A note from The Andrews: Hey! It would help us a lot if you would review Product Fridays on Apple Podcasts (even if you don’t like us). It’s basically like giving us money. If you do, we’ll immortalize you in a limerick on the next show.

AI is changing software development — duh! But while no-code platforms like Replit and Lovable have gotten a lot of attention, most of the magic is happening when developers partner with AI instead.

That means instead of ditching the IDE altogether, they’re using tools like Claude Code and Cursor to make engineering plans, debug code, and bang through all the boring scaffolding no one wants to do.

This week on Product Fridays, we pull back the curtain on our own coding workflows, explaining how a project goes from idea to production.

And we argue this style of hands-on vibecoding is more productive than using no-code platforms — even if you don’t know much code at all.

We’ll cover:

* How we use ChatGPT and Claude to think through architecture

* How we use Cursor and Visual Studio Code (with Claude) to write the code

* How AI makes it hard to resist laziness…

* … and how it’s an awesome tutor, too

Discussed in this episode:

* Replit

* Lovable

* Cursor

* Claude Code and Visual Studio Code

* Paradise on Hulu

* Snickers candy bars

A programming note: We’re now releasing Product Fridays on Mondays. We know, we know, Friday is right there in the name. But Friday is the vibe, you see. And Monday turns out to be a better day to release podcasts.

OpenAI’s latest product, ChatGPT Pulse, automatically compiles a personal news digest from your email, calendar, and across the web. It’s convenient, addictive — and a little terrifying if you work in media. Because in this world, the reporter still digs up the facts, but the reader never actually reads their words. The AI does the writing instead.

This week on Product Fridays, we ask: What happens when the machines become the primary consumers of journalism?

We draw a distinction between “bespoke” media — the creators and publications you seek out for their voices (The Atlantic, Substack, the McElroys) — and “commodity” news, where the value lies in facts, not style. The former might survive as personality-driven brands. The latter risks becoming raw material for AI.

Or is there a third way? Consider a new model that lets publishers feed high-quality reporting directly to LLMs and get paid for it. Enter MCP, a universal protocol that allows language models to securely talk to other systems. Imagine paying a few dollars to add CNBC, The Economist, or the AP directly to your personalized feed.

It’s a hopeful idea: reconnecting readers, machines, and journalists in a way that rewards everyone. But unless news organizations adapt fast, ChatGPT could do to media what Apple News, Google, and Facebook already did, only faster.

And hey, we’ve got a request. We’re asking our readers/viewers/listeners to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. As thanks, we will write a personalized limerick for every review — and read it on the next episode. Win-win-win-win-win-win-win!

Mentioned in this episode:

* Introducing ChatGPT Pulse

* Model Context Protocol (MCP)

* The McElroy Family

Andrew McGill shares a new demo he’s been working on — an AI-powered interior design assistant called Zhuzh — and wonders aloud: if this is just ChatGPT with a prettier interface, what’s the point? But maybe that is the point.

We go deep on:

* Why good UI still matters in the age of LLMs

* How purpose-built tools outshine general-purpose chat for many use cases

* Where wrapper apps land on the spectrum of AI product value

* The difference between novelty and utility

* What makes an AI idea ChatGPT-proof

Plus, honorable mentions: personalized podcast feeds, offline LLMs, and the dream of an air-gapped house AI.

We also commit to launching a small wrapper app of our own before the next episode. What should we make? Tell us in the comments.

Mentioned in the episode

Here are the products and articles we talked about (links TBD):

* Zhuzh, Andrew McGill’s AI-powered interior design demo

* OpenAI usage study (700M weekly active users)

* Flighty (flight tracking app)

* Renovate AI (home design tool)

* Post AI (Washington Post’s chatbot experiment)

* Notebook LM by Google

* Huxe (new personalized podcast app from former Notebook LM team)

* Ollama (run local LLMs)

* Reins (GUI app for local model management)

We've returned from our summer break, and Phelps is ALREADY trying to get back on Island Time by outsourcing the entire podcast to AI voice clones.

Seriously, text-to-speech is one of those sneaky technologies that has gotten amazingly better in the last year. Gone are the days of stilted, Siri-esque robot voices mispronouncing your name. AI voice bots can now speak fluidly, emote realistically — and chortle?

This week, we messed around in ElevenLabs to explore the boundaries of this tech. Listen for:

* An uncannily good simulacrum of McGill’s Philly accent;

* Bootleg fairytale podcasts for 5-year-olds;

* Some options for Product Friday’s new theme song, inspired by 90s hip-hop and death metal.

You liking this?

Yay! Tell a friend.

And believe it or not, doing fun projects with technology is actually how we make a living. If there’s a project you’ve been dying to start, or if you just want to get to know us better, we’d love to chat.

This week on Product Fridays, we’re trying something new: a deep dive. We focus on a single product and debate whether it’s worth keeping on our phones.

First up: Rise, the sleep and energy-tracking app that promises to turn anyone into a morning person—whether you like it or not.

We break down what makes Rise different from other sleep apps (spoiler: it’s not just the graphs), how it gamifies your sleep debt and energy potential, and whether it actually works. Along the way, we compare our numbers, debate alarm strategies, and explore why some of the app’s early guesses about our sleep schedules were… deeply cursed.

Plus:

* McGill’s daughter vs. the Rise smart alarm

* Why passive sleep tracking is still messy

* The joy of a good dopamine loop

* What Rise could learn from Flighty

* Why you should cancel just to get the 50% discount

What app is worthy of our next case study? Reply to this email or comment on Substack to tell us!

Happy Friday,

The Andrews

It’s Friday, and Andrew McGill is a deflated car dealership arm-waving balloon of a human being.

So this week, we take it easy… and build a bracket to determine the very best utility app on our phones. OK, so it wasn’t easy at all.

Eight apps enter. The losers are deleted from the world. Forever!!!

In this bracket:

* YouTube – universal video hub

* TikTok – short-form video juggernaut

* Instagram – photos, Reels, DMs

* Spotify – music and podcasts

* Google Maps – navigation & local search

* Amazon Shopping – everything store in your pocket

* WhatsApp – encrypted messaging & calls

* Gmail – go-to email client

Do you disagree with our pick of The One App To Rule Them All? We DARE you to throw down with us in the comments.

And if you like this bracket thing… tell us! Frankly, we had a ton of fun and we’re considering making it a more regular thing. But if it sucks, you know, break the news to us. But gently.

What does it actually look like to invent something new in a week?

This week we take you behind the scenes of a recent client sprint — a real one, with a real team, real stakes, and the usual emotional arc:

* Monday: new faces and high hopes

* Tuesday: existential dread

* Wednesday: ideas take shape (somehow)

* Thursday: revealing our work to real users

And yes, at one point, the phrase “sex party” ends up on a whiteboard in front seasoned editors. It’s a long story.

What you’ll learn:

* Why we’ve adapted the classic Google Ventures Design Sprint (and what we ignore completely)

* How to get to real user feedback in days, not months

* Why “bad ideas” are often the most valuable

* How we use sprints to compress months of decision-making into a single week

Whether you’re a startup founder, a PM, or just sprint-curious, this episode breaks it all down.

Thoughts or questions? Want to work with us?

Hit reply! We’d love to hear how you’re running product discovery in your own work.

Happy Friday,

Andrew & Andrew

Google owns the open web. If your website isn’t Googleable or doesn’t work in Chrome, it doesn’t exist.

Search has fueled discovery, traffic, and revenue growth for just about every online company of the last 25 years.

So what happens when Google rewrites the rules?

In this week’s episode, we unpack “Google Zero,” the moment Google stops sending traffic to websites. The term, coined by Nilay Patel at The Verge, describes a future where traditional search collapses under the weight of AI agents and instant answers.

Consider this: one analysis found nearly 60% of Google searches end without a click. And as LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity become the go-to for complex queries, the web itself risks being reduced to a training set.

This shift is existential for digital media. If your product is information—and AI is doing the reading for your users—you’ve been written out of the loop. No clicks, no impressions, no subscriptions.

We break down:

* How LLMs have rewired our own search habits

* Why Google is shoving Gemini into search (despite how bad it is)

* The rise and decline of Business Insider as a case study

* Whether the newsroom of the future is just an API

* What this means for marketers, founders, and anyone who thought SEO was a moat

How have your own search habits changed? Let us know in the comments. And please like this video if you like this video.

Andrew Phelps leads off with a question, one he’s never spoken out loud before — “Am I creative?”

Oof, isn’t that a straight jab to the ol’ imposter syndrome funny bone? If you’re like us, you’ve grappled with this very question many times before (especially when you’re in the midst of a creative drought).

So this Friday, we’re talking about ideas — how we get them, how we keep them coming, and how anyone can come up with good ones if they put in the work.

Also, stay for the outtakes at the end. It’s possible we’ve never laughed harder in our lives?

NB: The Andrews are publishing biweekly for the summer season.

Mentioned in this episode:

* On Writing by Stephen King

* The Atlantic’s iOS app

This week we talk about the shifting role of product management—and whether the profession we grew up in is headed for extinction, evolution, or something in between.

We start with the data: Lenny Rachitsky’s recent State of the Product Job Market shows PM hiring has rebounded from its post-Covid trough, but it’s nowhere near the highs of just three years ago. Big tech is thinning middle management ranks. And teams are asking: Do we really need so many PMs?

We unpack the pros and cons of soft power, the rise of the product engineer, and the arrival of AI-powered super ICs who can make PRDs and prototypes without a traditional team.

Plus: Our advice for PMs navigating this new world.

If you’re a PM, a maker, or just product-curious, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. How do you see product evolving?

Until next time,

—The Andrews