How I Use Claude Code & Cursor (Ship 10X Faster)

On this episode I sit down with indie app builder and designer Chris ****Raroque to walk through his real AI coding workflow. Chris explains how he ships a portfolio of productivity apps doing thousands in MRR by pairing Claude Code and Cursor instead of picking just one tool. He live-demos “vibe coding” an iOS animation, then compares how Claude Code and Cursor’s plan mode tackle the same task. The episode closes with concrete tips on plan mode, MCP servers, AI code review, dictation, and deep research so solo devs can build bigger apps than they could alone. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 03:04 – Which Tools & Models to Use 09:16 – Thoughts on the Vibe Coding Mobile App Landscape 11:14 – Live demo: prompting Claude Code to build an iOS “AI searching” animation 18:07 – Live demo: prompting Cursor with same task 21:02 – Chris’s Best Tips for Vibe Coders Key Points You don’t have to pick one IDE copilot: Chris actively switches between Claude Code and Cursor because they have different strengths. For very complex bug-hunting, he prefers Cursor with plan mode; for big-picture app architecture, he leans on Claude Code with Opus. Non-developers should start on higher-level “vibe coding” platforms like Create Anything for mobile apps before graduating to Claude/Cursor. Plan mode plus detailed, spoken prompts dramatically improves code quality, especially for UI and animation work. MCP servers and AI code review bots let solo developers safely set up infra, enforce security, and catch bugs they’d otherwise miss. Claude’s deep research is a powerful way to choose the right patterns and libraries before handing implementation back to Claude Code or Cursor. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: thevibemarketer.com Startup Empire - get your free builders toolkit to build cashflowing business - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire-toolkit Become a member - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND CHRIS ON SOCIAL Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@raroque X/Twitter: https://x.com/raroque Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chris.raroque/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  I brought on one of the best vibe coders on the planet to teach you how to squeeze the most out of Claude, Cursor, and all these vibe coding tools. We're talking about which models to pick, how to use MCPs properly, the exact servers to run them on, and a hack that gets you 20% more output from Cursor. There's even a single keyword that you can type that literally makes Claude code work harder. I'd never heard of it. If you want to get the most out of vibe coding platforms, this is the closest thing to multiplying yourself. The full breakdown is inside this video, and there's just, it's a lot of tangible tips

• 0:43Greg Isenberg?

  and tricks, how to get the most out of vibe coding.

• 0:56Greg Isenberg?

  Chris, welcome back to the pod. By the end of this episode, what are people going to learn?

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm, well, first, thanks so much for having me, Greg. What I hope people learn is just what my AI coding workflow is, because I know a lot of people are getting into AI, and there's a thousand tools out there, there's a thousand different ways to do this, and I want to show them what I'm using to build my apps. And then I'm going to also show some tips and tricks that I have that will probably help level up anyone who is doing AI coding.

• 1:23Greg Isenberg?

  Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're doing thousands of dollars of MRR with your apps. You've got a portfolio of successful apps, some beautiful looking things, so you're going to basically show us tips and tricks and your workflow so that people can copy it and do a similar thing?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what we're going to do.

• 1:43Greg Isenberg?

  All right, let's get into it.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Okay, cool. So I'll just give a little bit of context for anyone who doesn't know me. My name is Chris. I build productivity apps, and then I document everything on YouTube, so I teach people how to build apps and just show what it actually looks like behind the scenes of doing it myself. I have a bunch of different apps that I've built, and the reason I'm showing them, it's not to plug them, it's really to show that these are very substantial apps. Some of them, or most of them, people are always surprised when they hear that it's just me building them, and to be honest, this would not be physically possible for a single person to do if it wasn't for AI. So that is my secret to being able to build all of these things and just sustain all this stuff myself. And just to leverage AI coding tools like Claude coding Cursor,

• 2:30Speaker 01

  like we're going to talk about, to be able to do this. So this is a little bit of context here. I'll, let's just jump into it. So there are two tools that I'm currently using. And again, I don't want this to be an episode to just kind of show how to use Cursor, how to use Claude Code or anything, because there are so many better videos out there. And there's a bunch on my YouTube channel as well, if you want to check them out. But I did just want to show what I'm doing and then some rapid fire quick tips, so that you guys can maybe apply this stuff to your own coding workflow. But there are two tools that I'm currently using, and it's Claude Code and Cursor. And what's surprising to most people is I am actually using both at the same time.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  And so usually people are like, I just have to choose one and then I gotta stick with it. But what I've found is they have different strengths and weaknesses. And that's, that's why I choose to use both. And I'll actually show you, this is kind of the setup. So this is what it looks like for me. So I'm, I have Cursor open, so this is Cursor. And typically what I do is I have a terminal on the right. So typically the terminal I think is on the bottom and you can just drag it to the right. And then I just run Claude inside on the right here. So now Claude is running. And then if I want to use Cursor and their AI agents, I just have to change tabs. And then now here I'm using Cursor. So I am frequently switching between both Claude Code and Cursor all the time for different purposes, and we'll get into why that is. But this is how I'm setting it up.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  And this is actually also how I do the iOS projects as well. Because a lot of people are always asking, how are you doing this with Xcode? Because I am using Xcode to do the iOS projects. What I'm doing is I'm just opening the folder and the files in Cursor. And now when I make changes here, it'll automatically reflect in Xcode and then I can run the app and everything. So this is the current, these are the current two tools that I'm using. It's Claude Code and Cursor. In terms of the actual strengths and weaknesses of these, this is, this is why I'm using it. So Claude Code is extremely good. I'm actually using this model called Opus 4.1. This is my favorite model. It's probably the most powerful model, the best model there is for coding, but it is super limited.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  They changed their pricing since Claude Code came out. It used to be unlimited usage. Now it's very limited to the point where I probably can exhaust the Opus limit for the week in maybe three or four hours, maybe less actually. So I try to use it very sparingly, only for very, very complex problems. So for very complex problems, I'm using Claude Code with Opus. And then, but if I'm not allowed to use it because I've exhausted the limit, what I'm doing for very complex problems is I'm using Cursor specifically with Plan Mode.

• 5:14Greg Isenberg?

  Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy, and he is not wrong. I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so too. Now, I think that you can look at trends to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building? So that's exactly why I built idea browser.com. Every single day, you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox, and it's all backed by high-quality data trends. How we do it, people always ask. We use AI agents to go and search what are people looking for? And what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building?

• 5:59Greg Isenberg?

  And then we hand it on a silver platter for you to go check out. We do have a few paid plans that take it to the next level, give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more, almost like a chat GPT for ideas with it. But you can start for free, idea browser.com. And if you're listening to this, I highly recommend it.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  And I'm using, and this is what Plan Mode looks like. You can choose between Agent Mode and Plan Mode and Cursor. Plan Mode just means that it's going to actually plan out its steps and thinking and you'll approve it. And here's the hot take I'm going to have here. I am using GPT 5.1 High for Plan Mode. And typically, I'm seeing people using Sonnet or they're using even GPT-5 Codex. But for some weird reason, and this is a tip I got from a developer friend of mine. He was like, you need to try GPT 5.1 High with planning. It's just for some reason so good. My hypothesis is that it was not technically built for coding, but it's really good for writing. And when you're doing planning and doing a lot of critical thinking and you're trying to plan out steps,

• 7:05Speaker 01

  maybe a writing model is actually better than a coding model at doing that. And then for the execution, when I'm done planning, I do use Sonnet 4.7, I think. So I use the Sonnet model to actually execute. So that's a configuration that I have running right now. It's, I use Cursor, Plan Mode, that's the important one. It has to be Plan Mode with GPT 5.1 High, Sonnet for the execution. And then if I, if it can't get it, I use Claude 4.1 Opus, which again, I don't have much of that, so I try not to do it. And then I just switch between Claude Code, Sonnet 4.7, so not Opus Model, and then Cursor, Plan Mode. I just switch between them depending on, depending on the task. And then the reason, and here's when I would use which one as well.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  So if you're using, if you're doing something very, very complex, like really complex, like it's a bug, I actually think Claude for, Claude, I actually think Cursor with Plan Mode is better. If you're doing something massive, like you're trying to architect a whole app in like three or four prompts, Claude is actually really good at doing that. And then if it's just really small details, you can get away with, with either. If it's not like something complex. And then I just switch depending on what it is. And then for some reason Claude. Is just better at UI stuff. So this is the configuration that I have going. And I have tried Codex. I've tried, I've tried almost all the coding tools. Right now, at this moment of recording, these are currently the best ones. The other thing that I'll throw in here is if you don't have any coding experience,

• 8:32Speaker 01

  people are always asking me, what should I use? Should I use Claude Code? Should I use Cursor? To be honest, my recommendation is to use, don't use these platforms. It's actually to really start with something like createanything.com, for example. You can also get away using B0 or Bolt or something else. But what I found, if you want to do mobile apps specifically, I've tested all of them. Create Anything is probably the best one at mobile specific. It's just really good at design. It's really good at following instructions. So my recommendation is to use a platform like that first. And then if you hit the limits, go graduate to something like Claude Code and Cursor. And by that point, you should have a better understanding of how to work with AI and how to prompt it to actually use these tools. But this is the toolset. This is what I recommend. This is what I'm actually using.

• 9:16Greg Isenberg?

  I gotta ask, because you know, the vibe coding mobile app space is like the, you know, next big thing, maybe, you know? There's definitely a lot of opportunity there. A lot of people want to be able to do it. You know, Rourke and there's the vibe code app are two of the, you know, popular ones. In addition to Anything, like have you, have you seen them? Have you played with them? Any thoughts?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I honestly, I played with them. I still think, at least at the time of recording, Anything is a bit better. And the reason is, for some reason, the design sense is a little bit better. And its ability to follow instructions is, it's just, it's so good. It's so good compared to the other platforms. But again, you can get away with using any of them. They're all using the same models under the hood. I believe they're all probably using the Claude models under the hood. It just, it's really just also down to preference, I think. So if you prefer the style choice that vibe code or Rourke has, for sure. You can totally do it. But then if you, at least for me, subjectively, I did kind of like the designs that I was getting with it.

• 10:24Greg Isenberg?

  Fair, fair enough.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  I can actually show you too. This is an example of here was something that I actually did create in Anything to show kind of what you can do. So like this was something I fully designed in Anything with the custom illustrations and interactions. And this does surprise people when I tell them that something like this. And again, these are like custom interactions that are happening here. Like these aren't components or anything. All of this stuff was built in Anything in, I think, less than 24 hours.

• 10:52Greg Isenberg?

  So wait, that was built? This was designed and built in 24 hours?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, this one, yeah. This one, fully, fully working. The AI actually works. This one's like an AI calorie tracking app that I wanted to prototype. You take photos of your food and it'll just immediately scan and figure out the calories and everything. Fully built. This one was using Anything, 24 hours.

• 11:13Greg Isenberg?

  Cool.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  So that's my recommendation on the tooling. And then in terms of models, we kind of went over this. We could go into a quick example of just kind of what it looks like, like what it actually looks like to vibe code something. So I know in another episode that we talked about, we were looking at interactions in animations. So something that I kind of went semi-viral, in my opinion, for was the interaction or the animation for my daily or my calorie tracking app, Amy. When you search in Amy, it's kind of like typing in Apple Notes. And then on the right, the AI is going to calculate all the calories for you and it'll just appear there. But there's this really nice animation that I have here where you can see that it kind of drops down.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  There's going to be this little shiny effect that's going on and it shows the sources. So what I wanted to do is kind of show you guys what it looks like, like how I actually code this stuff really quickly. So we can kind of go into that. And then after that, we'll just do some rapid fire tips on how I do this. So I have a blank Xcode project. This is just the starting Xcode project. When you run the app, it's just a simple hello world app that should build. Yeah, so we see it's a hello world app. And again, I have this open in Cursor and Claude Code. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to, let's see if how far, or let's just for a little bit. We don't have to do the full thing here, but let's try to replicate.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  What I have here, where, let's just replicate the animation part. Okay. Where it does the searching, the calculating, all that stuff. Let's try to do that, so you guys can see what this looks like. So the way that I would start is I actually, let's just use Claude. You can, again, you can either use Cursor Plan Mode or Claude. Let's just use Claude for this case. And one of the tips that I have is I dictate everything. Just, I get way more detailed prompts this way. And I'm using a tool called Whisperflow as well to do this. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say, "Can you modify this so that there's a button? And when I click it, I want an animation to run? It's to simulate an AI searching for nutrition info and calories. So first, I want, when you click it,

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I want it to say "Searching", and I want it to have this shimmering text animation. Then, after one second, I want that to drop down. And then I want the text to say "Analyzing", and I want that to drop from the top and replace it. And it's gonna take its place. And then, still with the shimmering effect. Then after that, I want it to say, "Found 10 sources", and then just put three circles to the left of it. And maybe just find some random websites, or just put, I don't know, YouTube, New York Times, Google, just so we can get the Fabicons for those. Make those the sources on the left. And then after, "Show Calculating", then after that, "Show some sort of hardcoded calories",

• 14:08Speaker 01

  all just to show the animation. We just need to hardcode everything. And then make sure that when the replacement happens during the animation, maybe we can make it so that it is cut off. So it's all contained on one line.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  This is the level of detail that I go with my prompts. And then, I just ask Claude Code to do this. So again, that's why I dictate, because it would have taken me like, five minutes to type this all by hand. And this is, this is kind of how I, this is how I scaffold apps. This is how I'm making my edits. It's just dictating everything. And I do the same thing in Cursor Plan Mode. I'll just show you two. If we do the same thing in Cursor Plan Mode, we won't run it there, but I can copy and paste what I just... What I just dictated here. I'll run it in plan mode in parallel. So we can see what this looks like. Okay, so now Claude code. We're back in Claude code and it's saying, I'll help you make the sequence. This will include this. Do you want to do it? So it's asking permission if it can change the files. I'm just gonna say yes.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Go ahead and do it. So now it's running, it's editing files. And then we have a cursor with plan mode. It's starting to plan out its steps. Again, we're not going to use this one. I just want to show you what plan mode looks like because it's pretty interesting. Okay, and then Claude code is done. So it says that it did it. So let's just run it and let's just see what happens. Hopefully this is okay. Okay, nice. So, okay, so it did actually make this animation, which is interesting. Obviously not to the level of polish that we need here. So I might make some quick modifications. So I'm looking really closely. And here's a pro tip when you're doing animations and interaction stuff. If you're running the simulator, you can actually click at the top. It says slow animations. It will run it, I think, half speed or slower.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  So you can actually see what's going on here. So I can see here. Okay, now there's even something going on when I do that.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Like, I don't like how it's dropping down and then going back up. It looks like. So what I'll tell it is something that's wrong with the animation is when something is leaving focus, it's shooting back up. Can you make sure that it drops down? Also, increase the time to two seconds for each of the animations so they can show. Let's also make the shimmering effect a little more extreme. So we'll let this run. And then here's cursor with plan mode doing the same thing. What I love about cursor with plan mode and why I think it's better at very complex problems is it's really good at following up. It's really good at asking questions. So here it's asking, should the button be usable multiple times? So we'll just say, no, we just want to re, actually, yeah, replay on every tap. For the three sources, are you okay with stabilized placeholders? Yeah, sure. Let's do that.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  So it's asking permissions on like what it should do. And then we have Claude code still running here. Okay, so now this is done. So let's see how much closer it got. And again, I don't think we're going to get as close as we want because I think it took me like 20 prompts to get to the level I needed it to go, but.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Okay, you can see it's a little bit better.

• 17:10Greg Isenberg?

  It's already looking better.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Already?

• 17:11Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  And then, again, if you just do this a few more times, it's inevitable you can get to the level that I have here. That's exactly what I did here. I think it did take, again, 10 to 20 prompts to be able to get it here, but that's like an hour or two of time to get it to this level. And it's such a big difference compared to if we don't have it. Here's what it looked like before I added it. Again, there's no, like, it just kind of just says calculating. There's still kind of a shimmer effect and then it shows the calories, but it makes such a big difference. So yeah, that's currently how I'm doing it. Let's just go back to plan mode, so I'll just show you what this looks like. So when you're using Cursor with plan mode, it will actually build out this plan for you. And so it's actually saying what it's gonna do. It says step one, it's gonna do this.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Step two, it's gonna wait two seconds, say analyzing. And then you can review this plan, and then when you're ready, you can build it. And then here, I chose 4.5 Sonnet as the model to build it. And then when you click build, it's actually gonna go ahead and do it. So that's actually, actually, I'm kind of curious. What we can do is, I'm gonna completely restore this. So I'm basically just undoing everything Claude did. Let's just let Cursor go ahead and build it. And let's just see what it comes up with, so we can compare to see kind of what the differences between the two are. And then maybe you'll kind of see why I switch between them so frequently and why I'm not just sticking with one. I love having them sometimes do the exact same task and then just comparing and seeing which one is better.

• 18:37Greg Isenberg?

  Who do you think's gonna win?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  I actually think Claude Code will win, because I found that when it comes to design and interactions and animations, it does have a little bit of an edge, even if you're using the Sonnet model in Cursor, for some weird reason, I think it is. Let's see if I'm wrong, though. Let's see. I'm actually curious. While we wait for this to go, though... What I'll do is, let me, let me give you a few more, we can just kind of hop into some tips. I know this one takes a little bit of time. So again, these are the tools, I'm swapping between the two. These are the models I'm using, Opus 4.1, GPT-5 high, and then Sonnet for the actual execution.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Here are the tips that I have that really, I think, like when I've shared these tips, people are like, they, they usually pick something up from here where they, they add it to their workflow and they're like, this actually made a difference. So the first one, oh, actually, you know, this is done. Let's just see what's going on here. Okay, so Cursor is done. Let's see what it was able to do.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  That's actually not bad, first try.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Actually, you know what? If we're comparing just the first shot, because again, that original first shot for Claude was a little bit more choppy. This one was actually really good. You can tell though, it's so fascinating that it kind of came to the same conclusion. I think it's because, again, we're using the same model here. When I'm using Claude code, it's using Sonnet 4.5. When I'm using the model here, I'm, I'm using Sonnet 4.5 for the execution. So that's why they look so, so, so similar. But it is actually interesting that we got a slightly better result when we did the plan mode first with Cursor. So that's actually, I, I think I do, I would choose this one over the other one.

• 20:24Greg Isenberg?

  No, I think objectively, this one was better than the other one, first prompt, first prompt, so.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  I think so too. I think so too. Okay, so this is a prime example of like, even if you're using the exact same model, if you just use plan mode, for example, versus no plan mode on Cursor, on Claude code, you can get pretty different results. And that's a big reason why I think you should try to actually, you know, test it with a bunch of different tools, maybe have two AI tools that you're using for different scenarios. Yeah, this is a very fascinating one. Okay, so we'll go into, like, to be honest, the rest of my workflow, that this is kind of what I do. I just dictate everything. I'm constantly trying things. Let me go into some rapid-fire tips on how to get the most out of the AI coding tools. This is exactly what I'm doing in my workflow. And then if you need a basic tutorial on Cursor in Claude Code, there's so many great ones out there.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  So the first one is, as we saw, there is a difference when you use Plan Mode. 100%. Every action that you take, use Plan Mode. You get, it almost like you give the AI time to think, and you will get better results. So I already showed you what it looks like in Cursor when you do Plan Mode. All you have to do is toggle Plan Mode here, and it's going to give this beautiful plan on the left. And when, and you can review it, ask for changes, and then when you're ready, you click Build. Unfortunately, it's not as beautiful in Claude Code. So let's, let me show you what this looks like. You can actually hit Shift Tab, and it'll change it to Plan Mode here. And now, when you ask Claude Code to do something in Plan Mode, it's going to kind of do the same thing that Cursor does, where it's going to think through, come up with a plan, and ask you to review it.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  But what I have found, at least at the time of recording, Cursor's Plan Mode is stronger than Claude Code, which is why I use Cursor Plan Mode for insanely complex problems. It just somehow thinks about it a little bit better. It asks better follow-up questions. But that is tip number one. And then here's, here's Claude Code asking for things. It's like, yeah, here's my plan. You can already just tell, like, oh, actually, this is not fair, because it's, it's, it's looking at the current code right now. But typically, this is what happens. It tells you its plan, and then it's up to you to just review and approve it. It will not be as detailed as Cursor's plan. Like Cursor's plans are just so detailed. They're very, very good. So that's tip number one. It's use Plan Mode. I'm pretty sure if you do this, the output will probably at least increase by 20% at minimum,

• 22:43Speaker 01

  if you just do this. So 100% do this. It's also good to just review what it's about to do as well. Like, it's better than just letting it run, you know, run through your codebase, and then you have to retroactively go. Or yeah, you have to go back and try to fix it. This is just a way better way to do it. Second tip, this is specifically with Claude Code. It's to use the keyword UltraThink. So this one is actually a special keyword that Claude Code has. And I'll show you, if you type in, can you fix this issue? And you type in UltraThink, it actually changes colors because it is doing something. When you type this in, Claude Code is actually going to think a little bit harder about the problem.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  I'm assuming that it uses up more tokens and more usage when you do this. But to be honest, I think I use UltraThink in 90% of my messages. And I have not really found that it's impacted my token usage versus if I don't do it. It seems like it's about the same. So there's no reason not to do it. So when you're stuck on a complex problem, just type UltraThink and Claude will think. Maybe I'm assuming it seems like it takes twice as long. So maybe it thinks twice as hard or something. But this is a keyword I'm very surprised people don't know about. So you will get a lot better results when you do this. I don't think there is one in Cursor. It doesn't highlight, but I think you can still say like UltraThink in Cursor. If you're using Sonnet as the model, I think it will work too. But there's no nice color animation or color thing here to show that it is actually doing something.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  So that's the, that's my second tip.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  The next tip is in Claude Code, you can actually run background tasks. So this is where you can tell Claude Code, can you run the server in the background for me? This is something I think they only added in the last month. So this is a relatively new thing. But what this does is Claude Code will literally run your server in the background. So it's running just like you would in the terminal. But the important part is it now has access to your server logs. So when you're running and when you're coding with Claude Code, it can now access this during debugging. So if you're like, hey, why is this not working? It will then, you don't have to copy and paste things and say, hey, the server's crashing. Take a look at this. It just has access to it. And this is a massive one, which I just don't see people doing either. I think it's probably because it's a recent thing, but I'm constantly telling it, hey, run.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  All you have to do is say, run the server in the background for me. And you'll see this thing that says one background task and it's basically running it. So I'm constantly using this. This is another big one. The next one is MCP servers. So last time I came on the podcast, I was not using MCP servers. And to be honest, I didn't understand like what all the hype was about with MCP servers. I now understand like where they're useful, especially for coding. So there's two MCP servers that I'm currently using. The first one's called Contact 7. It's a free MCP server. Basically, it just lets you access the latest version of a lot of different documentation. And it's very compressed and very well formatted for an LLM. So instead of what I typically would do is I would just get the documentation for something.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Like, let's say I wanted to integrate PostHog Analytics into my app. I would typically say, by the way, here's the link to PostHog. Go implement it for me. But the problem with that is now it has to go scrape it. Maybe it doesn't do it correctly. Or you can use Contact 7, hook up the MCP server, and you're basically giving Claude code and cursor tools. And now it has access to Contact 7, which now I can just say, oh, make sure to use the latest documentation for PostHog. Please use the Contact 7 MCP. And when you do this, it's going to use the Contact 7, pull the latest documentation, really compressed, really, really more digestible for Claude coder cursor, and it will just, it will just use it way better than you trying to feed it in through a URL or something. So that's the first one.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Second one I'm using now is Superbase. So this one is, I'm probably going to get some heat for this, but because a lot of developers are probably going to say, oh, this is not secure. Why are you doing this? But in my experience, this MCP, and you can use this for Firebase, you can use it for whatever database you're using, is so powerful to correctly set up a project for you. So I'm constantly using this to set up projects from scratch, because before I would have Claude code do all the coding and everything, but then I would have to manually go set up my database, make sure I'm configuring rules correctly. I would argue that if you are using a tool like Superbase MCP, where Claude Code has full access to Superbase, it can spin up everything for you.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  It actually might be more secure because it has caught things that I have manually configured wrong. Like it has set up the security rules better than I would have done, to be honest. And so this is something where I actually do recommend if you're a beginner or if you're a seasoned developer, it's really helpful to use this. And if you're a developer and you don't trust it, at least use the Superbase MCP to read your configuration and just double check your work. So you can just say, hey, I set up the Superbase server. I set it all up. I've hooked it up. Can you just double check that I set it up correctly? Check all the security rules. Check all this stuff. Check the indexes so the performance is good. This is a really powerful MCP. And again, you can do this for Firebase. You can do this for AWS. They have an MCP, I believe, as well. And it's just such a, such a powerful way.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Just give Claude Code or Cursor access to these tools. And anything you can do in the UI, they'll be able to do. When I'm in production, though, I will say I am way more cautious about using it because it could just delete your entire server if it wanted to and just delete the database. So I am a little bit more cautious, but I still do run this in production, though, because it is, it's just so much faster for my workflow to use this. So those are the only two that I'm seriously using right now. I'm sure that's going to change in a few months, though. Like, I'm going to probably play with the Figma MCP now and test this out more. But yeah, these two are very good. The next one is, this is a very, this is a very big one for solo developers or anyone that has no coding experience.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Right now, there are a couple of AI coding tools that can review your code for you. And specifically, if you open a pull request in GitHub, so let's say you make a bunch of changes and you open up, like, like, if you have any coding experience, you know that the proper way to do something is you add your code to GitHub and then another developer reviews it before it gets merged into production. If you're a solo developer, you don't have that luxury. There's really no one who can review your code. So I'm using tools like Bugbot and Claude Code has one as well where it can actually... Live inside of your codebase. And anytime you open up a pull request or you want someone to review your code, it will do it for you. And I will say, these tools, when you hook them up,

• 29:22Speaker 01

  it is so much better than trying to do this inside of Cursor or Claude Code itself. Because I think these are maybe custom models or something, but they're specifically trained to identify security issues and bugs. And so what I'm doing is I have them hooked up to all my repos and it has caught so many things for me. And again, it's stuff that I am a pretty experienced developer, I believe, but I mean, I'm working so fast, I'm moving so quickly. It's just inevitable that bugs will be introduced, security vulnerabilities will be introduced. It gives me so much peace of mind. And I think the Cursor one is just forty dollars extra per month. Totally worth it. Totally worth it for peace of mind, especially from the security, security perspective. So I recommend hooking this up. It's a hack for solo developers. And for vibe coders who are really worried about the security,

• 30:06Speaker 01

  best forty dollars you'll probably ever spend for, to be able to sleep at night, knowing it's, everything is secure. The next thing, which is, uh, the next thing is dictation. This is, as you saw, when I was dictating, when I was trying to use Claude Code, I was dictating my prompt. It's because you can just get way more detailed prompts and then that will help steer the AI in a way better direction. I actually didn't think this was a big deal, but then when people started seeing me do this in my videos, I didn't know people weren't doing this. And that was something where people were like, wow, I just downloaded this? Yeah, my AI coding has dramatically improved because I'm dictating everything now. So that's another hack. Hundred percent recommend dictating. You can use Whisperflow like I'm using. There's also some other tools, but Whisperflow is really great

• 30:50Speaker 01

  because it has built-in developer terminology. So you can say developer terms and it kind of understands it already too. The last tip that I have is to use Claude for deep research on technical issues. So something a lot of people don't know is that if you are paying for Claude Code, you also have increased usage inside of Claude Desktop, like the chat app. And you can actually use it to do deep research for you. And so what I'm doing frequently is I'm actually asking it, hey, This is what I'm about to do in my app. So I'm, again, I'm a pretty experienced developer, I think. So I ask it, what's the best way to store data? I'm looking for something similar to this in React. What do you think?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  And it will go and it will look for 12 minutes straight and look through all of the documentation and try to find the best way to do this. And then it'll just summarize everything for me. And then I can just take that and then review it, obviously. And then I'll send it over to Claude Code and say, hey, can we actually do it this way? Cause I think this is a better way. So this is a great way, if you're a developer, to double check, are you implementing them correctly? Learn some new concepts. And then if you're just getting started out, this is also a great way. If you can just ask it, hey, I've never done this before. What is the best way for me to store data? So this is something that I am very surprised, I don't see a lot of people taking advantage of, especially non-technical people, especially people who are just starting to vibe code. You like, you don't have to call your developer friends anymore and say, hey, how do I set up this? Like, how should I structure my app?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Just use Claude, especially if you're paying for Claude Code already. And then obviously double check it. And if you don't know what you're doing, you can ask it follow-up questions. So you can say, why did you choose this pattern? Okay, what other patterns exist? It was also a great way to learn as well. So this is probably, it's a win-win if you use something like this. And then you can just feed it into Cursor in Claude Code. And then it has access to this. It's able to implement it for you. And yeah, I've just, I found so many things that I've done, not wrong, but I could have done better because I use Claude's deep research. So I know this wasn't a full-on coding tutorial, but these were just a couple of things that I've been telling people in my YouTube videos. And I've gotten a lot of comments saying, yeah, these are very helpful tips. Like, people did not know Bugbot existed.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  People did not know deep research existed. So hopefully there's some cool stuff that you can take and apply to your own AI coding workflow.

• 33:07Greg Isenberg?

  I appreciate you. I think we're all trying to get the most out of these vibe coding platforms and little tips and tricks help like this, especially a lot of us are, you know, solo developer, solo builders, solo developers, right? So it's not like we have people in, in real life to talk to. So this is helpful and I just want to thank you for coming on and, and spreading that, spreading the sauce with us. And I'll include where you can go find Chris and get more of him in the show notes. So you can check, check that out there. And Chris, don't forget about us. Come back on again.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Greg. Really appreciate it.

• 33:48Greg Isenberg?

  All right.