Follow me to find out about profitable AI builders. I'm also on YouTube: piped.video/@TheNextNewThing… Hear my past interviews on Mixergy
Austin, TX
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Andrew Warner retweeted
Huge thanks to @AndrewWarner for mentioning Claude Code Templates (aitmpl.com) on The Next New Thing podcast
And yes, the community is constantly cleaning up the marketplace
More skills don’t necessarily mean more knowledge. In many agent harnesses, too many components can actually introduce noise
Fewer components, higher quality, better agents
Thanks again for the mention, here’s the link if you want to listen to the podcast:
piped.video/watch?v=hlOk-EFU…
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A YC company built a smaller version of Jev.
And made it free.
It's on GitHub with 12,600 stars.
Like Jev, it can make decisions quickly and dependably.
Unlike Jev it's free, so you can build it into your software.
It's also tiny, so you can build it into hardware, like lights, vacuums, phones, etc.
No API key.
No credit card.
Just point your agent at its repo.
I interviewed the founder about how it works.
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Zapier just solved AI's top 2 problems: token burns & stupid results
It's called Next Gen Zaps
It solves 2 big problems:
Token burns
Ask your agent where it burns the most money. Do it.
I bet the top 1 or 2 result will be automations.
That's like paying a high-priced brain surgeon to check your home's mailbox.
@zapier's Next Gen Zaps finds the simple parts of your automations and hands them to plain (cheap) code.
Your agent only gets called in for the bits that need creativity.
Stupid agents
AI is probabilistic, constantly predicting what you probably want.
With probabilities, you're guaranteed to SOMETIMES be wrong.
For automations, that's stupid. We need accuracy.
Next Gen Zaps give us that.
They break automations down into parts that need to be probabilistic and hand them to AI, and parts that need to be deterministic and hand them to code.
@wadefoster (whose company sponsors my podcast) gave me a look at how it works.
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My buddy gave @Grok @Bot a phone. Now it's getting him customers.
The setup is easy:
~ Someone fills out a form but doesn't book? Grok Bot calls them.
~ Twilio dials. ElevenLabs gives it a natural voice.
~ Grok doesn't sell. It qualifies & books a call with a human.
It works because it's fast.
People get called while my friend's company is fresh on their minds.
I asked him to screenshare his setup
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I'm addicted to Grok Bot, but...
6 things bug the hell out of me:
1) I can't switch models
I love how Fable & Astra write. I wish I could use those. I can find workarounds, but I want an integration.
2) Can't add teammates
I want to include humans on my team in my conversations with bots.
3) Subscriptions are weird
There's a grok subscription that I got from X and a cursor subscription that I got for coding and some other thingy.
Make it easy for me.
And give me an easy 1-click way to up my subscription when I need to use more (which happens frequently).
4) Bots have access to everything
I do NOT want bots that interact with people (via email, etc) to have access to certain things, like my personal Notion pages.
Giving every bot access to everything made starting up fast & easy, but it's dangerous too.
5) No iMessage intergration
I want to use Grok Bot from the chat apps I already have, iMessage is the top use.
6) It gets is expensive
I ran out of subscription usage this week and had to pay over $200 for the extra use.
That's more than my full month subscription, for a couple of days
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This guy found a way to never pay for AI usage.
Tash noticed:
1. many LLM providers give free trials
2. you can string free trials together
3. which means you can code & use agents for free
But switching providers is a pain
So he wrote software for Mac/Windows/Android to automate switching
And he made it open source. It now has > 26k stars on GitHub.
Everyone told him it was breaking terms of service.
But LLM providers actually like it.
They ASK him to be included in his list of providers because they WANT users to test them.
I interviewed him and ask him to show me how to set it up.
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I think skills are the new software & employees.
But it takes me for-freakin'-ever to refine mine.
So I hired someone to create skills for me: a producer for one of my youtube shows.
Anyone have any experience outsourcing custom skill development?
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My advice to new creators, like @mvanhorn:
#1 Publish more frequently.
• You'll have more opportunities to experiment.
• Each rep will make you better.
• Viewers will be less likely to forget you.
• It'll become routine, so you won't hide from the work.
• It'll beat back your inner perfectionist.
#2 Do interviews.
• Each guest brings their fans to your work
#3 Jump on hot topics.
• I hate how effective it is, but when the world is obsessed with something that you talk about, they'll find you.
#4 Be interviewed on others' platforms.
• After Matt was on my channel his channel got its first ~1k subscribers. (Matt, let's do it again next week.)
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Andrew Warner retweeted
There was a big uptick in interest this month driven by 2 things:
1. @AndrewWarner 's awesome channel where he interviewed me (linked)
2. @Shpigford posting about self hosting OpenSEO which trended on X
Thank you both for sharing!
piped.video/watch?v=UNN6dLt5…
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Andrew Warner retweeted
Someone literally built Call of Duty from scratch with GPT-6 Astra.
@rileybrown got early access to GPT-6 Astra and the result looks exactly like the real game. And it's one of 8 things that dropped this week most people slept on.
Me and @AndrewWarner broke them all down in the video below. Here's what you need to know:
1. GPT-6 Astra is incredibly powerful and the Call of Duty demo is the proof. I played a lot of CoD and this is it, rough edges and all.
2. @businessbarista told Astra to build Pokemon Go for exploring Los Angeles. It overlays catchable spots on his camera. There is not much left you can't build with enough token spend.
3. Meta launched Muse, an AI agent that lives in your pocket. Free plan, $20 a month for power users, built to work inside Facebook and WhatsApp. This is how agents reach normal people.
4. Screen Context is Loom for agents. One click records your screen while you talk through the problem, one click pastes it into your agent. Free in the Mac App Store. 9 likes on X.
5. A random guy vibecoded an interview prep tool. Feed it your resume, cover letter, and the job posting and it drills you with realistic questions. $4.99 per interview.
6. AI Toolbox hit #1 on Product Hunt. Your prompts, synced across ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini. Great tool, confusing pricing: $10 a month or lifetime at $99 and $199.
7. Notch HUD puts every running agent in a heads-up display on your Mac. Shows which Claude Code and Codex agents need you, plus your 5 hour and weekly limits. Open source.
8. Apple Watch got Live Rewind. Double press the crown and it transcribes what was just said.
(Granola already does this on Apple Watch with the full transcript)
2 things about this week's releases that I find interesting:
1. The models are past what your daily work needs. Astra builds Call of Duty, but nothing you do day to day needed more than 5.5. Stop waiting on the next model and fix your workflow.
2. Small paid tools are the play. $4.99 per interview, $99 lifetime, free in the Mac store. Vibecode the tool that solves one problem, charge once, ship it.
We covered all 8 on this week's News You Missed.
Full video below.
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