Claire Vo: So you have actually named your claws and then you give them instructions to listen to each other.

Dan Roth: Yes, they have to talk to each other. One is called the builder app is called Bob. Bob the builder and he's got instructions to stop constantly and you have to run everything by Ry who's the review agent. Ray's job is senior software engineer who is obsessed with security. He reviews code at milestones, guard security architecture, and then the third agent is me. I am the person who breaks the tie that often happens between Bob wanting to do something and racing you can't do it.

Claire Vo: And you are doing all of this as someone who has not spent their career as a software engineer.

Dan Roth: For a while I thought I'm like a mediocre PM and then I was like no maybe I'm more like an architect. And now I realize like an architect actually knows real details. A PM is like super rigid and keeps the entire app in their head and they're able to really prioritize well. I'm a bad prioritizer. All I am is a really picky customer. So, I think that is like the role of the vibe coder is what do I care about deeply? I'm like walking through this house and I'm telling the architect, "No, I want this room blue. I know you don't think it's a good idea. I'm telling you this is what I want."

Claire Vo: Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today I have Dan Roth who's the editor of LinkedIn and started his career as a business writer and editor, but has somehow become a software engineer vibe coding iOS apps all the way to the app store. He's going to show us his dueling cloud code setup that lets Bob and Ray build high quality production grade software. Let's get to it.

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Claire Vo: Dan, welcome to How I AI. What I like about having people like me maybe that have a couple years of experience under their belt is we've seen technology shift over time and we've seen market shift over time and we've seen our own career shift over time. And what I love about your story is you've seen a shift like this in an industry that you've been in and you've seen how disruptive and scary it can feel and now you're seeing this again and you're really leaning into it. So tell us how you came from your background which is non-technical into now we're going to see some power claude code tips and iOS apps kind of vive coded all the way to the app store.

Dan Roth: I was a longtime business writer was at Fortune, Wired, Forbes, and I remember being at Fortune during the uh introduction of blogging. And all of the sudden, everyone had access to something that I thought was something that was unique to writers. We were able to talk to the world in a way that no one else could. And that was kind of like a monopoly almost on this ability to get ideas out into the world. And then WordPress came around and Tumblr and suddenly everyone could talk to everyone and you discovered this explosion of ideas and I have and it was scary at the time and then it was you realize oh actually you want to embrace this more ideas the better and so uh you as as a writer it changed and as an editor it changed how I thought about who I could go after and open up like suddenly I realized there were way more people that could be sharing ideas and reporting than I ever thought were possible a couple years ago when uh generative AI started making its way into coding and it became clear that any of us could build anything. I had the exact same idea but it went from being this I was on the opposite side of it. It was like oh my god I've had all these ideas of stuff I wanted to launch and in the past I would have had to go convince an engineer or a PM to go team up with me on something and I was just trying to influence what got built and then I could suddenly start building. So, it has become an obsession of mine of building to the point now where when I'm with friends and family, they're like, "Please stop talking about the stuff that you're building. You know, we don't want to hear about it anymore." And uh and I I just have to like ratchet it back. But on the weekends, it is like that is what I love spending my time doing. So, like while the Super Bowl was going on, I will be on my laptop building either like working on some new feature for the apps that I have out there.

Claire Vo: Well, what's really funny is you are not alone. We just had GMO the CEO of Verscell on and he calls that request for prioritization like petitioning the government where anytime you had to have something built you had to go to the government which were unfortunately run by product managers and say please oh please government would you pass this resolution to ship my button in totally in production and then we're also hearing from everybody whether technical or not that this is just really fun to build and it's kind of new hobby new new space for learning and um unfortunately maybe or fortunately where they're spending too much time.

Dan Roth: Yeah.

Claire Vo: So we'll what we're going to benefit from your obsession now and you're going to show us how you as somebody who has a nontechnical background has used cloud code and some other tools to build real production apps. So what do you do? What's what's your special sauce?

Dan Roth: Sure. So first I should just tell you I started this with a course I took on cursor. So it started with how to use cursor and I can share that link with you on the it's a free course. how to build with cursor, how to build apps and I watched that and so I started with cursor and then over time I stopped using cursor because I didn't really care where the files were kept. I wasn't going in and editing anything. I didn't actually need that. I just needed to tell people what I was doing. I needed to tell Claude what I was doing. So Claude code was the big unlock for me. And I'll show you what how I build. Um, so if you can see my screen here, I'm going to show you one one thing I do is I keep I use Claude and I ratchet back and forth between the $20 a month plan and the $100 a month plan depending on where I am in my building. So right now I'm in the $100 a month plan. Uh, I keep a claude window up that has all of my I keep a pro I keep everything in projects. So this is my commutely project if you can see this.

Claire Vo: Yep.

Dan Roth: And I keep one running feature here which is commutely feature idea and tracker. So, this is as people talk to me about what they wish the app did. And this is an app for being able to basically never run for the New York City train. Again, you can know if it's I keep missing the train. I'm like, I'm gonna build an app that is just for me that is basically like is the train almost here? Can I walk or do I have to run? That is what it's designed to do. It was that perfect product market fit because I was the entire product.

Claire Vo: We call this personalized. So, the rise of personalized software right now.

Dan Roth: It's amazing. It's the best. And then suddenly you discover other people care about this also. And it's like, well, I have a community. So, this is for my community of train runners. They give me lots of feedback and I've been keeping a um uh I keep I I keep one clawed chat available here that is just all the feature ideas and I've given it a prompt to basically rank it in terms of time it'll think to build and the growth that it will think that uh this feature should have for the for the app. And so the I'll read you the the prompt at the top which is basically uh let's use this as a running idea of ideas for commutely as I log them keep track of them and offer guidance time estimate to build and estimated back and forth hours potential impact score on two one to three scales customer happiness and growth impact and then I've given it a bunch of ideas and I just keep feeding it new ideas and it has this table here uh so these are if you can see this commutely features ranked by build time and so what I do is when I free time, I go into this chat and I find a feature that I'm like, I've got a couple hours. I can go and build something and I'll look for it. So, the things on my list to do are Siri integration, standalone widget. I've already built this SEO friendly blog, location awareness, but I thought maybe for this it would be fun to build something I've been trying to do, which I built this scheduled automatic um updates, which is I know that every day at 7:30 a.m. I usually leave my house. I just want commutely to tell me where the trains are. So, I built that, but no one's using it. And so I need to be able to build. Now I have to think about discovery. By the way, this is the other part of this I've learned is like the building is one thing. The marketing is a total other part of it. So now I've gone from being a quasi crappy PM to now being a quasi crappy PMM as I learn how to basically do marketing for my app, too.

Dan Roth: Here's here's a funny thing that I'm I'm thinking as you say that is I know I'm a true product founder and that I will literally build everything on this list before I can will myself to do anything that is like even remotely called marketing. And so if you can get over your uh you what we say in the industry you know if you can climb cringe mountain and just become a marketer you will be very happy with the distribution of your app. So I've already worked with uh cloud code on coming up with a retention plan and I save everything as MD file as markdown files. So I've got within my commutely project there's just there's a document folder and then there's a list of markdown files and I just every time I'm working with commut every time I'm working with claude I'm saying write it into a file log everything log everything and I do that for two reasons. One is the context window called it's constantly forgetting what it's working on and then I'm forgetting what I'm working on because I only do this on weekends. So there on Saturday I'll pick it up and I'll be like what wait what am I building? I can't remember and how far did I get? So everything gets logged. That is one tip I try to give anyone that is in my my shoes also. So we make these MD files. So this is retention plan and it's come up with a general plan. But now I need to go build it.

Dan Roth: So I keep two tabs. So I use terminal and I keep two tabs open. One is for building and one is for reviewing. Now I've given claude two personalities which I can bring up by using one is called the builder app is called Bob. Bob the builder and so I bring up Bob and this is my builder app and he's got instructions.

Dan Roth: Tell me your instructions on how you work. So this is just to show you what Bob is trying to do. And quick question for folks that don't know how to do this. First of all, I have never seen somebody customize their Claude theme to let them know what version um flavor of Claude they have running. I've seen a lot of people that run multiple cla multiple flavors.

Claire Vo: Yeah.

Dan Roth: Um so I've never seen that. Pro tip, you you can do that. Second is how do you how have you built these as aliases that have different settings? How do you build actually how do you technically make Bob? If you could just give us some high level. This is not going to be super satisfying because what I did was I go into Claude and I say I don't want to have to tell you every single time what you are. So this is your requirement as Bob and let me let me pull up what Bob is here. So uh well here this is this is what I've taught Bob to do. This is basically my prompt on what I want Bob to do. So this is Bob telling me

Dan Roth: Bob's idea. Everything has to plan first. I've learned over time like you don't build until it's done planning. I've heard guests of yours say the same thing like plan plan first and then everything has to be built in modules. I don't want like tons of spaghetti code. I learned that with my first project. The code gets unwieldy. So I say you're a lean builder whatever that means. And then document everything. We talked about that. This is the important part is I say to Claude the I say to Bob, you have to stop constantly and you have to run everything by Ry who's the review agent. [laughter]

Dan Roth: So let me get over to Ray. So this is Ray. Let me bring

Claire Vo: I love this so much. While you pull this over. So you have actually named your claws.

Dan Roth: Yes.

Claire Vo: And then you give them instructions to listen to each other.

Dan Roth: Yes. They have to talk to each other.

Dan Roth: So Ray's job is senior software engineer who is obsessed with security and with making sure that we don't uh leave what our um uh any of our design guidance. So I've got a whole design document also. And then make sure So here's what Ray does. Right. What I do, I review Bob's plans before he builds. He reviews code at milestones, guard security, architecture, and what he cares about, and this is what it was in my prompt is member trust, security, architecture, integrity, and quality. And I say, and because Claude is always rubber stamping everything, I'm sure your viewers see this all the time. Everything's genius. You're always perfect. I have to tell it,

Dan Roth: you have to say no to things like you're And then I break the tie. So, the third agent is me. I am the person who breaks the tide that often happens between Bob wanting to do something and Ray saying you can't do it.

Claire Vo: Well, can I suggest two other agents? One is Amy, the PM that says, "Sorry, Bob and Ray, that hasn't been prioritized yet."

Claire Vo: And then there's Joe, the AE that sells it anyway, whether or not it's been built and then you have the whole team ready to go. Okay, so Ry and Bob work together. So how does Bob invoke Ray?

Dan Roth: So Bob has to So let's do this. say I'm going to say we were going to build uh the retention plan.

Claire Vo: All right. So I use the at it finds its retention plan MD uh and then I just say because Bob knows what his role is. I say get started.

Dan Roth: So he should now go into plan. Bob I shouldn't even use I shouldn't personify these people. So it now goes into

Claire Vo: personify AI. I think it's very it's you know it's just the way we work

Dan Roth: really. I feel so creepy about it. I hate it. I hate I hate when I do it. So, it's starting to read this markdown file that I showed you earlier of what this retention plan is. I came up with this weeks ago. Reviewed it. I thought it was pretty good. And now we got to start building it.

Claire Vo: This is amazing. I think this is so fun.

Dan Roth: So, once it's done here, it will spit out something that I have to then copy and paste into Ray. Now, what I've done in the past is I haven't built Ray and I've just said run this past the security agent. That works, but what I don't like about it is I can't see what the security agent is saying. So what what the builder agent will often just say is security passed it or security wants me to change one thing but because I'm trying to learn this also I want to know what it's stumbling on.

Claire Vo: I think that's an underappreciated workflow which is you know earlier when you said I got out of cursor cuz I'm not looking at files and I'm not editing things the software engineer in me just started like my ulcer starts to just flare. Um, I am an aggressive code reader, but you are taking this and I I even think some of these like micro frictions that aren't necessarily like, yeah, could you spin up a a Ray sub agent and do all sorts of fancy stuff, but I do think putting a little bit of friction in the process where you're actually forced to like copy and paste, put it over, read what Ry says. Exactly.

Dan Roth: Does help with learning. And so I don't want people to, especially people that are moving from non-technical into more technical tasks, to make it so efficient that you're not actually learning the process because then like you, you can set up even more powerful systems. Couldn't agree with that more. That has been, and I'm not doing this just to build. I'm doing this to learn. But what I figured out early is that I'm not going to learn how to code. Like just being realistic. Like I tried to do that. I got I didn't find it that interesting. And I'm like, I'm a total beginner. And I'm like, well, it's actually building code. I just want to understand why it's building what it's doing. And the problems that I find that I can solve uniquely as a human are things of like, should we prioritize this or not? Or you're this seems like it's going to be really expensive. Like, is this worth doing? Is this going to break my budget? My budget for commutely is zero except what I'm paying for claude. And so I don't I have to tell it all the time like that seems expensive. I don't want to do this. All right. So here, this is it's now done here. Let's come up with this. Uh, it's pretty long implementation plan.

Dan Roth: So, normally I would sit here and read this whole thing. Uh, but I told it build it. Everything that Bob does has to be done in a in a branch. That's one lesson I've learned. I used to ship everything to Maine. And I learned the pain of that early on. Um,

Claire Vo: I yelled at a friend recently. I was like, "Make a branch, dude. Like, you're stressing me out."

Dan Roth: Oh my god. But what I I didn't realize this. I found this out from real engineers later is it's not when I merged the branch in my other app. I merged the branch into main and it didn't work. There were for some reason it didn't like merge perfectly. It took me weeks to be able to figure out why it wasn't merging. So I never I didn't this was a lesson to me is it doesn't always just work seamlessly. You probably know that well.

Claire Vo: Yeah.

Dan Roth: Okay. [laughter] All right. So here I've copying the plan here. Normally I would read this whole plan but I'm not going to this time because I'm just going to build this into a branch and then work on it later. So Ry is now ready for this. I paste it in. There we go. And now Ray is going to get to work.

Claire Vo: And so what Ry is doing here is the sort of um is this architecturally correct? Is it secure? Are there any, you know, as we say there be dragons? Like is there anything in there that you need to be worried about that Bob mixed? And I really like this. We we haven't actually seen somebody do a persona to persona handoff. What we have seen is a lot of people will maybe use like an Opus45 or an anthropic model to build the plan and then they'll actually hand it to like a codeex model to review it. Codeex is like a little a little mean um senior staff engineer. Totally.

Claire Vo: And so it is it is kind of nice to have that um handoff and can you know what I say is like dueling agents to just get well very similar to when you're working in a team. I think you can appreciate this, right? You write code and you're or you write up in my experience in product like you write a product idea and then you bring somebody else into it and they're like, "Oh, but you forgot we have to have this compliance thing or don't you remember that when we did the data analysis on this customers hated that piece or design says actually this is really technically hard to implement in our design system." And so I do think just taking some um taking some flows from your organizational process and then figuring out how to make them agentic is a really natural way for people who especially have been managers.

Dan Roth: Yep.

Dan Roth: To start building out their own little AI productivity stack.

Dan Roth: It's such a great call that manager that idea of being a manager for this. You are managing these agents.

Dan Roth: Yep. So like one of the things I find a lot with commutely is it depends on this app is really built around live activity on iOS. That is where you are tracking your train is your phone is locked. You just go and look at it. Live activity has it turns out to have all kinds of limitations. And Claude will forget those limitations all the time. And so it will suggest things like oh you should just do this. And I'm like we know we've learned this already. Don't you remember? Like two weeks ago we tried to build it. It turns out that like it can't actually ping the MTA's API when it's when when the the app is not uh in in on the screen. And so I it's like being a manager of I read this somewhere else. This is not my thing, but someone once said that managing AI is almost like managing a really smart but hung over intern. [laughter] And I feel that way all the time. It's like you're a genius but you don't have it this morning. Just remember we've gone over this already. Well, an AI is very similar to how I've positioned the benefits of what we call early career talent. Yeah.

Claire Vo: Which is like very capable, very excited, too experienced to know they shouldn't do something. So, occasionally you get greatness,

Claire Vo: right?

Claire Vo: But we should use a branch in a PR just just in case.

Dan Roth: That's exactly it.

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Claire Vo: Great. So now Bob has raised some edge case concerns, which I think are

Dan Roth: Ray has raised the edge case concerns.

Claire Vo: Yep, Ry has. And then um says Bob's plan is solid. So then do you pass this back to to Bob?

Dan Roth: Yeah, exactly. So now I copy and paste this right back.

Claire Vo: Uh it's got the green light and then Bob's going to go build. Now the next step in this is that I will then take this and put it into Xcode and do a new build uh and then test it out in the simulator, see if it works, test it on my phone, and then I usually ship it to Apple right then. So I've been trying to do weekly updates to Apple. I will say the hardest part of building my two apps has been the app store. [laughter] I had no idea. Navigating the app store is a whole separate I've got I have so many chats where I'm like what does Apple want from me here and just getting Claude to teach me how to use the app store has been a real I feel like that's almost the last friction left in being a builder is navigating the app store.

Claire Vo: I have a couple related requests for startups. We're all we have we have all the coding agents we need. They're going to get better. We're we're fine. We are spoiled for choice.

Dan Roth: We need AI for app source submissions. We need AI for uh SAP Aribba submitting procurement recruits and POS

Claire Vo: and we still need that perfect AI CRM. So uh all the builders out there if you could give us these very boring but very high value problem solved. You have a lot of customers waiting out there.

Dan Roth: You know one that I might build actually to solve again this idea of solving for your own problems is app store designs. So the right now the way that I do, you know, when you when you when you do something in the app store, you have to show what your app looks like

Dan Roth: and I've been using Canva for it, but it's really Canvas AI I don't love. I find like I'm not getting what I need. So I might try to build an app that just takes people screenshots and turns it into something for the app store.

Claire Vo: I love it. Okay, so right the plan, Bob is asking some design questions.

Dan Roth: Exactly. So this is great. So, this is I I have I've written about this in the past, but like and for a while I thought, "Oh, I'm I'm like a a mediocre PM." And then I was like, "No, maybe I'm more like an architect." And now I realize like an architect actually knows real details. A PM is like super rigid and like has understands the keeps the entire app in their head and they're able to really prioritize well. I'm a bad prioritizer. All I am is a really picky customer. So, I think that is like the role of the vibe coder is what do I care about deeply? I'm like walking through this house and I'm telling the architect, no, I want this room blue. I know you don't think it's a good idea. I'm telling you this is what I want it. So the picky customer is I think the role that is at least my role. That's how I think about my role. So in this case, Bob is saying uh there's some UX decision I have to decide.

Claire Vo: I like this concept of a picky customer because I was going to say what I feel like is Q QA that's just looking at little edges and and saying no, that's wrong and that button isn't quite doing. So, I like elevating this to no, no, no, no. I'm not doing quality assurance.

Dan Roth: Yeah.

Claire Vo: I am going through and being my own pickiest customer. You know, I'm I'm sniffing my champagne before I drink it as as we say. And so, that's a really fun fun way to think about your role when you're building for yourself.

Dan Roth: Yeah. And it also does like in my other app, which is a podcast clipping app, the there was all this it took a little while for the video to be made of the podcast clip and there was some kind of error. There was a message just saying, "Your video is being created." And I'm like, "Actually, I want this to have a better voice. I want this to be funny. I want it to say like, "Oh my god, you clipped a great part of the podcast." And so, as the picky customer, I could say, "This is the voice of this thing. Make it funny

Dan Roth: and wrote some copy for that." So, that's that's how I I think about it more than QA because you want to bring your personality into it.

Claire Vo: Yep.

Dan Roth: All right. So, in this case, it's asking me some options. It's giving me some options. I could pick my own option. Just for the sake of time, I'm gonna just say let's Okay, let's keep the M MTA blue.

Dan Roth: All right. And it's gonna start building.

Claire Vo: Great. And you're doing this all on the weekend. So, are you doing I have to ask, are you running multiple Bobs and multiple rays? Do you single do it? What's your own what is your own capacity for agentic management?

Dan Roth: Bob is allowed to spin off subobs. So, that is the one thing. What my my prompt says you are allowed to have agents that you manage. You're responsible for these agents. I'm holding you accountable. Uh and your sub agents can't create their own sub agents. So that's my rule on how to do this.

Claire Vo: Got it. So Bob can spawn, but he's ultimately the directly responsible.

Dan Roth: Exactly. Ray cannot spawn. Ray can spawn. There's only one one gatekeeper and that gatekeeper is Ray and there shall be no more. I love

Claire Vo: Exactly.

Claire Vo: That's very principal engineer energy. This like one guy.

Dan Roth: Yeah. and you go to him and you're like, can we do this? And only he can say yes or no and he neither manages nor can be managed. That is that is your Ray. Totally. Well, Claire, like one of the things that I have I'm I'm able to do this because I've now worked inside of a tech company for 15 years. And so I've watched how so a lot of this is based on people I've worked on worked with and exactly to your point the principal engineer like I've watched my PM partners be like we should really run this past Sanjay. And you know there's like one person who keeps coming up as like just find out whether this is going to work or not or where we're going to make a mistake. And so that is exactly what Ry is based on.

Claire Vo: Every Ray that you've ever worked with is now like is this is this am I is [laughter] this supposed to am I Ray?

Claire Vo: Okay. So, we're watching Cloud Code generate code as it does. And then, you know, maybe we won't show this part, but you're just going to take this into Xcode, make sure it compiles, test it, and and you know, spend the rest of your life getting it into the app store.

Dan Roth: Exactly. So, let me just show you quickly if I can what the what this would look like is you go into Xcode. I've actually come to really like working inside Xcode, but I think I'm probably only using like 5% of it. I tried putting Claude into Xcode. They're like they just built this new part of um where you can actually use cloud code in Xcode. I have not found it to be worthwhile. I kept running out of memory so I just quit using it. Um but you go into Xcode, you

Dan Roth: do what's you do? Command shift K. You do a clean of this.

Claire Vo: Look at you expert software up here.

Dan Roth: I should say I don't know what I'm doing. So let's just make that clear. I have like learned these things. I'm basically the bot. I'm like the the claude has told me what to do.

Claire Vo: You're the agentic browser.

Dan Roth: Exactly. That's exactly it. Like tell me how to do this. I'm doing it. I'm just like someone's pulling my strings. And then you go to build, which is what? Control B. It's going to run this thing. When it's done, it'll pop up the uh the simulator. I can test it out. The simulator is I find like 80% close. But you really like there's so many edge cases you don't even realize until you get it onto your phone. I test it on my phone and then I quickly ship it to Apple, get it in test flight, test it for like an hour and then I just ship it to the app store

Claire Vo: and then you have all this extra time so you can make it to your train on time.

Dan Roth: Exactly. That's exactly it.

Claire Vo: This is an awesome flow. Just to recap for folks. So what we saw is sort of dueling clawed codes. One's a builder, one's sort of like an architect reviewer type. You build your you have a a standing prioritization roadmap chat in the clawed web or desktop app where you're always putting in ideas rep prioritizing them against like a simple threepoint framework. On the weekends you pluck one of those. You make a PRD. You give Bob the PRD. Bob invokes plan mode in Cloud Code. It builds a plan. You copy and paste that over to Ray. Ray either greenlights it or gives feedback. You give it back to Bob. Bob builds love it. And then you used um keyboard commands you don't even know in Xcode and you ship it to the app store.

Dan Roth: That is 100% right.

Claire Vo: And you are doing all of this as someone who has not spent their career as a software engineer.

Dan Roth: I've been around a lot of software engineers. I've watched them work, but no, I have never done any of this myself.

Claire Vo: This is amaz This is a flow we really haven't seen. And I think it's a useful really repeatable one that others can use. And um I you know if anybody in San Francisco you used uh public transport anymore then I would definitely request a regional option for us. But in the meantime if you could build a commutely that tells me like when I need to yell at my kids at what level to get out of the door to school on time that would be Yeah. Apparently that's what we need. I'm going to I'm going to replicate your flow and build that next.

Dan Roth: Nice. All right. So, here it is. Commutely is now opening on this. Uh oh, nope. I don't have Metro up. I can never remember the command. Uh

Claire Vo: I'm going to have to suggest for anybody who can never remember the command. Yeah,

Claire Vo: you should watch our episode with John Linquist who shows us how to set up terminal aliases. You can just ask Claude to set up a terminal alias. Um that will then run these like regular things that you need to run. So if you wanted to type in Metro Yeah. and have the terminal run it, you could create a terminal alias using cloud code to just make

Dan Roth: I have it like in a notes file somewhere which I can then never find. So that's that's much handier.

Claire Vo: Let's go back to cloud code. I'm just I got to have you do this. We'll do it live. This can be a live how AI and say can you make me an alias for the metro command so it's easier to run in the future. By the way, I've really tried to not say can you or please. This is part of how I'm like making sure that I don't personify this thing. This is how I stop the robots from taking over.

Dan Roth: This is this is one of two things. This will go to our last question, which is how do you talk to talk to the bots? I am so southern. I'm like, would you pretty please

Dan Roth: do this? I Please, sir. Yes, ma'am. Um the other thing is actually quick parenting tip. I always finding ask my kids like, "Would you do you want to unload the dishwasher?" And they're like, "No, I don't want to unload the dishwasher." And so that's another another thing is you don't want your AI to say no. Okay, so now anytime you type in Metro, it'll restart the bundler. I

Claire Vo: amazing for you.

Claire Vo: You're so welcome. How AI live.

Dan Roth: Wow, just learned something new. I love that.

Claire Vo: Okay, so let's see if it's running now.

Dan Roth: So let's open the simulator.

Dan Roth: Look, there it is. So, this is exactly what I wanted to build. This was a hidden feature on commutely is that you could set it up to go off at certain times. Bob and Ray just worked together to build this thing. And now, every day, 7 a.m. weekdays, I can get this. But now, if I go to my morning commute, it's going to show me these trains are ready. I get this. If I go to the lock screen, it'll show up here. So,

Claire Vo: if you were at 14th Street, your next train's coming in five minutes. You got to start running.

Dan Roth: I love it. Okay. Download this app on the app store. give Dan all the feedback so he can give it to Claude, Bob, and Ray. All right, Dan, let's hop to some lightning round questions and then I will get back get you back to your day job

Dan Roth: so we get to the end of the week and on the weekend you can start playing with some more cloud code. So the first question I have for you is are there any sort of non-coding workflows or tips or tricks that you think are really useful that people can pick up in like five minutes that you think are going to make their life better? We've talked this entire episode about something I just do on weekends, but most of my time is actually spent at work. I run a 400 person team. I've got a context switch all day long. I rely on Copilot constantly to do that because it has access to all my files and my entire uh team. So I my command that I start the day with or I end the day with usually is what did I drop the ball on?

Dan Roth: And I'll show you that. What did I drop the ball on? And then I usually and then for the point of this show I'm going to say anonymize any names or project names as this will be seen by people I don't work with. Perfect.

Dan Roth: [laughter] Okay. Uh it's going to go through Outlook. It's going to go through Teams. It's going to go through any updated files. It knows who I report to. It knows who reports to me. and it keeps track of things that I'm constantly clicking on during the day. So, it'll find it'll go through all my emails and find places where I'm not responding or teams where I'm not responding. And what's great is it's not just places where I've been app mentioned. It's stuff that it knows that I am actually interested in. So, projects that I've been like con kind of like following over time.

Claire Vo: What I think is really useful about this is we've seen a lot of people do their morning daily digest, but we haven't seen anybody do their evening nightly nudge, which is, hey, you got through your whole day and you forgot X, Y, and Z. And how many of us, especially managers, want to start the morning with nothing to do and having wrapped it up all in the evening. So I think just even take AI out of it. Moving that practice from upfront in your morning to in the afternoon when you can actually do something about the stuff that hit your plate during the day is a really great idea.

Dan Roth: That's exactly it for me. This is my 30 minutes before I leave. I ask this I do this prompt and then I can go through here. So here's an inbound escalation from a longtime creator. Someone's unhappy with me. Uh I didn't reply. I I have a draft reply that I never sent.

Claire Vo: Uh meeting followup content seek

Dan Roth: [laughter]

Dan Roth: and this is it. This is like you get at some point you start managing so many different projects. You're like I know I'm dropping the ball. Just tell me what I am dropping the ball on. So this is my savior. This is like what I count on AI to be able to do to make me better at my job so that I can spend the weekends building money losing apps like commutely. [laughter]

Claire Vo: Yeah, you can vibe code. You cannot vibe code gross margin. So

Dan Roth: that's true. That is true.

Claire Vo: All right. And then my last question I ask everybody, but when AI is not giving you what you want, you've said you don't want to personify AI, um, which I I do. So, we're on opposite sides of this. Very interesting.

Dan Roth: What is your then what is your tactic? Do you do you like kill Bob and his spawns? Like do you Yeah. Are you an all caps person? What's your prompting strategy?

Dan Roth: I mean, there are times where So, I'm usually really just straightforward. I just I'm like, this is what you're doing. I try not to say please or thank you because again I just don't want you know at some point when we get to AGI they're going to be running the show and I just I'm I'm fighting until we get to that point. I'm holding on to my humanity. Um and then but I usually just I usually spend a lot of time saying we've gone over this already. You've talked about this. Go search your memory to go find the time where we've done this. And it is it's a lot of parenting. I have like you I have three boys and I rely on a lot of the things where I'm like we've talked about this remember and you know and your kids are like you you you know that they are they want to do the right thing and so it's just a lot of like helping them get there. There's something we say that that I learned from a former manager and that we say a lot at LinkedIn which is assume best intentions and that is how that's by the way a big change from how news rooms work which was my last life which was you assume worst intentions all the time. At at tech companies you assume best intentions. I've now taken that to my family and I've taken it also to building with AI. So I assume the AI has best intentions but has to be reminded about how we work. So I don't yell. I'm pretty clear and I try to give it a little bit of grace.

Claire Vo: Perfect. Well Dan, this was awesome. I think it's a great overview for technical, non-technical, busy, busier alike. So thank you for sharing your flows with us and our audience. Where can we find you and how can we be helpful?

Dan Roth: So I'm on LinkedIn, not surprisingly. Find me. You can follow me on LinkedIn. Uh it's Daniel Roth at LinkedIn. Uh and I've got I keep a running newsletter called Forward Deployed Editor which tracks how I'm learning how to AI and it talks it's really designed for people who are non-technical to be able to get to be able to build cool things. And so I try to talk about what I'm failing. It's mostly what I'm failing at. Uh what I'm learning, what didn't work, how to avoid making the same mistakes I've made. And so if you can follow that, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'm always constantly posting on LinkedIn. Great content that creators are posting around the world. So, hope you'll follow me there.

Claire Vo: Great. Well, thanks for joining How I AI.

Dan Roth: Thanks for having me.

Claire Vo: Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube, or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. [music] Please consider leaving us a rating and review which will help others find the show. You [music] can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiipod.com. See you next time.