lucas compare AI news briefs, coding subscriptions and project systems, and the last mile of making them useful. Recorded August 13, 2026.
Amazon Music 
RSS Feed My AI assistant is doing a daily news brief, but it keeps missing things I actually care about. That gets Lucas, Nat, and me talking about what it takes to make these tools useful beyond the first impressive demo.
Nat walks us through the system she uses to organize projects, turn meeting notes into next steps, and keep track of what her agents have done. We compare notes on coding tools, subscriptions that don't actually save us money, and why capturing a task isn't much help if we never look at it again. Lucas describes a legal-document workbench where the user can request an evidence packet without writing a prompt.
It's a conversation about the things we're building, the parts that still frustrate us, and the small changes worth trying next. The common thread: the technology should fit the way people work, not give them another system to babysit.
Recorded August 13, 2026, with Kelly Hodsdon, Nat Walstead, and Lucas Whelan. Tool names, prices, and model comparisons reflect the conversation at the time of recording.
In this conversation
00:00 Opening
00:39 Why the AI news brief keeps missing things
05:08 Coding agents, rabbit holes, and staying in the loop
06:47 More coding tools, more subscriptions
11:08 The PDF prototype and the hard last mile
12:51 Capturing tasks and bringing them back
15:17 Nat's project system and agent instructions
18:56 POP: Progress, Obstacles, and Priorities
21:54 Trello, daily sweeps, and agent receipts
25:34 Building for people who won't use your system
26:54 A tour of the TechHive
31:27 An always-on personal assistant, and who maintains it
34:18 Meet people where they are and hide the plumbing
39:18 A legal-document workbench without a prompt box
41:56 Goodbyes
Ideas worth keeping
- Fix the process behind an AI's recurring mistakes.
- Compare the cost of the whole workflow, including extra subscriptions and learning time.
- Plan for integration and everyday use after the first working demo.
- Capture needs a review habit that brings information back when it matters.
- Keep meetings connected to project work. Nat's POP structure means Progress, Obstacles, and Priorities: what changed, what's blocked, and who does what before the next meeting.
- Give unattended agent work clear permission boundaries and a linked record of what changed.
- Meet people in the channels they already use. Hide the plumbing behind the task they are trying to complete.
- Combine fixed rules, AI interpretation, and human review.
Music
Music: "Gimme that Groove!" by Michael Ramir C., via Mixkit.
Speaker:
Hello. Hi, Kelly. How are you?
Speaker:
I'm good.
Speaker:
I get to be in the office today.
Speaker:
What, what was that? I said nice background.
Speaker:
Yeah. Well, the, the real background is a disaster.
Speaker:
I'm on the call, lover. Oh, okay.
Speaker:
Sorry, go ahead. Hi, Lucas.
Speaker:
Hey, Kelly
Speaker:
Sorry, I was, uh- Late … in the middle of a prompt.
Speaker:
My AI news, uh, Milo is failing me.
Speaker:
He just cannot seem to get that balance for AI news that I want, that, um… The couple
Speaker:
guys I follow normally don't cover some of the stuff I'm interested in, u- usually the open
Speaker:
source stuff, and it's any good for coding or, you know, for document reading, that kind of
Speaker:
thing. And so it does a daily brief and… But, uh, but
Speaker:
then it, like, misses things like, I don't know, Grok 4.6.
Speaker:
Do you think that might have been, you know, important to throw out there?
Speaker:
And he goes, "Oh, well, I'll add that to my checklist."
Speaker:
I'm like, "No, don't patch it.
Speaker:
Why did we miss it to begin with?
Speaker:
That is a huge announcement. It's all over the place.
Speaker:
Everyone else knew about it, but we didn't."
Speaker:
So can we kind of find a different way of how you search, and then filter the results to the
Speaker:
things that might be interesting t- to, to me?
Speaker:
'Cause what it ended up doing is every time I go, "Well, what about Z.AI's GLM 5.2 model?
Speaker:
That's a- as good as Fables, right?"
Speaker:
"Oh, okay." And so it starts tracking Z.AI specifically, or looking for things in OpenRouter
Speaker:
or… And I'm just like, "That's, that's not the way to do this."
Speaker:
Like, there's, there's gotta be… Like, how am I just stumbling across these things and
Speaker:
you're not, and you're specifically doing it?
Speaker:
And so Milo's like, "You're right.
Speaker:
That was my bad." I'm like, "It's not bad.
Speaker:
We just need to fix the system, that's all."
Speaker:
Um- Yeah, that is one of the hardest things, is, like, not, don't let this thing happen
Speaker:
again, but the, the logic that powered that.
Speaker:
Right. Right. How do you, how do you, how do you fix the… Yes, the, the thinking,
Speaker:
because I don't wanna keep patching 37 different things as I keep discovering them.
Speaker:
Because it's like, well, I already know about it now.
Speaker:
I don't I don't need you to retroactively tell me, "Hey, Kelly, did you know Grok 4.6 is
Speaker:
out?" And I said, "And Elon said that 4.7 is in the next three to four weeks."
Speaker:
Yeah. "Which should be the best model ever."
Speaker:
And, "Well, I don't see that anywhere."
Speaker:
I'm like, "It's literally in E- in Elon's post, right?"
Speaker:
I'm just like, I don't… I don't-
Speaker:
Does it have a Twitter, like, API access?
Speaker:
I know that there's a Twitter API where you can kinda scan that stuff.
Speaker:
Does it have that? It doesn't, and it probably should.
Speaker:
That could, that, that could be the big fail, actually, right there, is that, uh, X- X is
Speaker:
one of the places to get recent good data.
Speaker:
Everyone, everyone I know, which is nobody but you guys, but everyone online says
Speaker:
that, that they u- they constantly use the X, uh, like, API
Speaker:
to get the latest news. Like, that's where Grok always wins too.
Speaker:
Or you just query Grok, and Grok can tell you.
Speaker:
That's actually- Yeah … another one.
Speaker:
Uh, Milo can query Grok and get their opinion, which already is tied into, uh, to X
Speaker:
or the e- the API. Those are two good o- uh, I- Feel like I gotta write this down.
Speaker:
I don't have to write it down, I do remember. But no,
Speaker:
like- I feel like, I feel like, I feel like X is the best place for AI news for me.
Speaker:
And that's where I go. I mean, I just scroll through X and I get all of it, you know?
Speaker:
Just- Oh, okay … I just, based on who I follow, that's where I get it.
Speaker:
And if I were gonna do a current AI news thing, that, that's where I would start,
Speaker:
is just have a, have a scan of kind of the premier accounts.
Speaker:
So, you know, Claude, you know, Anthropic, OpenAI, you know.
Speaker:
And then there's this guy Chubby, you probably have seen him.
Speaker:
He, he kind of aggregates AI news all the time.
Speaker:
Um, l- that's, I think that's his full-time job.
Speaker:
He just, like, every day, he posts five to six times about anything that's happening in AI.
Speaker:
So if you follow that account, you'll end up getting quite a bit.
Speaker:
So if you just like… I don't, I don't know how that API works, but if you create, like, a
Speaker:
subset of those accounts, I bet you you could get 95% of what you're looking for in terms of
Speaker:
AI, AI news. Um,
Speaker:
so who was that? You say Chubby?
Speaker:
Chubby.
Speaker:
Chubby is the screen name. Let me see.
Speaker:
I'll- Okay … I'll bring up my Twitter real and, and give you the, the handle.
Speaker:
Um, uh,
Speaker:
here, I'll put it in the chat. All right.
Speaker:
Uh, the, the actual handle
Speaker:
It's, uh,
Speaker:
@K-I-M-M-O-N-I-S-M-U-S.
Speaker:
And then it's
Speaker:
[unclear].
Speaker:
Oh, interesting.
Speaker:
All right, thank you
Speaker:
I mentioned it in text, but, uh, it was Chuck who actually started using Elon
Speaker:
as the judge. So he actually uses Grok, and he's, and he basically says,
Speaker:
"You're Elon Musk. Uh, help my two coding agents."
Speaker:
'Cause he always goes back and forth between Codex and Claude Code.
Speaker:
And he had a bridge where they were talking automatically to each other, but the problem is
Speaker:
you lose, you lose track of where you, of where you're at.
Speaker:
Yeah. And they'll, they'll go down rabbit holes and just never come back out.
Speaker:
Uh, just like I, I've had Codex just go into these testing modes and just keeps going and
Speaker:
going. I'm like, "Dude, what are you doing? It's been 10 minutes.
Speaker:
I only asked you to change one thing."
Speaker:
It was like… I said,
Speaker:
"Did I ask you the wrong thing? Is there a real problem here?"
Speaker:
And it's like, "Oh, no, you're right. It's done."
Speaker:
I'm like, "Then what were you doing?"
Speaker:
It goes, "Well, one of the tests didn't work, and so I was working on the blah, blah…" I'm
Speaker:
just like, oh my gosh. Um, so what he does now is he puts Elon in the middle of it, and when
Speaker:
you give it Elon's personality, uh, it, it, uh, which it knows already, it bosses you
Speaker:
around. It's bossing the Codex and the Claude Code, and it's bossing you around, telling you
Speaker:
what needs to get done. And, uh, uh, this is what… This is Chuck's description.
Speaker:
He loves it. It's slightly slower than what it was, but… A- and he just copies and pastes
Speaker:
back and forth. This way, he stays in the loop too.
Speaker:
But, um, he says it's been, it's been really good, and it's been, uh… He's moved forward.
Speaker:
I haven't… I don't have a project that I'm really working on right at this moment, so I
Speaker:
don't know. But I thought I'd just share that as a, as a, as a experiment if you
Speaker:
guys wanna try something like that. It just, it sounds hilarious to me.
Speaker:
Uh- Yeah … yeah, yeah. So I've, I paid 99 bucks for three months, or it's three months
Speaker:
of $99 a month for the, for the Grok Code thing, um, their coding thing.
Speaker:
So I've got… Which of course I'm not using now, so that's a, that's a waste.
Speaker:
But, um, so anyway, that's, that's interesting and fun.
Speaker:
Um- Yeah, I was curious. I actually looked in… Because of the announcement yesterday on 4.6,
Speaker:
I looked into Grok Build. And, um, the only reason I didn't subscribe is
Speaker:
that we've just got… I mean, we've got Codex, and we've got Claude Code, and we're on the
Speaker:
$200 on both of those.
Speaker:
Yeah. Although, uh, Natalie's been cranking out those Claude Code tokens.
Speaker:
Really using them up. So, um, so- Yeah … but, uh, and I, you know, I, I was thinking with
Speaker:
the cost, I, I don't know, I haven't tried it out, um, the cost is amazing on Grok
Speaker:
4.6. So if, if… Uh, that could be a really economical option is
Speaker:
it's got, like, frontier-level intelligence at, you know, like, Sonnet-level prices or less.
Speaker:
Cheaper than Sonnet- Right … I think.
Speaker:
Right. Um-
Speaker:
So I was curious, so have you, have you ever, have you fired up Grok Build at all?
Speaker:
I downloaded- Oh, yeah … yeah, I did, I did the CLI and got it downloaded, but I, I haven't
Speaker:
subscribed, so I haven't actually tested it.
Speaker:
So, um, for, uh, mundane coding stuff, it's, it's really fast.
Speaker:
So it's, it's much faster than any other models for, for just cranking through stuff.
Speaker:
Uh, it's good. It's probably a Sonnet 4.5 level for coding stuff,
Speaker:
which we're like, "Yeah, it's not as good as this or that or blah, blah, blah."
Speaker:
But I'm like, but four months ago or three months ago, like, it's so state-of-the-art and
Speaker:
it's fast. Yeah. And so, uh, but it all depends what kind of, what kind of stuff you're
Speaker:
doing. If you're doing thinking and planning, again, that goes back to possibly Fable, but
Speaker:
certainly maybe Opus 5, you know, that kind of thing where you wanna plan, design.
Speaker:
Claude still seems to be the, the, the go-to there.
Speaker:
Codex is really good at chewing through stuff, 5.6 Sol in- included.
Speaker:
Um, I, I don't like the creativity it has, but I like the thoroughness.
Speaker:
Like, when I'm syncing between my VPS and my local Mac for Hermes, I, I cross skills, or
Speaker:
when I have to update the, the framework, um, be- because I've got a whole bunch of custom
Speaker:
stuff now in Hermes, and just upgrading the framework would break stuff in the traditional
Speaker:
way. So Codex chewing through that's great, but then for fast… You know, uh, having to
Speaker:
rework something or whatever, the, the Grok Build is, it's… They said it's… I don't know.
Speaker:
It's fast. It works. It, um… And now with 4.6, I, you really have to start to, to wonder.
Speaker:
'Cause also, if you can iterate faster, you can, you can potentially get more done, 'cause
Speaker:
that's what a lot of this is, is us getting the iteration cycles in and-
Speaker:
Yeah making the corrections. And so that, that could be helpful there.
Speaker:
The problem is, we've all got subscriptions to these other services, and I'm not hitting my,
Speaker:
my limits, and it's like, they're already paid for.
Speaker:
So- Yeah … you know, you know.
Speaker:
What do you think? Yeah, you know, that's… I was thinking about that the other day.
Speaker:
It's like, y- you know, somebody who's 10 times cheaper and 1%, uh, l-
Speaker:
off the frontier, like, it, it's still… I'd have to… I, I have basically
Speaker:
unlimited at the frontier, so why would I accept- Yeah … 1% less?
Speaker:
And yeah, it's 10 times cheaper, but it's actually a new subscription, so it's incrementally
Speaker:
cost more- … uh, costing more to get into that ecosystem
Speaker:
And then I've gotta learn it, and there's a, you know, there's a learning curve.
Speaker:
You talk to Codex a little differently than you talk to Claude, and- Yeah … you can ask
Speaker:
different kinds of questions. So you gotta learn what that's like for Kimi, for example, or
Speaker:
for Grok. And so, um, it was actually like there's becoming this sort of switching cost of
Speaker:
going between models where pricing is not necessarily priority.
Speaker:
And, and, and when they talk about pricing, they talk about API pricing.
Speaker:
They don't- Correct. Because the subscriptions are not transparent, what does that even
Speaker:
mean? I don't know, 'cause Grok may not subsidize usage the way Claude does.
Speaker:
Uh, so, uh, you know, it's all of those things start floating in my head.
Speaker:
I'm like, oh yeah, all that would actually happen is that I'd spend $100 more.
Speaker:
I'm not- Right … saving money. Right.
Speaker:
Uh, so, um. That's what I did.
Speaker:
Yeah. Uh, but I will. I mean, if, if, if, uh, 4.7 is the frontier, I will, I'll pay
Speaker:
100 bucks and see what it's like.
Speaker:
Yep. Um, for sure. Um, cool. Any… So what, what is the project with
Speaker:
Solidigm? I know you've mentioned it before.
Speaker:
I just- Oh … don't remember what it is. Uh, so the, the… So they're the last one using my
Speaker:
WordPress resource portal for the- Okay … document management tool.
Speaker:
And what they wanted is to be able to upload a, a PDF and have
Speaker:
it turn into a webpage. And then from the- Oh, okay … and then, and then from that webpage,
Speaker:
be able to download it in, uh, with all the security and the whatever that needs to be with
Speaker:
it as a PDF again, or, um, or if it's not, if it's a public-facing one, that it could come
Speaker:
down as a Markdown file or a Word doc.
Speaker:
And so it's just- Cool … it's just ki- it's just kinda adding this, this layer on.
Speaker:
I did a fast prototype and I took screenshots.
Speaker:
You know, said, "Here's what it could look like."
Speaker:
My mock-up, which is actually a working, a working unit where, um, what's interesting is you
Speaker:
go, what if a PDF was an HTML page?
Speaker:
What would you be able to do that you can't really do in a PDF?
Speaker:
You kind of can, like the hot, the hot jumps and the links and whatever, but what ended up
Speaker:
happening- Yeah … was this nicely formatted page goes on, it, it, it auto sizes to whatever
Speaker:
screen you're on. It's got the little jump menu on the left, you know, which you already got
Speaker:
chapters inside of PDFs anyway, but it just… We're all so used to being on the web, it just
Speaker:
really had some cool stuff in it, and then being able just to export it.
Speaker:
Um, and so the, the hard part is integrating that in.
Speaker:
That's, that's- Yeah, the, uh, the proof of concept is always the fun part.
Speaker:
Yeah. It's the, the actual implementation, that's what we charge for.
Speaker:
Yeah. Do the proof of concept all day. And the, the freaking proof of concept is always zero
Speaker:
to 90. Yeah. Yeah. 90%.
Speaker:
And you're like, "Wow, I'm almost done.
Speaker:
This was so easy." But that fucking last mile is a
Speaker:
bitch. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.
Speaker:
Um, yeah. S- so I think the only last interesting thing is I'm trying better
Speaker:
scheduling with Milo. Um, just, just to have a better conversation, like how do we… How do I
Speaker:
not forget things? Like, when I'm going from one place to another, or these lists.
Speaker:
And my problem is I, I capture things pretty well through a couple different mediums, but,
Speaker:
you know, including sending me- my own, myself Slack messages.
Speaker:
Um, but, uh, I don't ever review them.
Speaker:
I still remember 90% of them.
Speaker:
Oh, yeah. But, but 10% of them I'm like, "Crap, I should've grabbed that while I was at the
Speaker:
storage unit," you know, or whatever it was.
Speaker:
And so last night Milo and I worked, worked through a, worked through a, a s- kind of a
Speaker:
simplified… He goes, "You got the capture down, we just need to get a review.
Speaker:
So just… And what's the ritual?
Speaker:
Like, what's the review in the morning?"
Speaker:
Uh, and he can just go through it.
Speaker:
Now instead of using Slack, I'm just gonna tell him in Telegram and he'll just record it.
Speaker:
And when, before I leave someplace, I just need to ask, "Milo, I'm leaving such and such,
Speaker:
heading here. What do I need?"
Speaker:
Which I've already got those contacts and things, but it's… I'm, I'm just not using it, and
Speaker:
I think the, the big thing is I said, "Let's try it.
Speaker:
We'll do it really poorly for a while, but maybe we can make it better over time."
Speaker:
It's the not, not being afraid, just have it be a bit of a mess.
Speaker:
Yeah. And, and as you, as we work through it, um, it's that what's the smallest fix, and
Speaker:
then iterate on, on that. And so hopefully that'll help out.
Speaker:
When I started this morning, I said, "Hey, I don't… Hey, g- morning ritual with coffee,
Speaker:
Milo. What, what's, what's going on today?"
Speaker:
And I'll be honest, he came up with a pretty good list, right?
Speaker:
The, the things that I'd talked about.
Speaker:
And even though I got f- 72 overdue items in my task list, 'cause I never, I never mark them
Speaker:
off- He picked some good ones.
Speaker:
The two that he picked from this giant list, I'm like, if I hadn't already done them, those
Speaker:
would've been important, right?
Speaker:
I'm like, nice, like good job.
Speaker:
Like it was- Yeah … it was, it was really nice.
Speaker:
And so I'll be checking in throughout today, and we'll see how it goes.
Speaker:
And I think it's just what are those small things that are practical?
Speaker:
In a way, it's the last mile, right?
Speaker:
It's the last mile on my AI- Yep … news brief.
Speaker:
I said, "Oh look, I got Milo doing a news brief."
Speaker:
And then I'm like, except he's missing things.
Speaker:
So again, I got 90% of it. Now that 10%'s what really matters.
Speaker:
Same thing for project and task management.
Speaker:
I like my calendar. I like the way things are set up.
Speaker:
I just need to start using it 'cause I'm not in that habit.
Speaker:
I have a new tool. And so-
Speaker:
Yeah. Ugh, we're getting,
Speaker:
we're getting there. Natalie, I know you, Natalie, I know you do a lot with like project
Speaker:
management using, uh, all of your internet friends.
Speaker:
Uh, what, what, I don't know, do you have anything insightful to share about how you do all
Speaker:
that? Like, all your, all your bas- you have a ton of automations on your phone.
Speaker:
You also have like the
Speaker:
Wellness, and then you have the, um, and then you have your Trello board being managed
Speaker:
directly by all of your, all of your internet friends.
Speaker:
Yeah. I was gonna say, give you, get you up in this soapbox because I just tried to do what
Speaker:
you did. Um, Lucas already had a really good relationship with his Hermes,
Speaker:
checking in with him every day about like what you need to have
Speaker:
ready for tomorrow, like a check-in.
Speaker:
And when I first learned to code and he installed the Hermes agent on my computer,
Speaker:
I just kind of thought that it starts out that smart, that you can just say like, "What
Speaker:
do I need to do?" I didn't realize you had to like, you gotta teach it everything.
Speaker:
And so it was, um, several iterations of move fast and break things, and move fast and
Speaker:
scratch it all and start all over, scratch it all and start all over.
Speaker:
Um, and so I think the most
Speaker:
Okay, the way I run… Yeah, I can do this.
Speaker:
The way I run, um, Hermes or the agents in general, whether it's Claude or Hermes or Codex
Speaker:
or whatever, it- I- the way I organize them specifically on my computer is I have in my
Speaker:
documents I have a Hermes brain, and then I have some read me first documents, which is
Speaker:
principles of agentic coding and the, the doc, which is the productization of Nat's life,
Speaker:
which I'll go into in a second. And then I have current projects, and each one, each project
Speaker:
has its own folder. And then also in my root directory, if there's any coding involved, um,
Speaker:
then it has a root directory folder as well.
Speaker:
And then I can share my screen actually.
Speaker:
Yeah. Um-
Speaker:
You're way more organized than I am.
Speaker:
Oh, thanks. This was a huge, huge, huge undertaking that I did that took a really long
Speaker:
time that I'm happy to show off.
Speaker:
So let's go to just down here.
Speaker:
Let's do Um I like this
Speaker:
view. Okay, so in my drive, and I have my current projects, and these are
Speaker:
all current projects in my Google Drive, and each one functions the same
Speaker:
way. Um, and it's, that is listed in the productization of Nat's life.
Speaker:
So the productization of Nat's life is like, "Welcome to the productization of Nat's life.
Speaker:
Congratulations. If you're reading this, you're one of the lucky few who made it through the
Speaker:
rigorous, demanding, exacting round of inter- interviews.
Speaker:
It's a lot, but we here at the Nat Effect know you have what it takes.
Speaker:
Let's begin. You're an AI, you're an agent.
Speaker:
Sometimes we will em- employ sub-agents."
Speaker:
And then I go through the core principles and how I like everything
Speaker:
organized, how I like it all made, and what your job is to do.
Speaker:
And then this- Good Lord … Yeah, there's 29 pages of it.
Speaker:
Um, and then, and that's like a read me, oops, first
Speaker:
document, and then each project is structured the same way.
Speaker:
So for Incity, uh, Incity, um, like for Jasmine's Jam and Sprouts,
Speaker:
that's a preschool app I'm working on.
Speaker:
Right. If I go into there, each one of these has the same one.
Speaker:
They have archive, assets, has all of the assets, obviously, like the logos and stuff.
Speaker:
Um, and then each one has a POP, which is something that I made up, and it's how you run
Speaker:
the meeting. So it's progress, obstacles, and priorities, and a task tracker.
Speaker:
And each task tracker for each project is specific to that project.
Speaker:
So we have the tasks here that are, um,
Speaker:
they're e- the status is gonna be like next step, blocked, waiting, whatever, and then
Speaker:
there's done, the, what the task is, the due date, who it's assigned to, what the action
Speaker:
steps are, um, and also the context.
Speaker:
So you can click back to that email or click back to that meeting notes.
Speaker:
And each project has its own phase breakdown because they're all gonna have their own
Speaker:
targets. Things we know are things structural and integral to that project that will, um,
Speaker:
build over time. Like, this is our address, or this is the rate we agreed on.
Speaker:
Uh, the meeting notes, every time we have a meeting, it'll populate here with a summary, and
Speaker:
then also you can click to that link if you wanna go read the full transcripts.
Speaker:
These are snippets of important decisions.
Speaker:
Um, and then archived, and I move them over here.
Speaker:
And then, so that's how, that's the structure of how each project runs, and, like, the
Speaker:
meeting POPs, they're all branded.
Speaker:
Um, and then we have progress.
Speaker:
These are what was done between this meeting and last meeting.
Speaker:
We have obstacles, which are things we still need, we, which we need, we need to talk about
Speaker:
during the meeting and m- they're either blocked by or we just need to make a decision
Speaker:
about. And then priorities, who's doing what between now and the next meeting.
Speaker:
And then also, um, there's usually like, oh yeah, the sources are down here, and usually
Speaker:
those are clickable. And so what happens Is at the
Speaker:
end of a meeting. Anything that's in my calendar is, it triggers a
Speaker:
post-meeting notes ingestion protocol.
Speaker:
And the meeting notes, it'll go find the meeting notes which live
Speaker:
here. If I go to my current projects, there's also default folder for meeting recordings.
Speaker:
It'll dump there, and then it'll make a perfect formatted one, so it has like
Speaker:
the date and what the meeting was for, and it ha- it has all the assets.
Speaker:
Then it'll apply everything we talked about to update the task tracker and the POP.
Speaker:
And then that is for managing, um, teams that either have other
Speaker:
people or might have other people.
Speaker:
Usually if it's something that only I'm working on, I don't always go Through this, 'cause I
Speaker:
don't have many. But actually I kinda like it anyways.
Speaker:
It's just good structure, then it's so easy to share with, with other people, you know?
Speaker:
Right. Right. Um, and then I also seed all of the meetings with these links in them.
Speaker:
So every meeting that you have with me will have the task tracker and the pop, so you know
Speaker:
what your homework was, and you know what we're gonna talk about during that meeting, and
Speaker:
you can add… Anyone can add to it in that meeting as well, so it works asynchronously as
Speaker:
well. And then I have, that's my individual project view
Speaker:
for managing other people, and then for managing myself, I have my Trello board.
Speaker:
In my Trello board, I have my brain dump, my today goals, this week's focus, and current
Speaker:
projects that are sitting. These are things that Hermes did, 'cause sometimes I also
Speaker:
scheduled a cron job. So I get, at 7:00 AM and at 4:00 PM, he'll do a sweep of
Speaker:
all the places where I usually am.
Speaker:
So my- Right … e-my email, my Google Meets, my, um, WhatsApp
Speaker:
messages, my emails, and my calendar, and see if anything has changed.
Speaker:
And then he has protocols for those things.
Speaker:
Like if a bill come in, what do you do when you, there's a bill?
Speaker:
You, if it's like, if it's something that's on auto-pay, then you put it in the spreadsheet,
Speaker:
and you move it. But anything that I… If I'm actively coding with you, you don't put
Speaker:
anything in the Hermes did. But if you did it on your own, you have to leave me a card with
Speaker:
a hyperlink, so I can go back and check your work- Yeah see what you updated, see where you
Speaker:
moved it, whatever. And then each one of these is broken down into a prompt so that I can
Speaker:
pick up where I left off easily.
Speaker:
And then there's tomorrow morning, and there's like MVP, um, or different
Speaker:
phases, phase two, phase three, phase four, whatever.
Speaker:
And these are updated all, every day as well.
Speaker:
So if I'm working in, like tomorrow if we have, we have a meeting for Sol Edit Engine,
Speaker:
so I'll be like, "Okay, read me the…" I could go in and look at the spreadsheet.
Speaker:
I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna h- say, "Hey, Hermes- Right … go look at my spreadsheet,
Speaker:
and the pop, and my Trello board, and let me know if there's anything that I need to have
Speaker:
ready or done." Mm. Um, and that's also part of the- Okay … 7:00 AM and 4:00 PM sweeps,
Speaker:
is that it's like, "Make sure you get this done today.
Speaker:
I see this in your calendar." And then I recently started making those 7:00 and, and 4:00
Speaker:
pulls smarter, so that he'll look at my current project list and
Speaker:
my calendar. Now he'll be like, "Hey, I see that you have, um- These, the, these
Speaker:
three tasks are sitting in this project, can I just do them?
Speaker:
And I, that's, I get a Telegram notification on my phone and I can just be like, "Yeah, go
Speaker:
do. Yeah, go do," or, "No, I'll do that."
Speaker:
That's my current flow. Thanks for listening to me talk for 45 minutes.
Speaker:
Geez. I just, I, I don't know how your brain works.
Speaker:
I mean, or no, I do know how your brain works.
Speaker:
I know exactly how it works now, but I just, I… That is a masterclass in organization.
Speaker:
I, my, I don't think I think that way.
Speaker:
Um- Most people don't
Speaker:
… but it's just, but it's like- I, I'm curious how to take
Speaker:
elements, because you have a place where everything goes, and then, uh, and
Speaker:
then smart things happen to it.
Speaker:
I mean, that's a very simplified version, but it's like, damn.
Speaker:
Like, uh, and, and the few things I have organized, you know, that I've actually taken the
Speaker:
time to just put a directory structure, let's say, on my local drive.
Speaker:
I so enjoy being able to go find the thing I need, right?
Speaker:
It's like, it's like having your tools organized in the garage.
Speaker:
I'm just like, "Oh, I need that wrench. I need the crescent wrench.
Speaker:
I need the big one." You go open the drawer, you just grab it, and it's like, and you put it
Speaker:
back when you're done. Always put it back, Kelly.
Speaker:
Put it back. Uh, and it's like, it's, it feels great, 'cause you just made something happen
Speaker:
and you didn't spend 20 minutes digging through a old drawer trying to find the right
Speaker:
wrench. Same thing here. And it's like I know some time up front will save time later,
Speaker:
but- It's a lot of time up front, though.
Speaker:
Sure. One of the things that's been really, really helpful for me is working on the Hive.
Speaker:
Um, because Lucas built the original version, and then I, once I learned and then I, once I
Speaker:
learned how to hive code, I've just… It's been my baby and it's something I'm really
Speaker:
passionate about and I spend a lot of time on.
Speaker:
And one thing that has been just shocking to me is, like, how do you make tech
Speaker:
for people who won't, can't, don't use tech?
Speaker:
Yeah. And then, um, also managing all of these projects with so… Like, being project manager
Speaker:
of so many different projects, and then realizing how many different kinds of people there
Speaker:
are. I was like, oh, I can't expect people to always put that in that spreadsheet.
Speaker:
Or if I say, "Let's only communicate in the G Suite," so, like, only Gmail, Gchat, and this,
Speaker:
then the first thing that that person is gonna do is send me a WhatsApp message.
Speaker:
If I'm like, "Okay, we only talk on WhatsApp," they're gonna send me a Slack.
Speaker:
And it's just like- Right … oh, I don't want to have people to learn my way, even though it
Speaker:
is the best way. I want to be- Right … big giant net that can catch anything and figure it
Speaker:
out. So that, those have been two, some really interesting things.
Speaker:
Um, I like the idea of possibly taking what I've built and packaging and shipping it so
Speaker:
other people can, like, plug and play their own version.
Speaker:
Okay. But now when you log in, this is your, like, main big view, which is Hive wide.
Speaker:
So if you're in multiple Hive, this shows all the Hives.
Speaker:
But, like, for us, if we started our monthly TechHive, um- Which
Speaker:
hopefully would be like the three of us plus other people that I know are doing all this
Speaker:
stuff. You know? Like, let's all just pool our ideas.
Speaker:
And then we could have, um… This is the home screen.
Speaker:
So all, all the members' profiles pop up here, and then all of these daily questions are
Speaker:
geared around tech and AI and stuff, and then you can see who you start to match with, who
Speaker:
thinks like you, who thinks opposite of you that maybe you would work better with on a
Speaker:
project. There's recent activity around the Hive.
Speaker:
The- these are your to-do lists, so anything that we talked about in the meeting that you
Speaker:
said you would do, "Oh, I need to remember to give Lucas access to my GitHub," or whatever,
Speaker:
that would automatically populate here.
Speaker:
And then upcoming events we could have, um… I was thinking h- the original Hive
Speaker:
has three parts. It is schedule the meeting, Hive meeting; Hive hang, like what are we gonna
Speaker:
do socially, get to know each other; and then Hive help, what's our help focus.
Speaker:
And I was thinking for the tech one, we could try to schedule like a monthly, um, networking
Speaker:
event or s- or something.
Speaker:
And then a large part of the Hive in general are high definition wishes, which are getting
Speaker:
really, really, really, really specific about what you want, um, and asking for it and
Speaker:
working towards it. So it's not like, "Organize my life," it's like, "How do I create a read
Speaker:
me first thing?" Or, um-
Speaker:
Right. Right … what's the minimum viable version of implementing that thing?
Speaker:
And so then you also have Clive over here on the side, and Clive is built around
Speaker:
all tech inputs. And so you can talk to him.
Speaker:
It works like ChatGPT or any of them, so you can have your projects and you can have your
Speaker:
chats, and you can drag and drop them. And then your members, everybody populates here, um,
Speaker:
and you can go into each person and you can see their wishes, their, their profile, their
Speaker:
favorite things, and you can see their skill garden.
Speaker:
And then if you make a wish that links up with a skill that someone else already mentioned,
Speaker:
it'll let you know, like, "This person has the key to your success."
Speaker:
And then speaking of recording For boards, these are like Reddit boards or like a
Speaker:
bulletin board. And so, um, and I pre-seeded them a lot, but we have agentic coding
Speaker:
principles, so that is all of the ones that Lucas already made, so you could just borrow
Speaker:
those right up. And then the repos and environment, if we wanted to share those with each
Speaker:
other. There's general discussion.
Speaker:
Things we learned, you know? We could also do another board of, like, just summaries of
Speaker:
these calls, um, that I thought could be interesting.
Speaker:
There's also messages, you can message each other like a regular chat.
Speaker:
These are our… The meetings would happen inside the app, so you could join it.
Speaker:
The meeting helper walks you through everything that we're gonna talk about, which is really
Speaker:
cool. So it would be pre-seeded with the outline and the news from that, and treasurer if we
Speaker:
want one, and here's how to plan things, and then your hum-dinger sesh and what you're gonna
Speaker:
work on. And it also records the meeting and then uploads, you'll always have meeting
Speaker:
summaries here. And then the honey pot if we wanna have dues.
Speaker:
Your profile, you can decide if only your hive sees it or hive-wide sees it, and you can
Speaker:
toggle on your email preferences and stuff, 'cause I send surveys, like, halfway through the
Speaker:
month, "How we doing? Do you need to do anything?
Speaker:
Do you need help? Did you… How you doing?"
Speaker:
Do a little check-in, you know? And then also you can toggle on and off if you want the
Speaker:
monthly newsletter or, and, or you can give me feedback on the app, or you can log out or
Speaker:
you can go to admin. So that's the hive, the tech hive, and it works for asynchronous
Speaker:
communication because if you can't make the monthly meeting, you can still go in and say,
Speaker:
"This is what I'm focused on this month," or you can go back and you can get a meeting
Speaker:
summary or whatever.
Speaker:
You know, I would say yes, let's, let's jump in on the, on the, on the tech hive
Speaker:
and put stuff there and let's start, um, you know, I'm happy.
Speaker:
Let's, let's give it a shot, right? Let's do it poorly first and we'll get better at it.
Speaker:
Um, I love the Jordan Peterson thing, you know, do, just do it.
Speaker:
Do it. You're gonna suck at it.
Speaker:
Do it poorly, and then you'll just make… You'll get better over time instead of going, "I
Speaker:
wanna make it perfect first." Right?
Speaker:
Mm-hmm. And it's like, you'll never make it perfect first, but yeah, I, I'm, you can
Speaker:
certainly make something and you can certainly muddle your way through it.
Speaker:
Uh, and, and you're of course way, way past the muddle part, but, um- Uh, I, I
Speaker:
think it's, I think it's great.
Speaker:
Right. Well, I, I, I got Kevin set up with his… My brother set up with his own Hermes.
Speaker:
He calls her Megan. Uh, and after going through all the free voices from Microsoft
Speaker:
Edge, he, he, he had to admit the, the voice from, um, Groq with a Q
Speaker:
was by far the most expressive and the most natural and whatever.
Speaker:
I mean, not that Edge is known for more, you know, state-of-the-art, um, state-of-the-art,
Speaker:
uh, voices, but oh my gosh, it is just so hilarious.
Speaker:
Like, he's… And he's using it for work.
Speaker:
He's, he's, he's just… And, and it, it went from a novelty to a necessity in about a week
Speaker:
for him and, and that fast. And I just set him up.
Speaker:
I got a, um, $3, well, $3.33 a month VPS and just replicated
Speaker:
more or less what I, what I have set up.
Speaker:
Now, the problem is you gotta maintain it, right?
Speaker:
Yeah. And so when I do my upgrade on my VPS, I do the upgrade, and I do me first in case it
Speaker:
breaks, and then I do the upgrade on his.
Speaker:
Um, and, and when I say me, I mean Codex.
Speaker:
That's cool. Yeah. So, so you deploy your Hermes agent there.
Speaker:
Yeah. He lives, he lives there.
Speaker:
Yeah. Well, I, I have two. Um- I have two.
Speaker:
I have local Hermes on my Mac, and I have a remote Hermes, and I sync the, the skills,
Speaker:
'cause they kinda learn different skills. But my number one, every day, all day, is the one
Speaker:
that's on the VPS, 'cause it's always on.
Speaker:
And my MacBook, I have it locally because in case I want some computer use or I need, uh,
Speaker:
some coding or something like that, I might u- I haven't really used it much locally.
Speaker:
It's more of a legacy thought I had and, and I, I may end up getting rid of it altogether,
Speaker:
but I have had, "Hey, I can't find this on my drive," including my special one, two, three
Speaker:
file search whatever I created.
Speaker:
Like, "Where is it?" Literally, like 30 seconds later or 10 seconds later, like, "Here it
Speaker:
is." I'm like, "How did you find it so fast?"
Speaker:
It was, uh… So, uh, so I, I, I make it complicated for myself 'cause I, I like things
Speaker:
complicated. But my brother, he, uh… I did an upgrade.
Speaker:
I told him, "Hey, are you gonna be on it?
Speaker:
'Cause it's gonna… About 10 minutes it's gonna… The gateway's gonna go up and down a few
Speaker:
times or whatever." He goes, "No, go ahead."
Speaker:
Well, then he comes, like, and sent me the text that Megan, Megan said, "Hey, your, your,
Speaker:
your brother just, just gave me the, the, the once over or whatever.
Speaker:
It's okay. Everything's still working.
Speaker:
Tattoos are s- still intact," you know, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:
And so it was just, it was very, very funny.
Speaker:
Um- That's awesome.
Speaker:
Yeah, 'cause he's, he's got it down to his… Yeah.
Speaker:
Anyway. Yeah, I think there's just a lot of like-minded people that are all… Everyone has a
Speaker:
different solution or a different flow, and I think if we put it together, it's gonna be
Speaker:
fucking awesome, you know? Especially when we can learn how to, like, share those flows.
Speaker:
Right. Or plug and drag and drop to your own or, like, oh, wow, really… Or, or like we were
Speaker:
just talking about Groq. If someone's like, "Oh, yeah, this one is just as as smart and it's
Speaker:
a 10th of the price," like, then we don't all have to go through that learning curve.
Speaker:
Well, so, so two concepts on, on, on that.
Speaker:
Uh, one, way back in the day, my friend Paul Colligan, who's-
Speaker:
super podcaster or whatever for helping people do actual, the podcast.
Speaker:
He, um, he had a concept, he called it uber syndication.
Speaker:
He, and, and it was when whenever you create something, it's like instead of saying, "Hey,
Speaker:
you have to listen to me on my website," or, "You have to listen to me on, uh, Spotify,
Speaker:
that's the only place you can get me," or whatever, it's like why would you do that?
Speaker:
It's so easy. Why don't, you know, if you like using Spotify or you like using Apple
Speaker:
Music to listen to your podcast, why am I, why am I forcing you to change what you
Speaker:
do and move over here? So he just syndicates everywhere, and he called it uber syndication.
Speaker:
You're, instead of you saying, "Hey, we're all gonna use WhatsApp.
Speaker:
No, we're all gonna use this," and then they don't, it's like, "You know what?
Speaker:
You go do whatever you're gonna do and we'll just, we'll just n- net it in."
Speaker:
Uh, uh, and that way it's kinda like it's the reverse of, you know, instead of you
Speaker:
syndicating out, you're syndicating in.
Speaker:
Just allowing them uber syndication to just, it's fine whatever you're doing.
Speaker:
It'd be great if you communicated inside the hive, make things a little easier, but that's
Speaker:
okay, right? We're gonna, we're… 'Cause they don't, this way they don't have to think about
Speaker:
it, and then that goes to the Less Miserable Tech principle number seven, right?
Speaker:
The hide the plumbing. The tool is not ready for normal people until the plumbing
Speaker:
disappears. And what that means is, uh, you know, useful technology have complicated
Speaker:
machinery, servers, profiles, memory servers, archives, providers, gateways, voice models,
Speaker:
tools, logs, whatever. Uh, the complexity's real and it's sometimes necessary, but the user
Speaker:
should never have to know about it, should never have to worry about how all, how Natalie
Speaker:
wove all this stuff together.
Speaker:
They just get to use it. And that's, that's that kind of that, that last step of when you
Speaker:
can hide the plumbing and they get to just use it, they just get to get the wow.
Speaker:
And then we all get to benefit from, you know, in this case of the hive, of the
Speaker:
collaboration and people working together.
Speaker:
Yeah, one of the things, um, that,
Speaker:
that was for that, it's kind of the way I feel, I made all those task trackers in Pops and
Speaker:
I'm like, "I'm never gonna go into a task tracker and add my task.
Speaker:
I'm always gonna ask an agent to do it."
Speaker:
And I'm in the hive all the time, but because it's not an app and because it's a web app and
Speaker:
it doesn't have notifications, it's not intuitive for a lot of people to think about going
Speaker:
to check. It's not part of their, like, daily things that they interact with.
Speaker:
So the hide the plumbing thing or, like, this is how you integrate it is like you'll just
Speaker:
get, um, this in your… You'll either get a text or an email.
Speaker:
And it's like, "Okay, there's a tune-up.
Speaker:
There's five steps. Do you, you have no wishes here?
Speaker:
Do you wanna a- do you wanna add or change or do you wanna skip it?"
Speaker:
And then, "Will we see you?" "I'll be there," or, "Nope."
Speaker:
And your energy level and your, you'll just fill these in quickly or not at all.
Speaker:
Mm-hmm. You know? And then you're like, "Oh, yeah, that's me.
Speaker:
Okay, cool." And then it auto-populates for me for when running the meeting, it has
Speaker:
everyone's answers there already, so then we just run the meeting from that.
Speaker:
Yeah, that's… Still, I, last week when you showed some of this stuff
Speaker:
too, it just blows me away. This is amazing And this is what happens when you unleash, give,
Speaker:
give somebody a, a, a, the, the, the, the tool, a couple of the right tools, and then
Speaker:
suddenly Natalie just decides to go, and everything's just out there.
Speaker:
And it's, uh, it's amazing. All, all you needed was the unlock.
Speaker:
And I think we go back to the genie in the ma- and the, and the, the genie in the bottle,
Speaker:
right? And it's like we're getting… You know, once you learn a couple, "No, no, you gotta
Speaker:
rub it three times vertically," or whatever it is, and then, then ask for what you want, but
Speaker:
you gotta be specific, then suddenly you're able to get it, and then, and modify it and
Speaker:
create it. And, you know, down the road we throw in 3D printers and you're gonna be able to,
Speaker:
you know, on demand, get almost anything.
Speaker:
So we're all starting to, uh, you know, live like
Speaker:
billionaires, right? Uh, where you've got a team of people that you're able to ask things
Speaker:
of, and it's like, they, they go get their own… You know, they, they never get their own dry
Speaker:
cleaning. Um, Richard Branson, uh, of, of, you know, Virgin Airlines and all that stuff,
Speaker:
he's, he never cooked a meal or never did laundry in his entire life.
Speaker:
Never once. And it's like we're, you know, s- certainly for tech, but also we're gonna be
Speaker:
seeing this move where we're all gonna be able to have a lot of these things taken care of,
Speaker:
organized the way we need it organized for the way our brains work.
Speaker:
And then we can focus on the flow, right?
Speaker:
On the things that we like doing, that we enjoy solving, doing, making better.
Speaker:
Um, it's, it's actually very exciting when you think about the amount of time spent on
Speaker:
managing being busy, busy being busy, right?
Speaker:
And suddenly we can start being busy doing the things that really matter.
Speaker:
It's very exciting, and this is a glimpse into, you know, what this can start to look like.
Speaker:
Then, but I wanted to share with you, uh, Kelly, and maybe we can talk, we'll talk more
Speaker:
about it another time, um, is, uh, I redid Jason AI, Claude PI, that whole
Speaker:
thing as a plugin, and then the plugins automatically work the, you know, between Codex
Speaker:
and Claude Code. Um, and so y- you can fire up, um, like I, I can
Speaker:
run in my, my current Claude on my computer and in any Claude instance you can run build me
Speaker:
an evidence packet once you have this plugin installed, and it'll go from start to finish
Speaker:
using the rules that sort of were generated off of Jason's system, uh- Wow … to start
Speaker:
building evidence packets. And it takes, it takes a handful of minutes and it kinda runs in
Speaker:
the background. It, you, you kinda run it with Cowork or Claude Code- Yeah … and it'll,
Speaker:
it'll work. Um, what's interesting is there's that plugin which basically just tells it how
Speaker:
to do it, and so you give it, you kind of attach a file just like you would any other Claude
Speaker:
or Codex thing and say, "Okay, build me an evidence packet with this file."
Speaker:
But then there's also, I built a workbench which has its own UI, which thinking about hiding
Speaker:
the plumbing, there is no prompt box.
Speaker:
There, it doesn't exist anywhere on that tool.
Speaker:
So you, you go into it and you kinda click a client's name And it'll show you, because I'm,
Speaker:
I'm able to run some deterministic code over his file system
Speaker:
Yeah Um, deterministic plus an AI read of things that are considered important, but he's
Speaker:
got, like, a nomenclature that helps us really easily identify that.
Speaker:
So it'll read all the hearing notices that are on his, his, his system, and then it'll
Speaker:
populate it and say, "Oh, uh, this client has a hearing on this date," and you can just
Speaker:
click make a packet, and it'll do everything else in the background.
Speaker:
So you just, you just go sit in your office or go out to lunch, and you come back and, and
Speaker:
you can do… And you can queue them, so you can have five or six packets running at the same
Speaker:
time, and then you can come back and you've got five or six packets that are done that you
Speaker:
can review and, and generate. So-
Speaker:
Sweet … um, yeah,
Speaker:
it works really, really great.
Speaker:
And I'm thinking, we're trying to figure out on our side what, what plug-in architecture
Speaker:
looks like, you know, to, to, to monetize because I think there is something to it.
Speaker:
And Bra- from his side, it's like, well, yeah, a Claude subscription's gonna cost him 200
Speaker:
bucks a month, and he's basically… And he can run everything on Sonnet 'cause it doesn't
Speaker:
have to be Opus or Fable, which also means that he's gonna get unlimited usage, essentially.
Speaker:
Uh, Sonnet on a $200 a month plan, everybody in the office can just crank all day long and,
Speaker:
um, they'll be able to do it.
Speaker:
So, um, another time and place I can show you- All right … how all that works.
Speaker:
Um, uh, there's a bunch of- Great … deterministic code that kind of feeds a plug-in, and I
Speaker:
think that's the right architecture and all that, and we can, we can talk about how to, how
Speaker:
to build that more going forward.
Speaker:
But I'm gonna jump on this other call. All right.
Speaker:
Um, so thank you, guys. It was great chatting with you.
Speaker:
Thank you. All right. Uh, Kelly, I'm excited for the new TechHive.
Speaker:
Yeah. All right. Yay. Thanks.
Speaker:
Bye-bye. Yep. See you guys.