Claude Code Clearly Explained (and how to use it)

In this episode, I sit down with Professor Ras Mic for a beginner-friendly crash course on using Claude Code (and AI coding agents in general) without feeling overwhelmed by the terminal. We break down why your output is only as good as your inputs and how thinking in features + tests turns “vague app ideas” into real, shippable products. Was walks me through a better planning workflow using Claude Code’s Ask User Question Tool, which forces clarity on UI/UX decisions, trade-offs, and technical constraints before you build. We also talk about when not to use “Ralph” automation, why context windows matter, and how taste + audacity are the real differentiators in 2026 software. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:22 – Claude Code Best Practices 05:31 – Claude Code Plan Mode 09:30 – The Ask User Question Tool 14:52 – Don’t start with Ralph automation (get reps first) 16:36 – What are “Ralph loops” and why plans and documentation matter most 18:41 – Ras’s Ralph setup: progress tracking + tests + linting 23:48 – Tips & tricks: don’t obsess over MCP/skills/plugins 27:44 – Scroll-stopping software wins Key Points Your results improve fast when you treat AI agents like junior engineers: clear inputs → clean outputs. The biggest unlock is planning in features + tests, not broad product descriptions. Claude Code’s Ask User Question Tool forces real clarity on workflow, UI/UX, costs, and technical decisions. If you haven’t shipped anything, don’t hide behind automation—build manually before using “Ralph.” Context management matters: long sessions can degrade quality, so restart earlier than you think. Numbered Section Summaries The Real Reason People Get “AI Slop” I frame the episode around a simple idea: if you feed agents sloppy instructions, you’ll get sloppy output. Ras explains that models are now good enough that the failure mode is usually unclear inputs, not model quality. How To Think Like A Product Builder (Features First): Ras pushes a practical mindset: don’t describe “the product,” describe the features that make the product real. If you can list the core features clearly, you can actually direct an agent to build them correctly. The Missing Piece: Tests Between Features: We talk about the shift from “generate code” to “build something serious.” The move is writing and running tests after each feature, so you don’t stack feature two on top of a broken feature one. Why Default Planning Mode Isn’t Enough: Ras shows the standard flow: open plan mode, ask Claude to write a PRD, and get a basic roadmap. The issue is it leaves too many assumptions—especially around UI/UX and workflow details. The Ask User Question Tool (The Planning Upgrade): This is the big unlock. Ras demonstrates how the Ask User Question Tool interrogates you with increasingly specific questions (workflow, cost handling, database/hosting, UI style, storage, etc.) so the plan becomes dramatically more precise. Spend Time Upfront Or Pay For It Later: We connect the dots: better planning reduces back-and-forth, reduces token burn, and prevents “I built the app but it’s not what I wanted.” The interview-style planning forces trade-offs early instead of late. Don’t Use Ralph Until You’ve Built Without It: Ras makes a strong case for reps: if you can’t ship something end-to-end yet, automation won’t save you—it’ll just move faster in the wrong direction. Build feature-by-feature manually first, then graduate to loops. Practical Tips: Context Discipline + Taste Wins: Ras shares a few operational habits: don’t obsess over tools like MCP/plugins, keep context usage under control, and restart sessions before quality degrades. We wrap on a bigger point: in 2026, “audacity + taste” is what makes software stand out. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND MIC ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/Rasmic Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rasmic

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

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  So you want to use Claude code, you want to get the most of it, but you don't know exactly how. This is a crash course, how to master Claude code, and we explain it in the most simple way. There are thousands, literally thousands of other Claude code tutorials on the internet, but there are none as simple as this. I brought on Professor Ross Mike. He comes on and he shares it in the simplest way so that anyone could create jaw dropping startups and software using Claude code. We're going to give you the exact steps for how you can set it up, thinking about the beginner, how to think about the terminal, how to think about prompting. But if you stick around to the end of this episode, there's a tips and tricks section, which I think is super valuable, and I can't wait to see what you build.

• 0:54Greg Isenberg?

  We got Ross Mike on the pod. By the end of this episode, what are people going to learn?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Hopefully, you're going to not feel overwhelmed with Claude code. I know the terminal is scary and it's a big boogeyman, but I'm going to give you the blueprint, how to use it. I'm also going to share, consider this the ultimate crash course on how to use Claude code or any agent effectively.

• 1:15Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, let's, let's get into it.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  So I mean, the best way to start these episodes is with sharing our screen. So when we think of building applications using AI, using some sort of agent like Claude code or Open Code or Codex, whatever it is, there's a couple of things that you always have to keep in mind. You know, the principles never really change. One thing that it's important for us to understand is however good your inputs are will dictate how good your output is, right? We're getting to a point where the models are so freakishly good that if you are producing quote unquote slop, it's because you've given it slop, right? There was a time where the models weren't good enough. There was a time where, you know,

• 2:01Speaker 01

  we had serious qualms and issues with the quality of code the models gave us. But now we're starting to get to a point where even myself, like I'm Reviewing a lot more code than I write, and I never thought I'd be able to say that in the early uh months of twenty twenty six. So very important for us to understand our inputs, how good they are, how precise they are, how articulate they are, are just as good as our outputs and will dictate just how good our outputs will be. And the way I want people to think about this is Greg is like, imagine you were communicating this to a human, to a human engineer, right? If you give them sparse instructions and if anyone is in like client work, you realize that most clients, they,

• 2:42Speaker 01

  they they tell you one thing, but you have to sort of extract the deeper thoughts of what it is they want. Um, it's the same way when we work with these agents, when we work with Claude Code, we need to be really, really precise with how we build our inputs. Now, what do I mean by inputs? What I mean is our PRDs or our to-do list or our plans, right? Like there's, you know, people are giving you different names. Um, it doesn't really matter. It's all the same thing, right? And when we think of a PR gear, when we think of a to-do list, or when we think of a plan, I want us to think in such a way as this. Let's say I'm trying to build this product, right? Let's say, um, I don't know, Greg, any product ideas um that?

• 3:25Greg Isenberg?

  Me have product ideas?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's actually the first best person to ask, right?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Um, let's say I go on ideabrowser.com and-

• 3:36Greg Isenberg?

  I was just going to it. I was just going to it. Yeah, pick pick the idea of the day from idea browser. Says it's a diagnostic tool for appliance text losing hundreds of repeat visits.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  See, I have no idea what that means, but let's say I know what that means. Essentially, when thinking of this idea and looking to build this into a full-fledged product, generally the way you're going to think is, okay, if the if product X does Y, Z, A, B, and C. How I would reach that is I'm going to think of features, right? So let's say there's four core features to this application that um Greg just mentioned. And if I have these four features built out, we can safely assume that we have said product, right? The way we are to design our PRDs, to-do lists and plans is such that we want the agent, the model, to build out all these features, right?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Because all these features put together is our product. You see, a lot of times people will describe a product, um not describe features and will be frustrated with AI, like AI is supposed to magically know what you're thinking about. Um, by the way, Greg, am I making sense so far?

• 4:46Greg Isenberg?

  A hundred percent, I'm with you.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we really need to think in features. But here's the cool part, when developing features, oftentimes the issue with models is like you'll develop a feature or like, let's say the model develops a feature. Uh, we don't know if it works, we don't know if it did it the right way. That's where with all the cool Ralph stuff that's happening, we can introduce tests, right? So let's say uh the model, the agent bu- builds feature one. Before moving on, moving on to feature two, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get the model to write a test. If that test passes, then we'll work on the second feature. If that test passes, we work on the third feature, right? So we're finally entering an era where you can really build something serious with these models.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So instead of telling you about just uh planning, why don't we do actual planning together? So I'm gonna pop up my terminal. So I know everyone's afraid of the terminal, but in all honesty, if you don't know how to use a terminal, ask AI. Like it's the like simplest thing. And if not, you can even download the Claude code app and go on code section. Give it a specific folder you want to work on and use the app. Like there's literally no excuse to not use Claude code. If you're afraid, boo hoo, just jump into use AI, you have all the tools. That being said, I'm just going to type in Claude and we're going to have uh Claude code open. And usually how people plan is they'll click shift tab, right? And then you have plan mode on and you can say, let's say, I want to build

• 6:17Speaker 01

  um TikTok UGC generating app for my marketing agency. I see like these UGC apps everywhere. Um, please help me create a plan.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Write this in the in uh PRD dot M D file. So this is how most people have planning setup, right? You'll tell Claude Code or Cursor or whatever agent uh to do the plan for you. And you ask it to be in some file. And like it says, it'd be happy to help you plan this out. And it'll ask you some questions, et cetera, et cetera. But I found that there's a better way to get an even more concise plan. And this way, it actually gets you to think a lot more about trade offs, concerns, UI UX decisions. Because most of the time, you're sort of allowing the AI to have free rein over certain decisions,

• 7:17Speaker 01

  which I think uh will lead you with a finished product that you're not excited about. And that's invoking a special tool. Um I was gonna show you guys the tweet, but unfortunately Twitter's down right now. But Claude Code has a specific tool called Ask User Question Tool. And essentially what this tool does, it starts to interview you about the specifics of your plan, right? So I'm gonna drop this prompt where it says, read this plan file. Interview me in detail using the Ask User Question Tool about literally anything. Technical implementation, UI UX concerns and trade offs. I spelled implementation wrong, do not judge me. Um and what this is going to do is it's going to go past the plan that we have and start to ask us about minute details. So let's finish off this plan first.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I'm just going to accept um this is internal use. Uh tech stack will use React. I just want core features. We'll submit answers. And then Claude Code, you'll see, might ask us a few more questions, but this will generally be the plan.

• 8:19Greg Isenberg?

  Right, so it's it's not just it's not just the plan, it's the right plan, right? Like to what you were saying, like go back, scroll back up here, the features and yeah, the features and test. Like the way I think about this, and I don't know if you agree, is like if you ask Claude Code to build you a car, it doesn't really know what a car is. It doesn't understand like you need a steering wheel and a, you know, a radio and you need wheels. So the, the, the hard part is trying to figure it is basically explaining what those things are in a really succinct and clear way. And that's what this interview is basically doing. It's, it's explaining each of them and then we're going to test each of those features.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like think of, think of it this, like a simple example. Let's say you ask the AI agent to build you a specific feature, right? How is it going to present that specific feature? Did you want it in a dashboard? Did you want it to be a modal? Did, did it have to be a separate page? Like when you don't specify these minute details, it will make the assumption for you. And with Ralph loops and all these type of things, like you might have a whole application built out and it's not exactly to the liking or the expectations you had, right? So let me continue. I'll just make some selections here just so we can move on. And then hit submit. And then I'm going to pause this planning here and then I'm going to paste this.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I'm going to say read this plan file and I'm going to tag the plan file. It's called PRD dot M D. We have that right here. And I'm going to say interview me the details about this question, or I don't even need to tag it because it has it in its context. But I just want to show you how annoyingly annoying this is going to get. Meaning it's going to keep asking me questions about said plan or said app idea. So notice how it says round one core workflow and technical foundation, right? And some of the questions it might even ask you are things that you might not know about because you're not technical. So what do I do when I don't know something, Greg? I'm going to copy this and I'm going to go to the chat bot of my choice, whether it's Claude, Chat GPT, whatever, and I'm going to ask it questions.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  So if you remember earlier, it asked me generic questions about the app. Now it's saying, what's your ideal workflow for generating UGC video from start to finish? Like notice how the questions are even more specific now. So it says linear, step by step, template based, batch processing, iterative, conversational. So let's say I select that. And it says, how should the app handle agent API costs and usage? So now it's talking about costs, right? Again, most of the times when you just have a basic plan, this is not included in the plan. Right? Let's say we want to have a hard, hard budget. Um, what database and hosting approach do you want to use? Most of you probably watching this have no idea. So I can copy this over, go to chat GPT and ask, what's the best decision? This is my current situation.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  And then you keep going, you keep going and you submit answers. So when you use this ask user question tool, the questions become more granular. So it asked me about core workflow and technical foundation. Now it's going to ask me about UI UX and script generation. If you notice the first plan that it came up with of the default plan for Claude code, it was pretty basic. Now it's asking me, okay, what AI do I want to use for the script generation? I'll use Claude. Uh, what UI style aesthetic are you going for? Minimal clean, dashboard heavy, creative tool feel, chat first, right? So hopefully Greg, I'm making sense with like how much more questions I'm being asked when I'm invoking this ask user question tool.

• 11:59Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, makes complete sense. You're also, you're also going to use less tokens in the end, right? Cause you're gonna, right?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the thing is the better your plan, the better your input, the better the initial set of documents that you give the model, um, the, the better the outcome. And if the better the outcome, there's no back and forth, right? Most people have a Ralph loop running, it'll be a basic plan and it'll do what you told it to do, but you weren't specific. So now you're going back and then maybe you're running another loop or you're going back and doing all these changes. But if you get it done right, if you invest the time in the planning stage, I hundred percent believe you'll save a lot more money. And this will help you clear up a lot of ideas. So like, for example, this idea that we just had, this TikTok UGC farm. Um, how do we want it set up? Do we want it to be flat with search? Do we want it?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  To be client campaign asks, there's a lot of like these minute details that you're not thinking about. And because you're not thinking about it, you're allowing Claude code to make those assumptions for you. Right. Which at the end, after it's burned through a ton of tokens, now you're going back to change. Right. We can save so much headache if we do the proper planning from the beginning. And hopefully, people see value in this ask user question tool. Make sure you specify it in your prompt and hopefully Greg that that made sense. It does. So I would say step number one for this Claude crash course is I would get good at planning. I would get really, really good at planning. I would get good at generating these, right?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Like, look, it keeps on asking me questions. If you notice the very first plan that we generated with Claude, it was two sets of questions and it was ready to build. But with this, it's asking me, do I have basic avatars, custom avatars, multi-scene videos? How do I want to handle storage? Do I want to download the videos instantly? Cloud storage, external storage, like there's so much to software engineering. And I think in our last video, you, someone shared this on Twitter, I don't know if it was you or someone else. Like, software, building personal software is easy. But building software others are going to use is very, very difficult. And if you don't have the audacity or the decency to to set up a little time, a little extra time to plan, then I guarantee you whatever you generate is going to be AI slop.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  And you might blame the model, but really the problem is you. So invest in your plans, spend time using planning. Don't use the generic plan mode that cursor or Claude code has. I would use Claude code and then I would specify the ask user question tool. It's going to continue to annoy you with questions, like it keeps asking, right? Because until it knows exactly what it is you want, it won't start building. So I would say that's step number one to building with Claude code. Step number two, and everyone's talking about Ralph and it's exciting, but I wouldn't use it. I wouldn't use Ralph.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  And the reason I wouldn't use Ralph, if I was just starting, y'all Greg, is because, um, how are you going to? Like imagine this, like imagine not knowing how to drive, but then buying a Tesla for uh like the self-driving stuff. Like, cool in theory, but maybe it's a great idea to know how to drive, how to steer, how to hit the corners, how to maybe yell at someone when they cut you off before you get the full automated version. I say this to say because when you get good at developing plans and then working with the AI to build each feature and testing each feature, you you start to develop this sense on product building,

• 15:43Speaker 01

  on on like, you know, even uh I heard someone call vibe QA testing. You get this sense by going one-on-one yourself. And this is why a lot of people who were fighting with Claude Code all these months are really, really good at using it now because they spent the time building without using these crazy automation. So if you're using Claude Code for the first time or you're just getting into it, good plan, number one. And number two, get your reps in by not using Ralph. So develop the features one by one. Now that you have your plan, you can literally tell Claude Code, hey, okay, let's build the first feature. Um, you know, go ahead and do it. And then once the feature is done, you can test it or ask it. How can I test this? How can I run this app?

• 16:25Speaker 01

  I wouldn't jump into using Ralph right away.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Build without Ralph. But let's say you've built these reps now and you're you're comfortable with Claude Code. Now you hear about all these things, skills, MCP, uh prompt dot M D, agent dot M D, um what else is there? Something dot M D. You you hear all these conventions, plugins, um you have Ralph, all these things. So what do I need to perfectly uh build something um using Claude Code or any agent? I'll be honest with you. Most of these things are all the same. Prompt M D and Agent M D are just markdown files. Um, plugins are skills with, you know, a little bit extra. What you need to build successfully using these agents

• 17:17Speaker 01

  is first of all, you need a good plan. Right, which are documents, which is the PRD dot MD we just generated. And then you need to document the progress that's being made. For anyone who's familiar with Ralph, you know what I'm talking about. For those who aren't, what's cool about a Ralph loop is as follows. A Ralph loop is basically, you have a list of things that need to be get, that need to get done. The, what you might call it, the PRD dot MD or the plan. You give it to the AI model, the model works on the first task, it finishes. It then documents it in another file and then it goes again. And it stops until it's completed the whole list.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Now, this isn't anything special, but the reason why it's now super powerful is because the models are getting so, so good. But here is the issue, if you have a terrible plan, if you have a terrible PRD, this doesn't matter, you're just donating money to Anthropic and I wish you the best of luck if that's what you want to do. But if you want to make sure that your tokens are not wasted, you're going to invest in a good PRD dot MD file or a good plan file. Greg, am I making sense so far? A hundred percent. Okay. You're driving the point home. Yes, so I'll talk a little bit about Ralph now. So with Mr. Ralph Wiggum, how do we use this?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Now, there's a lot of different iterations, like people are coming with their own style. I'm going to share with you my Ralph setup in a second, Greg. One thing I will say is Claude Code has a plugin, a Ralph Wiggum plugin. I wouldn't use that and the reason I wouldn't use that is even the person who invented the whole Ralph system is against it. It's not the best use of Ralph, but I just want to share this concept of how Ralph works. It's essentially going to go through our plan and it's going to build out each feature step by step. And it's not going to stop until it's done. This is cool when your plan rocks. If your plan sucks, then it's terrible, it doesn't matter.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Now, in terms of how to set up Ralph Wiggum, I have my own setup.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  And I don't want anyone to think I'm shilling my own setup for any reason. But the reason why I built my own setup is there's a couple of things my Ralph loop does. The first thing is it makes sure that there's a plan, a PRD dot M D file, and there's a progress dot T X T file. But it also, every feature it builds, it then writes a test. And it then links. And basically what this does is it makes sure that every feature that's built actually works. Right? Because there's no point on working on feature two if feature one doesn't work. If feature one doesn't work, if the test fails, guess what the AI model is going to do? It's going to go back to working on feature one. And once the test passes, we work on feature two.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  And then once feature two test passes, we work on features three, right? All this is awesome, but I'm going to go back to the same point. If your plan sucks, then the Ralph loop won't matter. Now, in order to set up this loop, um, you can find the uh, GitHub here. How to set it up? You honestly, I'm not even going to explain it. Uh, Greg, people can literally copy the link, pass it to Claude and then be like, I want to run this Ralph loop. And it will tell you exactly what to do. That's how good the models have become. But I'll show you an example of this running. So I have a simple PRD dot M D file. It's nothing crazy. It's just to show you the point. But basically there are a couple of tasks here. I want to build a basic server that has some basic endpoints.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  And I just want to show you how my Ralph loop works. So when I run this Ralph loop, and again, if you don't know how to run this, the you paste the GitHub URL in Claude code in your agent and ask it and it will tell you how to do it. I have a few different configurations. I can use open code if I want. I can use Codex if I want, but I'm just going to use Claude code. And I'm just going to run the script. And basically what it's going to start doing is it's going to start running through each task. As you can see, and it's going to update the PRD. And it's just going to continue to work. Now, I can go and leave, right? I can go about my day, hang with, um, hang with Greg. And this loop will continue to work.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  And I'm going to see that at some point, whether it's five minutes, three minutes, 10 minutes, however long this is, this is going to finish all the tasks. I'm going to have a working product built. And all this is cool, but it doesn't matter if I'm going to go back to the original document, if the plan isn't good. Now, skills are great, MCPs are great, all these different markdown files are great. You would do yourself a serious service if your, if your plan is good. So, the key to successfully building with Claude Code is you have an absolutely great plan. And if you use the Ask User Question Tool, you will spend so much time on the plan where it starts to get annoying.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  It doesn't get fun, but those of us who focus on this will end up having better outputs. Let's continue. If you notice here, my Ralph loop is continuing to go. And it took care of the first task. I can see some files already generated. If I go to the progress.txt file, you can see, Greg, it started to make some progress. It's documenting that. And this is just going to continue to work. This is just going to continue to run. So, people have different iterations. I know the Amcode people have their own iteration. Um, and different people have their own iteration. It doesn't really matter, right? Someone's Ralph is, could be better, someone's can be worse, someone's could be... All of that is cool, but don't get stuck in the weeds.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  The main sauce is how you can articulately, perfectly, in a beautiful presentation, create the perfect input. Because if you create the perfect input, we have reached a point where the models will give you perfect outputs. So, that's my main, uh, tip, crash course for people. Use the Ask User Question Tool. Build without using Ralph. And if you are going to use Ralph, understand if your plan sucks, you're just donating money to Anthropic. And I think Anthropic has enough money that they don't need your money being donated to them.

• 23:49Greg Isenberg?

  Amen. Amen. Is there anything else people need to know, like little tips and tricks? I notice, you know, you're not using the Mac terminal, you're using Ghosty.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So honestly, it's all preference, right? So like the terminal you use and all this stuff is all preference. Here's what I would say, like, let's have a tips and tricks list, tips and tricks. So first I would say is, my goodness, spelling today. First I would say is use the ask, what was the specific tool? I just wanna make sure I don't forget, ask user questions tool. Slept on, I don't know why no one's not talking about it. It literally, I saw the tweet from the Anthropic team, 100% I would use that when planning. Uh, number two, um, don't over obsess.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Obsess on uh MCP skills, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not saying don't get into these, I'm not saying don't read about them. I'm not saying don't use them, but I can almost guarantee you, these things are not the reason why your product isn't working. Right? Most of the time, it's your plan sucks, right? That's number two. Uh, number three, I would use Ralph after I've built something without. And the reason being is, again, listen, if you are a baller shot caller and you have all the money to blow and you don't care and you wanted don't need money to Anthropic, go ahead and use Ralph. But if we were to sit here eye to eye and you haven't built anything, deployed anything, there isn't a URL

• 25:27Speaker 01

  that I myself or Greg can click on that you've built, you have no business using Ralph. You literally have no business using Ralph. I would first get good at prompting and building something using a plan, whether it's whatever AG1, Claude Code, Open Code, whatever. Once you have something deployed to Vercel or like there's a URL and we can use it, then you can use Ralph. Number four, um, this is a little in the weeds, but context is more important than ever. And a lot of times Claude Code or even Cursor will tell you what percent of context has been used. Um, I generally wouldn't go over fifty percent, meaning like the Anthropic model Opus four point five

• 26:10Speaker 01

  has a two hundred thousand token context limit. The moment, in my opinion, you've got over a hundred thousand tokens, meaning you're using the same session. It starts to sort of deteriorate. That's when you have people, Greg, who say, oh, like, I started off good, but it started going bad. That's because you've filled it with so much context. And the best way to think about this is like yourself, right? Like, let's say we went to some English class and or some, you know, whatever class, and the professor just kept dumping information, information, information. At some point, we're gonna feel overwhelmed and we're gonna actually start forgetting stuff. Um, and I'm not saying that's how the models work, but that's how the models act, right? So context is very much important.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  The moment you see fifty percent or even forty percent, I would start a new session. And last but not least, um, have audacity. And what I mean by that is software development is starting to become easy. The software engineering is very, very hard. And what do I mean by that? Um, to architect software, to make sure things are usable, to create great UX, UI, to have great taste, to make something that people actually use requires time. And in order to spend time, it requires audacity. I know the models are good and you can clone a six billion dollar software. But if all of us can do it, now what makes software different? I think thinking about those things and thinking about the art of building products and building something that's tasteful is very, very important.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And I think anyone who uses these five, uh, tips should kick cheeks in twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, sorry.

• 27:44Greg Isenberg?

  Um, I agree on the audacity thing. I think like it's, for me, it's like about creating scroll stopping software. You know what I mean? Like, there's so many people and there's a lot of tutorials about this, like cloning billion dollar software. You know, I cloned a four billion dollar software, look at me. But that's not the type of software that's going to work in twenty twenty six, right? Um, I saw this, uh, uh, let me just share it real quick. I saw this guy who created a running app based on how you're feeling. So it's like, how are you feeling stressed, angry? And it's an AI assisted running app that interprets your current emotions to generate a personalized route. And I just thought it was interesting. You know what I mean? Like, I'd never seen an app like this.

• 28:29Greg Isenberg?

  And I think that, like, as, you know, you call it audacity. I think this is an audacious app, right? It's scroll stopping. You haven't seen it before. So I think push, you wanna push Claude code to like, get you to this, basically.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  And this is why I'm like so pro people not using graph if they haven't built anything fully. Cause like now we're, people are getting to a point where they, they want the model to think for them, right? Where like, if you look at the app, you just shared the animations and how things were floating. And like even the colors used for the different emotions, like that required thought, right? And that's what stops people now. Like if building the AI chat interface is easy, what's going to make your app different? I think a little bit of audacity, a little bit of thought and care and a little bit of taste goes a long way nowadays. And more than the models getting better, cause it's going to get easier. It's going to get better. It's going to get faster. But unfortunately, if you don't change, then it doesn't all matter.

• 29:28Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, and don't be afraid to use pen and paper. Like this, this person literally just like started sketching out the features. Like, how should this thing work?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, how should it feel like? And I love it. I love it, right? And, and this is why the app, if, I don't know the metrics, but I'm willing to bet it's doing really, really well. Because all this stuff matters. Like, we could clone something like this feature wise, but I'm willing to bet like the feel, the animations, the colors, we would not be able to get it exactly like this.

• 29:57Greg Isenberg?

  Hundred percent. All right, man. Thanks for coming on. You got me fired up. Actually, I didn't know about that interview tool, so thanks for sharing that with me.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, just a heads up, it will ask a lot of questions. I shared it with a couple of friends and a couple of people got annoyed, but it's worth it, right? Especially if you wanted to build something end to end, or you're building a very like, like very minute detailed feature, then it's really, really worth it. I wouldn't use the general plan personally. Um, so just a heads up, but it's really, really worth it. And I would love to hear people's feedback in the comments.

• 30:34Greg Isenberg?

  Sounds good. We'll be in the comments. Uh, you gotta come back on in a few months or whenever people want you. Uh, it's always an absolute privilege to have you here. I'll include links where you can follow, uh, and you should follow, uh, Monsieur Ras Mike, uh, his YouTube channel is X. I'll include the link to Ralphie, even though, if you're a beginner, don't even click that link.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  I, I wouldn't like, I know there's some degenerates who do, but I highly suggest you don't, because if you haven't even built without it, there's no point.

• 31:08Greg Isenberg?

  Have some willpower, folks. Come on, you know, don't click the link, but I'm putting it in there because I want to see who's tempted. And, uh, yeah, thanks again for coming on. I'll see you, uh, I'm coming to Toronto in April, so let's hang out.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  We'll see, we'll see each other then. And again, as always, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much, you know, for bringing me on.

• 31:25Greg Isenberg?

  Of course. Later.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Have a good one.