You're using GPT-6 Astra WRONG

I talk with Ras Mic about GPT-6 Astra. We skip the game demos and the 3D toys, and we focus on use cases to earn money or improve products. I share 9 Astra prompts that I posted publicly, and Greg Brockman reposted. Ras then shows his hardware project: he moved from a speaker idea to a parts list, a Blender layout, and merged code in about 30 minutes. The takeaway is simple: use this model for the ideas that felt too large for you last year. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:53 – Astra Overview 04:14 – 9 Astra Prompts 11:48 – Jarvis Speaker Idea 16:21 – Think Bigger with Astra 18:29 – Vibe Coding to Vibe Manufacturing 21:16 – Closing Thoughts Key Points Astra costs more per task, and it uses fewer steps, so the value per dollar stays high. A performance audit moved one of Ras’s apps from 800 ms to 20–30 ms. A security audit on his live payments app found real risks in production. Ras went from a speaker idea to a $561 parts order and a merged pull request in about 30 minutes. Ras’s point: intelligence keeps climbing, and bravery stays flat. Ask for bigger things. The shift that vibe coding brought to software now reaches physical products. 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/ 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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  GPT-6 Astra is here and I got good news for you. By the end of this episode, you're gonna understand what are the different startup ideas? What are the different use cases? How do you use it to be more productive? How do you use it to save money, to make money? Everything, all in here. I'm gonna show you how you can use it with hardware to create hardware businesses. And this is an episode not just focused around cool 3D demos. This is for people who wanna make money, to be more productive with AI, and how you can use it specifically with Astra. What are the different prompts? How to think about it? I brought on my friend Ross Mike, who's just amazing at clearly explaining all this sorts of stuff. So enjoy the episode. Like, comment, subscribe for more of this in your feed, and I can't wait to see you at the end.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  Ross Mike on the pod. This isn't your average GPT-6 Astra review, is it?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  No, we don't have no games. We don't have any trade demos. We don't have... There's some weird ones, right? Some weird 3D ones. Although those things are cool, they're not really useful to myself, you, and Greg. So we're actually gonna talk about some useful, cool stuff. And particularly, we're gonna get you guys to dream big with hardware.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So by the end of this episode, what I hope you take away is getting your creative juices flowing around really

• 1:30Speaker 00

  some ideas around how you can build a business using GPT-6 Astra, and actually how you can have a more productive codebase, have better products. So by the end of this, you're not gonna get some glitzy, cool video game thing, but you're actually gonna have, okay, here's what I can actually create today.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Yup, that's what we're gonna do, and we'll just get started. So a couple of things about the model, first and foremost. This is OpenAI's most expensive model. It's on par with Fable in terms of pricing, but if you have a Codex subscription, very subsidized. And not only that, it's also very efficient, meaning it doesn't take as many steps to complete a task. So even though, yes, the price is high, you're still getting a good bang for intelligence. If you have an existing app or web app, mobile app, something that you've worked on software, I highly encourage you to do two things. Tell the agent, tell your Codex agent, "I want to run a performance update. My pages aren't as fast as they need to be. My API calls aren't as fast as they need to be. Please review my entire app and suggest a performance update."

• 2:36Speaker 01

  I did that for one of my apps, and speeds went from 800 milliseconds to literally 20 to 30 milliseconds, right? That's an insane increase in speed. Highly suggest you do that. Number two, something we couldn't do with Fable is a security audit. I was telling Greg this. I have some sort of payments startup, if you will, in the background for a specific niche. And I had a couple of people using it. I ran the security audit, and Astra was basically like, "My boy would have been cooked if I didn't read all this." So run a security audit if you have an app that people are actually using. In terms of UI, I mean, I could just show some examples. This is one that it designed really nice. The reason it was nice was because I gave it a reference image.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  And the reference image, if I have it, is the old Microsoft XP network icon. I really like the OT network icon.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Very smaggy.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  For anyone over 30, you remember this. I gave it that, I'm like, "Use this as a reference image." And yeah, it looks pretty nice. Without a reference image, it kinda does too much, right? So do what you will with that. Number four, computer use. The agent Codex Astra insane with using your computer, insane with doing tasks for you in the background, using your local machine. Highly encourage you to do that. But what Greg wanted me to talk about...

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Wait, before you get into this, before you get into this, I wanna share some things of my own, of my own that I think you should use Astra for. So let me share my screen real quick.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Please.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  So I tweeted this. Greg Brockman retweeted it, and he said it was good. So it's good enough for Greg Brockman.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  For all of us.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  It's good enough for all of us. So I just wrote, "Here's some nine cool Astra prompts we're trying." One is the bill renegotiator. "Go through my internet, phone, software bills. Jump into each provider's chat support and negotiate them down or cancel what I'm not using." No-brainer.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  I pay for a lot of stuff, I'll tell you that right now.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  And you're in Canada, right? So you're paying a lot probably for your phone and internet and stuff like that. So I'm obsessed with like, how do you turn agencies into software right now? So here, "Pick one service business in a niche." You pick the niche. "And reverse engineer the exact workflow they sell to clients. Break it into steps, tools used, inputs, outputs, human judgment points, and places where the work gets slow or expensive. Then design the simplest AI product that could replace the first version of that service and charge $500 to $5,000 a month." Now, is it gonna be perfect? No, but it's gonna get your creative juices flowing around what the software could look like.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  And I wanna add to that. I think one thing that I do a lot, that a lot of people should do, is I prototype the heck out of everything, Greg. Like, let's say I'm building an app, and I'm using Daytona, like their sandbox provider. I will literally, before I jump into Daytona, I'll spend 15 minutes trying to build a clone. It's not that I'm going to use the clone, but I'm going to allow building the clone to just get me to think. Because I think one thing that I've realized is intelligence has gone up, but the bravery for people to try new things hasn't gone up, right? Like, I said this the other, in a video. The saddest thing that people can do with a model like GPT-6 Astra is generate landing pages.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Literally.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  It's just like, you can use GPT-4 or whatever. We're past that, like, really think bigger. So I like that idea. Number two is fire.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Number three, I almost called it the Gary Vaynerchuk prompt, but I refrained. "Watch Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist in my city for cameras, furniture, bikes, what have you. Listed way under market, and text me the second one's mispriced with the link." This is like a really good idea for people who just wanna make a few hundred dollars a day or something.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  And maybe they can't get a job. A lot of our young people can't get jobs right now.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  I'm gonna screenshot that and put it in my church group chat, because it's true, like, jobs for the young kids is really, really hard right now.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's really, really hard. So that's a good one. And also, for a lot of people, it's fun to do this sort of thing. So young or old, this is an interesting one. Number four, if you are a founder, this is a no-brainer. "Look at my docs. Basically, it's creating the one-person company dashboard. Look at my docs, notes, Stripe exports, analytics, customer calls, and project list, and build a weekly operator dashboard. I wanna know what is making money, what's wasting time, what customers are asking for, what I should stop doing, and the three highest leverage actions for the next week. Be blunt and show your work."

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Prove.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  You should set that up for your project.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was literally just gonna say that.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Okay, we got a few more, and then we'll get to your hardware thing using Blender, which I think is just fascinating. I want you to show me that. Number five, audit my company for agent opportunities. "Look at how this business works and find the tasks we should give to agents before hiring another person." This is just how, by the way, side note, this is how I'm thinking before I hire anyone. I'm like, should I just get an agent to do this? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but that's been the default of how I've been thinking as I'm building my company. "For each task, estimate the current human time, the cost of mistakes, the tools involved, the difficulty of automating it, and the first safe version we could deploy.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Prioritize things that save money or create revenue within 30 days." And then we have, I'll do, we're almost done, I'll do them all. "Be my browser operator." So you can actually use Astra to do this, right? "Use the browser to complete this workflow. You give it the workflow. As you go, click through the actual sites, collect the data, fill the forms where appropriate, and keep notes on what broke or slowed down. When you're done, give me the output, the repeatable SOP, and the automation plan so this can become an agent."

• 8:51Speaker 01

  And it will do this well. Like, I'm so bullish on computer use. Like, I really, and a lot of people might think it's insane, or it doesn't work, or breaks. Like, you'll be surprised how good Astra is. If anyone's in Canada, then you know how terrible the CRA website is, like, how atrocious that monstrosity is. If the government's watching, I'm just joking. But I literally got Astra with Codex to comb through tons of pages to find me the exact thing I want that I couldn't find on Google Search, right? So it really is that good.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. Number seven, you can literally build a QA team. So every night, open my app on a real phone, go through signup, checkout, and the main flows, and screenshot anything that's broken or confusing. So keyword confusing too. Like when I say QA, I don't necessarily mean there's like, you know, of course, it could be like a bug, but it can also be like a UX bug. Like people are just confused what happens here.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Too much information, the bug's in the wrong place.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Competitor spy, sign up to my top three competitors, sit inside their product and their emails, and send me a monthly report on every new feature, price change, and the thing they do better than that.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  That is a good one. That is a good one.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting is like, there's two types of founders. Either the founders who are obsessed with the competition and are like spending too much time looking at competition, and then the founder who like ignores it completely and like doesn't know what they're doing at all. And I think what's good about this is it's sort of like the happy medium. So you just, it's just monthly. Like every month I want to know like what I need to know, and that's it.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  No, that makes sense. And again, it's competition for a reason, right? Like there's sort of this element of like, oh, you know, looking around and stuff, but obviously innovation always wins.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  And this one, yes, it is make a video, the last one is make a video game, but it's making a video game with the purpose of getting you email signups and phone numbers and data and helping you sell whatever you're selling. So it's build a browser game around this mechanic. You give it a mechanic. Don't just make a cute demo, add progression, tension, scoring, failure, polish, and one reason someone would send it to a friend. That's extremely key because you're creating, you want to create something that's a viral game. I saw a lot of games that are like really cool, but people wouldn't actually send them to their friends. Then add lead capture, like email and SMS, and it needs to tie into my core product, which sells XYZ.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That's actually pretty good. Like a, like a really like something cute and fun that I'd want to share. Because to your point, right, like people are making these first-person shooters, which is great. It shows the model capability, but I have Call of Duty at home.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Exactly. All right. I showed you mine, you show me yours.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yes. So please don't make fun of me, people watching, but I've had this idea of a hardware startup for a while. Obviously, we've seen the rise of personal agents. I have one in the works that I plan on launching soon that I think is a different take and pretty cool. But the one aspect that the reason why I wanted a personal agent and like, this is again, like a dream of mine since a child, like the whole Jarvis thing is I wanted there to be physical hardware, right? And it's such a miss for companies like, you know, Amazon and like Apple, like they have like these beautiful products, but like their agent or the AI sucks. In particular, I'm talking about the HomePod. If anyone has the HomePod, Siri is terrible, but this is the best looking speaker, in my opinion.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  And I just got to thinking, like, what if I could put my agent on like a HomePod? So first, my thought process is buy the HomePod and jailbreak it. I did a little bit of research, not possible to do it. I'm like, what if I built it, right? So I literally told the agent, and I'll zoom in so we can see the convo. I asked, I told the agent, I have Blender installed, can you use it? It's, I know that it can use it. I just wanted it to set up a connection. It did that. And I asked it to create a HomePod-like speaker, and it did. And I asked it, I want to build an AI home speaker. I want to load my agent, Ruth, from, and I gave it my repo. How would I DIY? And then it basically said that I would need a Raspberry Pi speaker, I could load in my agent,

• 13:20Speaker 01

  and it was possible. Now, this got me excited because I didn't think this was possible. I didn't think that I had the capability to do it. And it basically created me a diagram, and it said, it even went as far as to say, this is what I would need to buy to have a first physical prototype. Now, I got excited, right? And it even gave me a budget, it's like 350 to 450 before tax. I live in Canada, so this is like 700 bucks, 600 bucks. I was like, cool, give me amazon.ca links, right? And it got me the links. And it was 561 before tax. I was like, I just bought. I just automatically bought. But then I panicked. I'm like, what do I do? I don't know nothing about hardware. So I asked the agent, Greg, can you use Blender to show me

• 14:03Speaker 01

  the setup of this project? And will you believe it? It showed exactly how I would have each thing laid up, right? This is the Raspberry Pi. This is me plugging it in. This is some sort of speak, this is the speaker. This is some sort of connector. I don't even know what this is, but this helps. And I think this is the voice recognizer. But it basically laid out on Blender how I would have this set up. Now I've got to the point where I'm like, oh, I can build this. And then it was telling me, once we've proven the proof of concept, then this is what we would need to build out the HomePod version. And then even in a separate thread, I have emails, so I don't want to share.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  But in a separate thread, it was even giving, telling me Chinese suppliers to access, to reach out to, to build the HomePod shelf. So I went from idea to setup. I bought all the products, right? I told it I bought all the products. And then I was like, okay, like I bought this stuff, but I have my agent repo. What code would I need to add, or what changes would I need to make to set this up? Guess what it did, Greg? It wrote the code, and it made a PR. I literally had code, it made a PR, where like, once I have the thing set up, I can easily load my agent. Mind you, this is a couple of minutes conversation, but I dared to think a little more bigger out of

• 15:27Speaker 01

  my box. So it gave me the PR, it explained to me the code, and then I asked it for the links again because I didn't purchase at that time. I asked for the PR, I can click it and I can show you.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  I merged the PR. It made a PR. So I know, like, once I have my, once I have all the hardware stuff ready, I'm going to build it, and I'm going to have it set up. And I even asked it, just to be sure, do I get one of each, by the way? And it said yes. So we went from idea, from exploration, Greg, to setup, to initial prototype, costs you 500 bucks. It gave me, it showed me exactly how it's set everything up, right? And if I have further questions, I'll continue to work with the agent. It also wrote the code that I'm going to load into the Raspberry Pi to make my speaker agent work.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  This was half an hour of work. This, in my opinion, is the true power of Astro, where like, we have models like Fable, like, okay, not Fable, but we have like 5.6 Soul, and all these different smaller models that are good at a lot of things. What makes Astro amazing is for these like insane hardware projects, this next level software. So again, if you're using Astro to build a landing page, it's a sad use of intelligence. But I kind of wanted to use this moment to encourage you all, if you've had that hardware idea, if you've had that next level software idea, if you want another, I don't know if I have the tab here.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  I have a PS4 lying around. And I was wondering, if I, can I boot Linux on a PS4 and run agents on it? And I literally said, I have PS4, based on what you know about me, I don't plan on gaming with it. What can I do? That was the first thing I asked. And it's like, you could turn it to Media Server, this, this, that. But then it said, turn it into a Linux learning project. I was like, oh, I didn't know you could do that. So I said, low-key nuking it and running Linux would be cool. And then it says, yeah, a PS4 you can SSH into and use as a Linux lab would be a fun project. And then people have been talking about on March, which is a type of Linux distro.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And I was like, could I run it on PS4? Yes. I could run Linux on my dust collecting PS4. I would have never imagined, thought, or even tried to do this. But with this model, I'm starting to think way outside the box. And mind you, you might think, oh, you're a developer, so this is easier. This is networking OS stuff. I'm more of a web dev, mobile dev type of developer. This is, this is like a little above like my pay grade, but like, the last couple of months, I'm doing stuff like this. I have a home lab. I'm buying, I bought a couple DGX kits. I am thinking way above what my normal means would have been if I didn't have access to this

• 18:22Speaker 01

  intelligence. And there's no reason you shouldn't. I'll stop yapping, Greg, so you can say some things as well.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  I remember when 2024, when lovable and Bolt and Replid, V0 came out, all of a sudden, anyone could be a vibe coder. And we started seeing all these vibe coding projects, websites, landing pages, apps. And you know, the effects of that are still playing out to this day. It feels like we're having a similar shift right now, but for physical projects. So what you showed me with your hardware product, you know, that would have required you become a full-time 3D designer or slash engineer.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I would have never known how to do any of this. And to be honest, I wouldn't have tried because it's intimidating. And like, I think, you know, most humans, like I myself, like, I like knowing the stuff that I'm doing. And if I don't know, like, about hardware, for example, it would feel intimidating for me, for me to even try. Now, like, I have a, like, a friend for 200 bucks a month, or 50 bucks a month, or 20 bucks a month, that can actually walk me through all of this, and it's super possible. I even have a desk coming up that's gonna be like, right here, and it's gonna be my hardware station. And I'm going to just start building random stuff. And let's say nothing turns to a product, the enjoyment of learning and developing, and maybe it leads to job opportunity, a business, whatever it is, you owe it to yourself to do this stuff.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, make a printable object, a CAD file, a blender, blender model, a circuit board, like, something. Because I think that there's just, there's opportunity in terms of like niche products that you, you know, you might be like, oh, I don't know how big of a market there is for this sort of thing. But it doesn't need to be huge. And if it doesn't cost a lot to, to create, like, there's a business here. So I think, I actually personally believe that there's gonna be thousands of $1 million a year plus businesses that get created in this whole shift that OpenAI has spearheaded with Astra around like vibe manufacturing.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  You know, will the other models catch up? Absolutely. But I think that it's fair to say that Astra was the first model that ushered in this era. And I think this is just really, like, for me, my, where my brain is going is like, okay, what are some small little products that, you know, seem niche, but solve a real pain point that I can go and create in a short amount of time? And then, you know, create, you know, meta ads to drive traffic to those, to those products. That's what, that's what's going through my mind.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when I build my whole pod, I'm gonna hit up Greg to teach me all that stuff. So make sure you're subscribed, because that's all the stuff he teaches here, too.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  I appreciate you. Mickey, thanks for coming on. Astra is awesome. And I'm curious to see how the other models take note of it.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Sure. Anthropic is sweating for Circa for, for the first time, I would like, if I, if someone asked me, pick a subscription, I would cancel Anthropic subscription. I would cancel Claude. Astra's that good. So please take advantage of the subsidies before they eventually start charging us the real price of these things.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, because the val, I mean, think about it, like, the value is obviously more than what we're paying now.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. Like, I, like, I asked my Astra agent to calculate how much of, how much I've been using, like, the subscription price, but also like, in terms of API price, how much like I've been using in terms of model cost. And in the last week, I've spent over $24,000. Mind you, I just have a couple of $200 subscriptions, right? So there's an insane level of subsidization that's happening. Take advantage of it now. Dream big, act big, and build big.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Appreciate you. I'll include links where you can follow Ross Mike, as he's, as he's known on the internet, YouTube, X, and all those places. Go, go and subscribe, go and check him out. Thanks again for coming on. I think this is probably your, what is it, sixth, seventh, eighth time coming on?

• 22:40Speaker 01

  I'm a regular this, on this pod, and as always, I appreciate you, Greg. It really means a lot for you bringing me on, and thank you, everybody, for always watching and showing love as well.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  See you later.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Have a good one.