Behind the Craft

Sam is the co-founder of Granola, the AI meeting notes app now valued at $1.5B. Granola has helped me survive (and even enjoy) countless meetings, so I was excited to learn how Sam uses AI to show up prepared. We also talked about building an AI-native company without the 996 grind and what design means when agents skip your app entirely.

Sam and I talked about:

(00:00) The AI brief Sam now relies on before every new meeting

(01:27) “What did I miss?”: Granola’s most used recipe

(03:45) Why Granola hides the transcript despite user complaints

(09:37) A Granola recipe to get feedback from founders

(13:54) Why Sam feels a pang of sadness when agents skip your UI

(19:30) Why Sam’s Figma use fell to 20% and how Granola stops slop

(26:14) Nacho: The agent every Granola employee asks first

(30:58) Why most people stop improving their product way too early

Thanks to our sponsors:

Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/how-to-use-ai-to-survive-meetings-sam-stephenson

Where to find Sam:

X: https://x.com/samstphenson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephensonsam/

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Peng and Lauren are the lead designer and engineer for Grok Bot at SpaceXAI. In our interview, they showed me 14 bots that they use for work and life, from a design bot that helps Peng mock up designs to an entire team of engineering bots that help Lauren ship faster.

Peng, Lauren, and I talked about:

(00:00) The bots that the Grok Bot team actually uses

(01:23) Peng’s chief of staff bot buys supplies and lists gear

(06:31) Putting PM, design, and eng bots in the same room

(10:07) Turning a street photo into a diorama on Peng’s website

(14:16) How Lauren’s bots test their own work before merging

(17:59) Dr. Eggbot, Lauren’s bot that designs and audits your bots

(21:27) The assistant bot that booked Lauren’s multi-city trip

(25:22) Eng bots that sometimes land PRs before Lauren reads them

(38:59) How to trust your bots with more work, one skill at a time

Thanks to our sponsors:

Granola: AI meeting notes that don’t suck https://granola.ai/peter

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/grok-bot-team-14-best-bots-peng-zheng-lauren-tan

Where to find Peng Zheng:

X: https://x.com/pengzheng_

Website: https://www.pengzhe.ng/

Where to find Lauren Tan:

X: https://x.com/poteto

Dr. Eggbot: https://x.ai/bot/marketplace/bots/dr-eggbot-v2

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Ethan is the product lead for ChatGPT Finances at OpenAI. He previously co-founded Digit, which helped more than 10 million people save over $9 billion. In our interview, he shared six practical ways to use ChatGPT to find wasted spending, save money on taxes, maximize credit card rewards, and model major financial decisions. I’m confident at least one of these use cases will save you money today.

Ethan and I talked about:

(00:00) ChatGPT Finances can save you money right now

(03:37) Use case 1: Cancel recurring subscriptions

(09:37) How ChatGPT protects your financial data

(18:03) Use case 2: Find tax savings proactively

(24:58) Use case 3: Cut ETF and mutual fund fees

(26:20) Use case 4: Maximize credit card rewards

(28:20) Use case 5: Model income and taking time off

(31:05) Use case 6: Decide whether to rent or buy

(34:00) How to set up recurring finance checks

(36:58) Shipping 47 product updates in one week

Thanks to our sponsors:

Wispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/how-to-save-money-now-with-chatgpt-finances-ethan-bloch

Where to find Ethan:

X: https://x.com/ebloch

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ebloch/

Website: https://ethanbloch.com/

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Pedro is widely respected as one of the most AI-pilled CEOs out there. His hot take is that “agents” is a terrible name. Instead, he showed me what you should build: AI employees that have a defined job, skills, manager, and budget. Pedro also did a live demo of how he still uses OpenClaw to stay on top of his $5B business.

Pedro and I talked about:

(00:00) Build AI employees, not AI agents

(05:23) Why Pedro spends half his time reviewing work

(12:32) Live demo: Jim, Brex’s AI recruiting employee

(21:24) Why Brex makes engineers build with AI in interviews

(22:33) CrabTrap: How to stop AI employees from leaking data

(27:30) The tokenmaxxing bill is coming. Here’s how to control it

(40:45) Live demo: Pedro’s OpenClaw system runs his life

Thanks to our sponsors:

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/stop-building-ai-agents-build-ai-employees-insead-pedro-franceschi-brex

Where to find Pedro:

X: https://x.com/pedroh96

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pfranceschi/

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📌 Copy the AI system I use to run a one-person $1M+ business: https://www.behindthecraft.com

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Sue is the co-founder and CEO of Brilliant, an interactive learning platform with 10M+ learners. I asked her how AI can help kids learn without doing their thinking for them, and she played back a real session with Koji, Brilliant’s AI tutor. If you’re building AI products or raising kids, watch how it helps a student work through a mistake without handing over the answer.

We talked about:

(00:00) Why AI should make kids think harder

(01:34) Why test scores are down while grades are up

(09:41) Koji: An AI tutor that won’t give you the answer

(18:05) Why humans design lessons and AI builds them

(22:25) Primitives: The building blocks behind Brilliant’s AI

(29:30) Testing AI lessons with simulated students

(32:10) Measuring learning, not lesson completion

(34:39) Sue’s rule for competing with the big AI labs

(39:10) How to raise kids who enjoy doing hard things

Thanks to our sponsors:

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

Wispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang

Where to find Sue:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-khim-70b86014/

Brilliant: https://brilliant.org

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📌 Copy the AI system I use to run a one-person $1M+ business: https://www.behindthecraft.com

🤝 Subscribe to my practical AI newsletter read by 150K+ professionals: https://creatoreconomy.so

As head of product engineering at Replit, Amol has a firsthand look at which vibe-coded apps become real businesses. He showed me three apps built by non-coders that reached six figures, then walked through his 4-step process to take a prototype to production — publishing, security, monetization, and distribution.

Amol and I talked about:

(00:00) He built an app in 3 days that made $100K+ in month one

(02:08) Three vibe-coded apps that became real businesses

(08:04) What six-figure vibe-coded apps have in common

(12:31) Live demo: Turn an AI interview coach into a real business

(13:59) Steps 1 and 2: Publish the app and make it secure

(17:50) Steps 3 and 4: Add payments and optimize SEO

(21:35) How to replace expensive SaaS with internal tools

(28:22) What software survives when code costs almost nothing

(31:02) Why value is moving from models to apps

Thanks to our sponsors:

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

Wispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/how-non-coders-are-vibe-coding-100k-businesses-with-ai-amol-jain-replit

Where to find Amol:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jainamol

Website: https://replit.com

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📌 Copy the AI system I use to run a one-person $1M+ business: https://www.behindthecraft.com

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Shreya and Hamel teach the industry standard course for AI evaluations taken by 4,500+ students from OpenAI, Google, and more. In our interview, I asked them to give live feedback on the AI evals that I built for my skills and demo how anyone can run evals with ChatGPT/Claude and their free evals skill. Don’t miss this up to date primer on evals from the real experts. 🙂

P.S., I asked Shreya and Hamel to give my audience 25% off the next cohort of their AI evals course. It has 4.7 stars with 900 reviews which is almost unheard of on Maven. Sign up via the link here: https://maven.com/parlance-labs/evals?utm_campaign=peteryang&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=maven&promoCode=PETERYANG

We talked about:

(00:00) Why AI evals are completely different now with the latest models

(02:30) Demo: Live audit of the evals that I built for my AI skills

(05:14) Top down vs. bottom up evals and why AI sucks at the latter

(08:16) Spinning up AI agents to grade each eval criteria

(14:32) Demo: Using Shreyas AI skill to run evals in Claude

(23:46) How to review output labels to identify failures

(34:37) How to turn failures into reusable evals

(43:19) Where human judgement is still needed

Resources mentioned:

Free eval skills from Shreya: https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills

Do automated evals work?: https://parlance-labs.com/blog/posts/auto-evals/

Thanks to our sponsors:

Wispr Flow — 4x faster than typing with your voice — https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/how-to-build-better-ai-evals-with-claude-code-shreya-hamel

Where to find Shreya and Hamel:

Shreya: https://www.sh-reya.com/

Hamel: https://hamel.dev/

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📌 Copy the AI system I use to run a one-person $1M+ business: https://www.behindthecraft.com

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Riley is a top AI creator and founder of Agent Native. In this episode, he showed me how he uses Codex to run his entire content business from generating engaging thumbnails to writing incredible video hooks. Riley also shared his full AI stack including some lesser known AI tools to edit videos, draw diagrams, and more.

We talked about:

(00:00) How Codex runs Riley’s 1.5M+ follower content business

(03:16) Demo: Using Codex to create animations and B-roll

(07:28) Demo: Codex can reverse-engineer a top YouTube hook

(13:24) The BRENS framework to turn an idea into a strong hook

(17:24) Demo: Riley’s Codex stack for diagrams, thumbnails, and posts

(22:01) How Riley creates so much content every week

(25:41) Demo: Using Codex and Paper for viral YouTube thumbnails

(35:01) How to set up AI agents to find content ideas proactively

Thanks to our sponsors:

Google AI Studio: The fastest way to go from prompt to production https://aistudio.google.com/?utm_source=peteryang&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=26Q3-peteryang_ais

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

Wispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/how-i-run-my-content-business-with-codex-riley-brown

Where to find Riley:

Agent Native, Riley’s new company: https://agentnative.inc/

X: https://x.com/rileybrown

Website: https://rileybrown.xyz/

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📌 Copy the AI system I use to run a one-person $1M+ business: https://www.behindthecraft.com

🤝 Subscribe to my practical AI newsletter read by 150K+ professionals: https://creatoreconomy.so

Nan and Jacob built Linear Agent, which has transformed how the $1.25B company gets work done. In this episode, they took me from the initial memo to launch, showing how to give an agent tools to find the context it needs, use evals to improve reliability, and more. This episode is a must-watch if you want a concrete, behind-the-scenes example of how to build a production agent end to end.

We talked about:

(00:00) What’s holding AI agents back as models improve?

(00:51) Three things every good agent needs

(03:00) Demo: The internal memo that started Linear Agent

(09:50) The biggest mistake to avoid when building agents

(11:29) Demo: From Slack to code in 6 minutes with the agent

(17:01) When prototyping, “use the biggest model until it works”

(24:02) Give agents tools to find context, not more context

(34:07) The first thing to do before building an agent

Thanks to our sponsors:

Oceans: Hire AI-native EAs http://oceanstalent.com/peter

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/5-rules-for-building-ai-agents-in-production-linear-nan-jacob

Where to find Nan and Jacob:

Nan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenanyu

Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-shumway-314a8366

Linear Agent: https://linear.app/docs/linear-agent

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📌 Copy my personal AI system to save time and build with AI: https://www.behindthecraft.com/

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Karan co-founded Nous Research, the company behind Hermes, the #1 personal agent and AI app overall on OpenRouter. I found him incredibly down to earth as we discussed why open-source AI must win, how Hermes gets better the more you use it, and even a live demo of how Hermes can mod your favorite childhood games.

Karan and I talked about:

(00:00) How Hermes differs from Claude Code and Codex

(02:20) Why every AI model now sounds exactly the same

(11:16) How to stop AI from saying “you’re absolutely right”

(15:16) How Hermes creates skills without bloating its context

(16:40) The open vs. closed-source debate on AI safety

(23:40) Using one Kanban board for humans and AI agents

(26:45) Demo: Rebuilding a childhood Sonic world with Hermes

(36:07) How two Discord friends built a self-improving agent

(42:40) How Hermes became its own biggest contributor

Thanks to our sponsors:

Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYang

Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft

Wispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang

📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/hermes-co-founder-on-building-an-ai-agent-that-improves-itself-karan-malhotra

Where to find Karan:

X: https://x.com/karan4d

Website: https://www.karan4d.com/

Hermes Agent: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

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