Why We Switched From Claude Code to Codex

[00:00] Codex is one of those things where three months ago, six months ago, it was trash. If anyone from OpenAI is on the call and listening to that, I stand by that 100%. [00:09] If you have a great general purpose coding agent on your computer, it's actually really great for any kind of knowledge work. If it can write software on its own, it can do any kind of knowledge work on its own. When I sign on during the day, Codex is the first thing I open. It is pulling in whatever I need from Gmail, Slack, Notion, Stripe, all of our data sources. It's where I spend like 80% of my time working. [00:32] Overwhelmingly because the app itself is just so good. There's a new operating system for how and where you're going to get your work done and it's this kind of agent management interface. [00:55] hello everybody welcome to codex camp codex for knowledge work [01:02] psyched to have you psyched to have you on this auspicious gpt 5.5 day after release day [01:10] Hope you're doing well. [01:12] um i'm here with our head of growth austin austin say hello hello [01:17] We're psyched to have you. We are psyched to do this. Um, codex is one of those things where, um, [01:23] You know, three months ago, six months ago, it was trash. [01:26] And if anyone from OpenAI is on the call and listening to that, I stand by that 100%. And it was really built for...

[01:37] senior engineers doing pair programming. [01:40] So it was, it would argue with you to make you feel stupid. It was just, it was like a little autistic, like it didn't have any emotional intelligence. [01:50] And I think OpenAI had this interesting strategy or this interesting theory starting with GPT-5 that... [01:57] your vibe coding was going to happen in chat gbt and that was where all that stuff was going to live and then senior engineers are going to use codex to like do all their programming work but we're going to hobble the model so it doesn't do anything bad it's in a sandbox all that kind of stuff and [02:12] I think basically what happened is Anthropic figured out that [02:17] having a model that's pretty usable and fast and smart and also emotionally intelligent intelligent on your computer that can access your computer. [02:26] Um, [02:27] is a really, really great experience for programmers. And it means you could throw away a lot of the old stuff that you used to have in a programming environment where it was built for typing code. You could just type commands into your terminal and then it would start working. [02:41] And then I think what Anthropoc figured out is if you have a great general purpose, if you have a great coding agent on your computer, it's actually really great for any kind of knowledge work. If it can write software on its own, it can do any kind of knowledge work on its own. And we started to move from this world where programmers had been delegating their tasks, starting to delegate their tasks inside of cloud code, to now any kind of knowledge work is being delegated inside of cloud code and cloud co-work and all that kind of stuff.

[03:11] split it's like oh you're gonna do all your vibe coding in chat gpt and I think they saw what was starting to happen with cloud code and over the last maybe three months or so they have done this hard pivot on code codex where it has gone from a senior engineer only tool that is really for pair programming um to [03:29] I think like it's it is my daily driver for this kind of work. I use codecs for everything from deep engineering stuff to [03:42] writing to recruiting. I do a lot of actually do a fair amount of recruiting. It's really good for that. And I'll give you some use cases later, but they sort of figured out that [03:53] having this general purpose agent on your computer with the ability to write code, the ability to access your file system, the ability to have a browser, and wrapping it in a desktop app is like the ideal... [04:05] - Yeah. [04:06] ideal next step for knowledge work and i think that they built the best current version of that um and it what it is starting to snap into into focus now is that there's a new operating system for how and where surface for how and where you're going to get your work done and it's this kind of agent management interface and that's whether or not you're using cloud code or cloud co-work in the desktop app or codex in the desktop app it's becoming this race between the model companies [04:36] Each model company has their own surface like this for agent management, a desktop app for agent management that's

[04:41] At its core, a programming agent that's used for knowledge work. Anthropic has Cloud Code and Cloud Cowork. [04:48] OpenAI has codecs. XAI recently essentially bought Cursor. [04:55] And [04:56] uh and google is the only one that i mean they have anti-gravity but i don't think no one is seriously using it for that yet but i imagine google will do this too and that's the race that is the race that's happening and so i think [05:09] for us who gets who get all the benefits of being able to use these tools uh it's really important to [05:18] be bouncing around between these. So like use it for example, using codex so that you can feel what it's like to work in an agent first world. Because once you add an agent that is like your primary way of accessing and using software and the internet and all that kind of stuff, it opens up [05:34] all this interesting stuff that wasn't possible before because you can send your agent out to go talk to other pieces of software and come back and um you know we can get into into more of the details there but i want to get into like the more of the concrete use cases but [05:48] That's the world that we're starting to live in. You're doing work on your computer through codecs or co-work. [05:54] And your agent is your interface to a lot of the work that you're doing and a lot of the software that you use and a lot of the stuff that you do every day. And that's actually really fun. It's really cool. There's a lot of good stuff here. And so... [06:10] I wanted to I wanted to bring Austin in to to help do this because Austin is our head of growth and

[06:17] I think he had his real agent pill moment. [06:20] you tell me Austin, but probably like three or four months ago. And the agent pill moment was really cloud code. [06:26] And I sort of remember you just being like, [06:29] Oh, yeah. On a Monday morning, being like, oh, yeah, I just was on my computer all weekend. Like, I was like 12 hours a day. I didn't go out or anything because I was using Cloud Code. And you started to use it for all those, all the kind of knowledge work tasks that a growth marketer would. [06:45] And over the last... [06:47] a couple weeks as we've been using 5.5. And I've been telling you for a little bit, you should try Codex. [06:52] it seems like you've actually just shifted everything over to Codex and 5.5. And so I think you're a great person to, [06:59] Talk about, you know, sort of what you're seeing and how and how that is [07:05] how that is, [07:08] how this has changed, how these agent management interfaces have changed your workflow, and then why you like Codex, and then I would love to get into some demos of your actual Codex workflows so that we can sort of see things from your perspective. [07:22] Yeah. [07:23] That sounds great. So I yes, my like agent pilled moment. [07:27] with spending... [07:29] a week, [07:30] going deep into cloud code in the CLI, probably in like December into January, hooking it up to everything I do for work and for my personal life and finding that I use warp as my like CLI interface. And finding that the things that could automate the things that could handle for me and then the way it could work as a thought partner to make my work better. It was like this is the only way I want to do this.

[07:58] the kind of knowledge work that requires [08:01] strategic thinking and data analysis and shipping marketing copy, like a bunch of stuff that can get you spread out across a bunch of apps and tools during the day. And [08:12] And maybe in February, you kept nudging me to be like, you really should try Codex. There were things you liked about it. [08:18] And if someone says that at every, if anyone on the team says that, like, I'll go try it. And I like to push myself and play around with more engineering tasks, especially to see what these models are capable of. And so I tried to build a personal vibe coded app in Codex because that was one of the things that you said that it was really good for. [08:48] like two months ago, like I always, I use compounded, our compound engineering plugin that Kieran Klassen made for basically everything, including knowledge work, but especially if I'm trying to build [08:58] an app or ship a PR to the site. [09:01] And so I made a plan. [09:03] in the plan it comes up with like three questions [09:06] and for like which direction we should go. And I had no idea what the hell it was talking about. It was like, do you do any of these three? And every question I was like, please explain this to me. [09:15] in more detail. And its response was basically like, why? Like, why don't you just do what I'm recommending? [09:22] And I found a way to, I basically stayed in Codex for all engineering stuff, because I did like the results, even if I didn't love working in it. But I would say 80% of what I was reaching for was cloud code in the CLI. And when we got our hands on the new GPT model,

[09:39] a month ago, the first thing I felt was, [09:43] At the very least, there's [09:45] parity between the latest Opus model and the latest GPT model for the kind of knowledge work I do. [09:52] There's a few things that Opus does better. There's a few things that Codex does better. That feels a little more specific to me even. Like outside of design, which I still really trust Opus for, [10:03] it feels a little more like, oh, there's some stuff I like better than this. But the real differentiator to me is that [10:08] To me, there's no comparison for how fast and powerful the Codex desktop app is as just like an app compared to the Claude desktop app. Like, [10:18] I have never been able to get a co-work to work for me. And I think it's because I've been kind of ruined by the Codex app. It's so fast. [10:25] The sub agents are so good. [10:27] the way in which it suggests and then um ships automations for me is just like it i can't imagine not using it i wouldn't be surprised if at any week the cloud [10:39] desktop app is like just as good right like um they could ship versions where it's faster and better but i i'm now at the point where [10:47] When I sign on during the day, I... [10:49] Codex is the first thing I open. [10:51] It is pulling in whatever I need from Gmail, Slack, Notion, Stripe, all of our data sources. [10:58] This morning I was like, oh yeah, we need to do a run of show for this camp. I messaged Codex. I'm like, make the run of show. [11:05] It knows exactly where to look because we've already had conversations about what we're going to talk about today. It pushed it to Notion. It sent it to Slack.

[11:13] it [11:13] was perfect. It was like, oh, yeah, exactly what we should do. And yeah, it's where I spent like 80% of my time working overwhelmingly, because the app itself is just so good. And then the model has now gotten good enough to be the daily driver for me. [11:30] Yeah, and I feel I feel the same way. I love to get into an interview. Someone asked, are you we discussing the app or the CLI? We're discussing the app, the desktop app. And and I think you're making a good point. [11:43] that [11:44] uh [11:45] Both of these companies, I think, sort of see the end game here and are pushing in the right direction. And for a while, at least, it's going to be a horse race where [11:54] every couple every couple weeks or every couple months like one is going to pull ahead and have this like sort of amazing [12:00] thing going on and then the competitor is going to [12:05] uh like anthropic for example i think will release something in a couple weeks or a couple months i don't have any inside information into this but [12:11] that will make it at least parity, if not better. And they're just going to keep trading. Um, [12:18] And at some point, I think that'll slow down and you'll end up with sort of separate ecosystems. But for now, they're actually fairly easy to switch between. It's not... [12:28] It's not... [12:29] trivial, but it's pretty easy. Like you can kind of ask Codex, "Can you go grab all my Claude stuff?" And it'll go do it. [12:36] it, [12:37] I think it feels that way when you do it. It's funny. I'm in New York right now. I usually live in L.A., [12:42] Most of my friends who are in the knowledge workspace have been asking me about like what they should be using. They're all Claude code or Claude desktop app filled. And when I tell them that.

[12:52] I have fully transitioned to Codex, this look of horror shows up on their face. And they're like, do I, they're kind of like, do I really have to? And I, of course, tell them they don't, but I'm like, you really should right now. You really should. Like, I think you would get a big benefit from it. And I've been showing them why. [13:06] And it's interesting and to me unsurprising how resistant people have been to it because the [13:11] When you're a knowledge worker and you have all these new tools, the Cloud desktop app is game changing. It's amazing, right? So the idea that the Codex app is maybe 30 to 40% better is like, that's a lot of work, which we can get into kind of how I migrated. I can show some of that. It was very easy and the ways that I'm starting to use it. So I'm happy to dive into that and start sharing my screen and showing it works. Why don't you share your screen? I think, yeah, I kind of agree with you. It's more of like an emotional thing of like, oh, I have to learn a whole new thing or whatever. [13:41] It's pretty similar. Yeah, I would love to see some of your workflows. [13:45] Cool. [13:46] So, [13:47] This is the Codex app. I was going to do like a very, very quick tour. I think a lot of the audiences have seen it for kind of like where I go and how I use it. One thing I love about the Codex app is like I do think it's much better organized than the Cloud desktop app. The ability to have... [14:03] these folders with persistent, consistent chats inside of it that I can go check out. [14:09] And then especially like the big differentiator is that because I do think this is much better for [14:14] engineering for like occasionally I will ship a PR for one of our products. It's great to not have to switch between the, [14:21] the Cloud Code CLI, the Cloud Desktop App and Codex, that I can be here, I can be working on our, improving our KPI sheet, which I'll like show what I was doing here.

[14:31] And then I can go down to plus one and ship a PR for plus one and [14:36] The other thing I found, because I tried the updates to the cloud desktop app last week when they shipped it, [14:42] And the stress test I put on it was... [14:46] make a go-to-market plan for our new product and ship a PR to Sparkle in different chats. And it was so clunky and slow. And when you do stuff like that inside of Codex, it just works. Like it just works really quickly and well. And that's the thing that like once you start feeling that it's very hard for me to turn away from it. So I have these different folders for [15:07] some like vibe coded apps that I play around with for fun. [15:11] for my personal open claw where I can go and manipulate it here. And then the one with all of the chats is this like every growth OS. All this is a folder with a bunch of secrets and keys. So it's connected to everything we use for every. And then some project instructional files that explain what the every business is, what we care about. [15:34] how we like to work together. [15:35] It has some like reviewer agents inside of it that are all informed by how compound engineering works. Inside of compound engineering, Kieran's plugin, there is a compound engineering review step once you do some work that reviews for like security and a few different things that are [15:55] Oftentimes not as helpful for like, I'm doing a strategic plan for a go to market initiative. [16:00] And so inside of here, there's like a fork for it, for strategic alignment with the company goals, for data accuracy. And having that inside of this folder means that as I'm making plans, I can get reviews online.

[16:15] from the model in like a targeted way. And so the first thing I wanted to show is like how I was talking to our editor-in-chief, Kate, [16:23] Yesterday to show her like how I would recommend getting started in Codex. [16:28] And this is my recommended prompts. I am happy to put it in the chat for people. We can put it in the email as well. And so all I did was-- I'm putting in the prompts here. [16:42] I only have posted panelist access, so I'll send it later. Can't. Okay. Yeah, maybe read it out. We can all agree that housing is expensive. Rent or mortgage doesn't matter what you're paying. It stings every month. But Built can make it feel a little better. Built started out by rewarding members for their rent. Now, as of 2026, Built members can also earn points on mortgage payments wherever they live. Every housing payment earns points you can use toward flights with top travel partners like United and Hyatt, [17:12] purchases, and so much more. This is actually pretty cool, and I have some friends that use this and like it a lot. Something that's underrated is that Bilt members also get access to a neighborhood concierge. They can make restaurant reservations, book fitness classes, and find new local spots, all while still rewarding you at 45,000 merchant partners. It's like having a personal assistant baked into where you live. It's simple. Being a renter and now owning a home is better with Bilt. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. [17:40] And now, back to the episode.

[17:45] I think. [17:46] There we go. So... [17:49] through the plugin tool with Codex. [17:52] I went in and did the manual clicks to connect [17:57] all of the tools I use every day, like Gmail, Slack, Notion. [18:01] And then I went to a new chat inside of this folder that was built through Cloud Code. Cloud Code built this whole Every Growth OS system. There's a Cloud MD file in there. [18:14] And it's saved locally. It's also synced and pushed to GitHub. [18:18] And so I just opened that project inside of Codex when I started working here. [18:21] And I start a compound engineering brainstorm workflow, because it is, again, just kind of like a thing I reach for of let's think about this thing together, me and the model. And basically what I said is like, go take a look at the things I use the most, which are Notion, Slack, and Gmail. [18:39] And think of some automations that would help me with my work. [18:43] I find that when I'm trying something new, whether it's a model or an app, [18:47] um having an agent having a very smart frontier model like tell me how to use it tell me what it should do is like exactly where i want to start rather than thinking of it myself i usually start here sometimes i will describe a very specific problem but this is very helpful for me and i think a good generic problem for people to start with and uh codex comes back [19:09] it looks at what's going on for me and for the company right now. [19:13] And I thought these were really good that like,

[19:17] And it has this kind of follow-up radar. This is a big thing that happens with people who do knowledge work, who do partnerships, who do social media marketing, that there's all this stuff coming at you across a bunch of different sources. Like, what if it handled the triage for you? [19:33] What if it had this kind of like command sensor when we run a camp or an event, which usually requires a bunch of moving pieces and moving parts? [19:41] uh [19:42] like Dan mentioned for recruiting and hiring. We don't use a tool like Ashby or something. We kind of have it all synced through Notion because... [19:51] apps like this and agents can kind of like handle a lot of the pipeline and tracking work for us. And you can just ask it to automate it for you. And so it does that. And it asks me like, [20:02] Which ones look good? What do you want to tweak? For the sake of this demo, I didn't give it any real feedback. I was like, looks good. [20:10] And this is actually the thing I've always been most impressed with Codex for and for the models is that, [20:16] It's like, great, I made this automation for you. [20:19] And I do find that they just work incredibly well. They require very little tweaking to be like, this is a thing I would and do use every day. There's this set of instructions that it comes up with based on what it knows about me. [20:33] I can change when it runs. I can give it additional insights. I can connect it to other things, but mostly it just works. There's one that works for me that just at the end of each day now, compiles all of the stuff that I haven't responded to yet, drafts the replies, and we can kind of knock it out together of what to say. Or actually, all I need to do is just give a thumbs up Slack reaction to something, and it'll do that for me. It's kind of like a...

[20:57] like a dumb agent. Like I think of agents like this as like the dumb ones that just do the right thing every time. [21:03] And then the smart ones like an open claw or a plus one, the products we have coming that's like, [21:08] you'll work back and forth with it and like have a have like a more of like a creative [21:13] strategic partner. [21:15] And Codex is good at building both. And I can show kind of like the smart agent setup, but [21:19] If someone is looking to be like, can I see what this thing can do to help me with knowledge work? I would start here in like a brainstorming automation state because it is. And I think you'll also be surprised by how fast it is. And you're like, oh, I'm starting to get what this thing could do. [21:33] This is so sick. Your codex usage is far surpassing mine in terms of interestingness. I'm getting a lot of ideas. I want to just actually pause here. Normally we take questions at the end, but I think it would be kind of interesting if you have a question about what Austin has just showed, it would be nice to let people come up and just ask a question or two just to see what the vibe of the room is like. [22:03] We will... [22:04] uh, [22:05] calling you. [22:07] Margaret. [22:08] Welcome. Please introduce yourself and ask your question. [22:12] Hi, can you hear me? I'm Margaret. I'm in Plymouth. And [22:19] My question is, what is your review step look like? So it's saying don't send post archive or modify without explicit approval. So what does that look like? Is that like, do you call up, say, hey, let's do the review flow now? Or is it doing push notifications to your phone or what?

[22:38] Thanks. Yeah. [22:40] For this, what I prefer, and I was actually talking to a friend at dinner last night who said they did the same thing on their own. They came up with this too, is like, [22:48] Everything, I work primarily in Codex. I do all the drafting and setup in Codex. [22:53] And then it's helpful for my brain to have the final review step actually live in the external app. So it will draft all the Slack messages. And then I can go to Slack where Slack has that like, [23:04] draft reply tab and I can go and knock them out. And I do find that it like freshens up my brain a bit to be like, here's where I'll just make sure that this is what I want to send to a human being. Same thing for email. It like creates all of these drafts. [23:20] in Gmail. And I'll actually go open Gmail and look at them and knock them out. I know some other people who just have it actually come up inside of Codex and they're like, yeah, sure, send it. It looks good there. I do the same thing for strategic planning. It pushes to either a proof doc, the agent-friendly markdown file that Dan made, or a Notion doc. I use them for some [23:50] from this agentic space and have a final check in another surface. That's really the only time that I'm like leaving the app to do something. [24:02] That's brilliant. Thank you. [24:04] sweet all right we'll do one more and then we'll keep going [24:08] Alex, please introduce yourself and ask your question.

[24:12] Hi, my name is Alex. I'm a musician and I do a lot of gigs and get emails from clients all the time. So I have to sort my leads from, you know, my newsletters and all that informational stuff. So how do you make sure that you prompt people? [24:32] codecs to keep those emails safe for me, the ones that, you know, that require a personalized response. And, and I just want to make sure that, you know, I don't send something that, you know, loses me money or something. [24:47] Yeah. So, [24:50] For me personally, I rely a lot on Quora, the internal, like the app that Kieran runs for like the AI email assistant that's a part of the every subscription. It's really helpful now that inside of Quora, there is a... [25:06] um like a cli and api connector that i can work in codex and tell it [25:13] which is managing my email filtering and my email rules. [25:19] what I want and what I value. The way I do that is the same thing I would recommend whether you use Quora or not. [25:26] which is to have the agent interview you to get an understanding of what the rules should be. [25:32] I always find that I get a better result rather than, [25:36] saying what I think the rules should be. [25:38] And so I'll do a brain dump using Monologue, our speech-to-text app.

[25:43] saying, here's the problem I'm facing, my email's a mess. [25:46] Let's figure out how to triage it. [25:48] I think it would work perfectly well if you wanted to try starting it as an automation in codex or a rule in codex of saying, like, I think these are the things I want to make sure I get. [25:58] I think these are the rules I want to set of like never send anything for me, only drafts. [26:02] I think I want to go through all emails at 3:00 PM on weekdays, but go take a look at all my email, go do a search, spawn sub agents to do a search. I'm always telling Codex to spawn sub agents to do different types of work across different. [26:16] We're close. [26:17] and then come back with a plan. [26:20] come back with a plan for like how you're going to set up my email. [26:24] And then you can read the plan and see, oh, it looks like it's actually going to [26:30] brief or summarize or auto archive something that might lead to making money for you. And that's where you can tweak it. [26:38] And then the other step I take is that I set reminders for myself. [26:45] And I used Todoist for all of my like, [26:48] reminder task tracking, it's also connected to codex. So I can just message codex or message my open claw and say, like, just add this reminder to my schedule. [26:58] to check how the new automation is working. [27:01] and do an audit of it. So you can see [27:05] it's been 72 hours. Let's see if I've missed anything. You can prompt the model to see, what have you been archiving? [27:13] And I find that really helpful, but I'm really excited.

[27:16] Bye. [27:17] all of the work our product gms that i've been doing to make it so that i can just prompt [27:23] codex or cloud code or inside of cursor, any agent, to manipulate those apps how I want. It works really well with our other tools also. [27:35] Thanks, Alex. I will, I will add to that. [27:39] like one of the things that we found basically because austin started doing it i sort of was like oh that's really interesting is that austin started we have plus ones which is our hosted open claw and austin started setting up his plus ones with [27:52] codecs and cloud code, [27:54] and realized that it's just a much better experience. So rather than, for example, [28:01] the earlier version of plus ones, we had like a whole dashboard and a whole onboarding experience where you had to kind of manually click a bunch of buttons and give it a lot of context. [28:10] it's much easier if we just expose um plus ones via a cli to [28:16] Alex Bialik: code X or cloud code, and then you can just like talk to codex and it will take everything it knows about you from your computer and your past conversations and throw it into. Alex Bialik: Throw it into a plus one setup and and Austin showing this and it's it's like a it's really powerful and. [28:32] It's part of what I'm saying about how the world is changing when you assume every user has access to an agent like this, because we don't have to have a settings dashboard. We don't have to have an onboarding experience. We don't have to gather as much context manually. It can just be given to us for free by codex, and that's really interesting.

[28:52] Yeah, one of my favorite use cases was I got really inspired by this interview Clairvaux did with Lenny, where she said how much of a breakthrough she had when she... [29:00] Stopped trying to just use an individual open claw as like a master supercharged open claw and had this suite of six like specified open claws. I think that applies to any kind of like agent like there's the new chat GPT like provisional agents like I got hooked on that I think Claire's point was really good. [29:21] And my path towards making this suite of agents to help with the growth function at Every was just going to Codex, going to this folder. [29:31] I actually just sent it the transcript of Claire's interview with Lenny. And so I'm like, I want to do this, too. [29:36] "Given everything you know about me and my work, [29:39] make a plan to suggest six agents that we should provision into our Slack. Consider the fact that we might want to make some of them [29:48] Notion custom agents, which I find work really well. It's just like do the same thing every day, every time. Some of them might need to be smarter automations, but like do that, come up with a plan, [29:58] The plan it made was really good. And like I tweaked it a bit after seeing it, but there was that. And then now I have this suite of six agents in our Slack that work really well for me. [30:08] they still break. Like I find when you're making open clause and personal agents right now, like they're going to you should accept they're going to break a bit. But the really powerful thing is that rather than going back and forth with the agent or getting frustrated, [30:19] Um, [30:20] I just go to Codex and I'm like, I either screenshot or I can

[30:24] at slack in codex and say like go find this conversation where this stupid thing happened and fix it and it does a really good job of just like [30:33] changing the architecture of the agent and making a fix from there. [30:37] Bye. [30:38] I love that. Yeah, it's just a it's such a it's just a step change in how you work. And now I want to paste that Claire interview, too. I want to show one thing that I like. This is kind of actually my favorite way to use this stuff for knowledge work. [30:56] It's a thing that I like. [30:58] wish I had for so much of my career, because this is one of the most time consuming [31:02] to me, like frustrating things about KnowledgeWork is that we are doing a real go to market public launch for a plus one soon. We're very excited about it. And we've been having a bunch of [31:16] internal meetings and Slack conversations around like, [31:20] How are we taking this to market? What is the strategy? What are we going to do? [31:25] Um, [31:26] And we've done all of the work that like kind of like only humans can do the like marketing case, the business case, the like. [31:34] the narratives and stuff. [31:35] Not all of it is as refined as it needs to be because it still needs to be refined, but it's all sitting somewhere. [31:40] And I had all these plans this week to make the go to market plan, which is like one thing I'm responsible for. And an inevitable thing that happens that happens in everyone's job is like, [31:53] All this stuff came up, like I've got to do interviews for hiring. We found out the release date for the new ChatGPT model. And so I had a day, I think it was Tuesday, in between meetings where I'm just kind of like, I'm prompting Codex this way.

[32:07] Hey, I kind of done most of the work, right? Like in our notion, every meeting is recorded in a single place and all the transcripts are there. [32:15] We've talked about this a bunch in Slack. [32:18] I have a template for a go-to-market plan that I really like. And I can go to Codex and say, like, can you just make the plan? Like, and in my head, what I'm thinking is, like, maybe it'll get, like, a six out of 10 or a seven out of 10. [32:32] And we can keep nudging and I can keep going along. And so it does that. What I'm asking for is like, why don't you start by doing the compound engineering brainstorm step to just ship a proof doc and I can see how close you are. [32:46] And [32:47] One thing that it doesn't really do super well unless I tell it to, and I want to install this as a workflow, is it doesn't go read our calendar of upcoming posts and launches. And so as it was going, I was like, oh, you always forget this. This is the message I'm sending of actually look at everything that's scheduled because I have to account for that and go to market plan. And then it makes a plan as a proof doc. [33:12] I went and looked at it and I was like, again, I maybe have five minutes in between meetings. And I'm like, this is really good. Like you kind of have every, you have the architecture enough. [33:21] that I want you to like factor in one other change. [33:25] and then just shift the plan to Notion. [33:29] And the planet ships in ocean, I was reading it and I was like, [33:33] This is basically... [33:35] 80 to 90% of the way there. And that's not because I'm relying on the model

[33:41] to come up with our go-to-market strategy it's that i'm relying on the model to [33:46] um look at all of the things that we've already said thought about the go-to-market strategy [33:52] piece it together and then review it, right? Come with what will work with what's not. There's a lot of important context loading that happens here. We're like, it knows what our target ICP is and knows what our goals are. It knows how we think about narrative positioning. And [34:09] And before this was possible, the only thing I could have done was either block off a whole day to sit and do this or get done with my work for the day at like six or seven and then stay up all night writing this. [34:22] And this has been such a game changer for me. And the other part of it that I think I've found is really helpful is that I don't make this plan. [34:31] for humans. I make this plan for humans and agents and primarily for humans to understand through agents. [34:37] And so when I sent it to the team working on the go to market, [34:40] They can read it and it's like digestible to humans, but... [34:44] The thing that it's really helpful for is like, it's the full plan sectioned off all in one. And so Brandon, our COO, who's like deep in this product, [34:52] can ask his plus one, can ask codex, can ask cloud code, like, [34:56] Let me know what Austin's plan is. Like summarize it for me. Let me know the business case. Brandon has to come up with the pricing modeling for the plan. So he can work with an agent against the plan. [35:06] And as someone who spent so much time in my career, [35:10] Thinking about like literally how the proposal or go to market document looks like, how is it going to look when I present to the CEO like this two page plan for like a for a budget I'm asking for like, is it going to make sense to their eyes and like really fine tuning stuff, giving up on that and just saying like, is the plan really good? And is it going to make sense to like Dan's agent if he approves it?

[35:31] Um, [35:32] to me, it makes me work faster. It makes the work better. It means that I don't have to think about all this, like, kind of dumb stuff that doesn't matter. [35:38] um that like it's to me a much more like powerful and fun way to work [35:44] I totally agree with that. You said so many things that are interesting there. The first one is just normalize sending agent documents around. And that's why we have proof. It's just such an easy way to send the markdown documents that we generate to each other and interview them together. And... [36:03] It's like, I think there's this whole strand of AI stuff that's like, make AI write in your voice. We even do this with Spiral, but there's this other strand of just like normalize AI writing, because I would actually prefer to read your agent's writing than your writing in a lot of cases, because [36:18] I know that it's just easier for you to get all that that thinking together in a format I can read if you if you have your agent write it. The thing I care about is. [36:27] Do you stand by it? Have you thought about it? And if I talk to you about it, will it be clear that if I talk about a particular bullet point in it, like you've thought that through? And as long as we have the trust that that's going to be the case, then I absolutely prefer the agent version. [36:45] In the future, humans face a new problem. What do you do when your computer is doing your work for you? [36:52] One answer? [36:52] Take a Claude Walk, an idea by Avery. [36:57] . [36:59] Every. [37:00] The only subscription you need to stay at the edge of AI.

[37:05] Totally. My friend Rachel Carton, who runs the great sub-sec newsletter, LinkedIn Bio, about [37:11] uh social media had had a really good piece this week about [37:15] frustrations for people working in social for like every like this pressure they feel that everything has to run through AI and the quality going down and one reason why is that [37:27] there's that dichotomy of like, what do you actually stand behind? Like, are you running something through AI and you... [37:33] Like maybe your manager did it and they don't even know what it said. And the thing I love about working at Every is like you show up to a meeting, [37:42] you've shared an AI written document ahead of time. [37:46] And the expectation is that you're going to stand behind all of it, that someone will ask you a question of what's in that document and you can [37:52] If you say like, oh, I didn't even know that was in there. [37:55] It's like you're exposed, right? But the other nice thing is that [37:59] We continue to keep [38:02] investing in [38:03] skills and workflows and tools to kind of ensure that never happens. Like, I have rules inside of this project file to be like, [38:11] Don't add anything that I haven't said in another context. [38:16] I want your suggestion, send your suggestions to me in the chat, but don't put it in a document. And like, [38:22] Depending on how big the context gets, these models can follow or not follow those rules, which is another reason why I always leave Codex for that final review before it goes to the humans I work with.

[38:37] Yeah. And I think that that last thing that that I want to point out that you said is like, [38:42] A lot of the time... [38:44] that you spend working is about [38:47] taking thinking you've already done and putting it into a form that other people can read and consume [38:53] And the important part is doing the thinking. [38:58] There is something obviously about like, I love writing. Writing is a good way of thinking. [39:02] Um, and sometimes you actually want to do the writing yourself because you want to think about it for certain types of things and certain types of people. But there's a lot of stuff like company strategy where a lot of the thinking happens out loud. [39:13] in meetings and there's also times like for example i'm writing something that's sort of like a [39:18] it's like a retrospective on the last three and a half years of AI and like where I think we're going. And [39:24] That's so hard to sit down and write, but it's much easier to just like dictate. So I just took a monologue note where I was just like saying stuff and I'm using AI to help me like [39:34] Jeff Terrell: figure out what i'm really trying to say and in those cases, I think it's just so nice to record stuff give codex access to everything. Jeff Terrell: And then just have it spit out a strategy doc and go through it to make sure it's stuff you agree with but it's um such a time saver and especially if you're someone who like Austin or like me like you're in meetings a lot, and so. [39:57] you don't necessarily have huge chunks of time in your day to like go do a big strategy document because you're just trying to stay on top of whatever's happening. It helps you do that in the cracks of your day and do a lot of that thinking. And I just, I love it for that.

[40:12] Yeah, me too. [40:14] I want to show one more thing before we get into more questions. This is like I wanted to show kind of like a more like mix of knowledge work and engineering stuff that like would never have been possible without these kinds of tools. And that I really love Codex for, which is I've been rebuilding our KPI. [40:33] tracker every week um i'll just like show it here for a bit so um we have so many different parts of our business at uh at every [40:44] And it's very difficult [40:47] to [40:49] get all of those data points in one source of truth in a traditional tool. [40:55] like even PostHog, which I really like, and a lot of our data runs through it, to get one dashboard that is, again, both human and agent facing, that is up to date with all of the metrics we care about. I haven't found a great solution for just like, [41:10] you know, going to [41:12] post-dog and having it do it. [41:14] So I've been rebuilding our KPI sheets inside of [41:19] notion with the goal in mind of any anyone can point their agent to look at it and see how are new paid subscription trials doing, how are page views doing, how is monologue iOS MRR doing, all versus plan, all of this stuff. [41:34] Because one, it helps you work as a human, but it also really helps you automate agentic work so that you can say, like, if your agencies that we're tracking behind on SEO for a keyword, we should be winning on SEO.

[41:49] They can go just ship a bunch of landing pages for us to try to win more on it if the source of truth are good. [41:54] And so I have been doing this big kind of like to me, complex workflow problem and codex of let's build the sheet together. Let's have it live in a notion database that all of our agents can point at. And I've done a bunch of different versions of it. The first version was like, [42:12] can Codex one-shot this, right? Like it has all the API keys. It has everything. I'm happy to give it the context on like how we measure MRR, [42:20] and everything. [42:21] And each time it was like a little off. It was like maybe five to 10% off of the formatting, the numbers, the framing. And [42:29] Our MRR number can't be 5% off. Like we can't run a business with a source of truth that's even 3% off. It has to be just exactly right. And so the thing that I forced myself to do, and it's weird now, I'm like, it feels so stupid that I have to do this, but it makes sense. It's like, I'm going column by column, end to end to ensure each column is exactly right and defensible because it's the only way that we can run and grow the business reliably. And especially the only way we can confidently [42:59] against [43:00] what's happening in that KPI sheet. And it's so interesting to me that I'm frustrated that I have to do this, that the model can't do it for me. [43:11] But it's just because of how powerful these models are gotten that I expect it to be able to do it. [43:15] But, and this is the thing where I'm like, you know, it's using, you know, [43:18] Notion's worker's tool, which is this like dev tool to build always on tool calls of our stripe of our social media.

[43:27] um it's like creating little scripts and stuff all stuff i don't really understand but i understand the outputs i understand that the output [43:33] is a notion database that updates every six hours with all of our metrics. And it's just nice that I can do that and I don't need to [43:42] hire a consultant to do it or like i don't need to like um [43:46] take away from our engineers' times that work on our data. I can do this now, and I can do it just by prompting [43:55] the model and understanding how the metrics are supposed to work. [43:59] it's amazing uh i can't wait it's the do you think it'll be ready on monday it'll be ready on monday yeah yeah feeling really good because we've been i mean just having it turns out that figuring out how much money you're making and how much you've grown is truly a philosophical question you know um and you actually do need to like go in and like set that frame [44:21] Um... [44:22] and [44:23] So we've been dealing with an outdated cheat because it's like, [44:26] It's pulling numbers, but are the numbers correct? You know, even outside of... [44:31] AI. And there's no one way to, for example, measure your MRR. You just want to do it the same way every time. So you have to decide. And that's kind of it's kind of wild that it's like almost impossible to tell how much money you've made in an objective way. You have to just like pick. But anyway, that's just the way my brain works. I want to say before we get into questions, one other thing that I use this for that was like blew my mind from a knowledge work perspective is recruiting.

[44:59] So we're hiring a lot. [45:02] And we were looking for an L&D [45:06] Aaron Shaw: head of L&D, someone to help us run courses. And there's this company in New York called General Assembly. And when I think about people who've run like really great courses about technology to teach people how to get hands on with like programming or design or anything like that, like they're the company that I think of from the like 2010s in New York. And so [45:26] I [45:28] My theory was that if we're hiring someone to do, like build our courses, they would probably have a good person probably would have worked at GA. [45:38] And Jason, yes. [45:41] And it [45:42] I think J is quality has gone up and down, but at the beginning, they were amazing. [45:46] Um, and, um, [45:49] So what I did was I just said to Codex, hey, like [45:53] can you find can you just get a list of ga alums i'm like hiring an lnd director and then i want you to filter and sort the list by [46:03] people who have subsequently gotten into AI. [46:06] So, [46:07] And [46:08] It did it. Like it just gave me a list of people. [46:12] The first one I clicked on, it was like, I was like, this guy's perfect. [46:16] And then I looked and he followed me on Twitter. So I just DM him and [46:20] Like, I don't know if we're going to end up working with him, but like it was just one of those holy shit light bulb moments where normally what we're doing is sorting through a ton of applications and like trying to find the right person. And we're still going to do that, but especially for any kind of like outbound effort, it can kind of find that needle in the haystack that you're looking for really, really well. So I highly, highly recommend.

[46:41] Um, [46:43] Okay, we've got about 10 minutes left. Um, and I want to take some more time for questions. So if you got a question, please, uh, [46:52] uh please raise your hand one thing that we have not gotten to actually is that if you're here you're getting codex credits uh austin do you want to uh go through that really quick [47:02] Yes, so OpenAI has given [47:06] us a code I'm about to drop into the chat for 250 attendees of this camp to get a free month of chat GPT pro lights that's about a [47:18] $100 value. [47:21] And you can redeem it at this link that we will drop in the chat right now. [47:28] sick uh dan i'm actually gonna i'm gonna slack it to you so you can drop in the chat because for some reason i don't have access okay i'll do that um so yes this is this is our gift to you as every subscribers we try to do stuff like this all the time we've been we've given out i think we've done um cursor credits we've done we've done a lot a lot of other stuff we have more stuff like this coming so we just want you to be able to try these tools be at the edge with us and um we just love [47:58] I think. [47:59] It's $100. [48:00] Oh, Notion. Yes, we did give out Notion. It's $100. [48:04] Um... [48:06] And [48:08] uh check it out we will send it out in an email maybe we actually may not send it out in an email because it's only 200 limited to 250 people and that's pretty much exactly the number of people who are here so if there's any left we will send it um if there's one person there's 251 people here so there's

[48:27] *BANG* [48:28] uh [48:33] So if that person... [48:35] If you let us know, we'll figure something out for you. [48:39] Interesting, not available on my plan. [48:42] Um... [48:46] Okay. [48:47] We will have to deal with this. Let us... [48:53] let us figure out what to do here. So, [48:56] Thank you. [48:57] Correction, this is only if you do not have a plan. [49:00] This is for new users. And we'll try to get something for existing users and send it out as soon as we can. [49:08] Cool. [49:10] All right, let's do some questions. [49:12] Um... [49:14] Rich, please ask your question. [49:17] So I saw at the beginning you were using compound engineering as kind of part of your workflow. Are you using kind of like the off-the-shelf plugin or is there tweaks to it and kind of where does that work and maybe not work when you're outside of the, you know, kind of code creation workflow? [49:43] So I find that there's no overwhelming need to fork your own version of compound engineering. I used it for a long time. [49:54] for all of my knowledge work. And it was extremely powerful for me. And then maybe about two months ago, the main thing I noticed was reading the agent's response to especially the review stage of watching the reviewers that Kieran and Trevin had built that are very specific to engineering and

[50:15] I was like, oh, this like, the thing you'll see the agent do, [50:20] is say like, [50:21] I'm supposed to go through this review step. It looks like it's designed for engineering. It's thinking about security and front end design. When this is a go to market plan, the agent will then like change the path. The agent will be like, I'm going to review this for something else rather than reviewing it for security. [50:39] And so the thing that I did was I went and forked a version of it that is actually publicly available on our GitHub called Compound Knowledge, which is built exclusively for me taking the Compound Engineering plugin, which is also public and you can go fork and going inside of I think it started in Cloud Code. Now I update it in Codex and saying, like, I want to tweak this to general knowledge work. [51:09] And this is the thing I was referencing around the reviewers being much more specific to knowledge work around strategic alignment and data accuracy. I think more than anything, this is a really fun way to learn and a fun way to push yourself on using models. You're welcome just to go use this one. We'll include it in the follow-up email to the camp. But I think it's a cool, I learned a ton just by doing this. I had never made a plugin like this before. [51:39] of say you do like social media marketing and you want to make sure all the reviews go through your style guide. [51:44] your like past performance. I got a ton out of operating this way. If you just want the compound engineering to make your work better, it absolutely works really, really well for knowledge work just kind of out of the box.

[51:56] Got it. Yeah, no, interesting, particularly using kind of all the end of step pieces like compound, that that's still [52:08] apparently a valuable step for you. [52:13] Yeah, the compound stuff is really valuable. We have inside of our notion, [52:18] a go-to database of after you're done with a session, [52:23] you can send the learnings from the session to actually a team-wide shared [52:28] compound source of truth. Whenever I'm done with any session in Codex or Cloud Code, [52:34] The agents are instructed to ask me, should we compound this, save it somewhere for the learning? And should we turn any workflow from the session into a skill? [52:44] so that we can just do it automatically each time. [52:49] Got it. Cool. No, I'll check that out. Thanks. [52:51] Cool. [52:57] All right, Rory, please introduce yourself and ask your question. [53:02] Hi, my name is Rory and I'm in your head. Are there anything... [53:07] about the way you work at every, like maybe... [53:13] taking some time after meetings, like getting them a few minutes early so that you can do those things that [53:18] you'd recommend to teams that are adopting workflows like yours? [53:25] Thank you.

[53:28] Exactly. [53:30] Yeah, I think so. Like, um, but to say it back to you, like what I'm hearing, which is like a very real challenge here is that, um, [53:37] It's so exciting and tempting and alluring to spend a lot of your day playing with stuff. Also spend a lot of your day continuing to push on stuff. [53:48] Like, [53:49] if I just get this automation right or this tool right, my work is going to be like 100% [53:55] times better and easier. And I actually find myself a lot like on a lot of days spending most of my time not in meetings, trying to build really good tools and automations that work well, and not [54:08] making the time to do the actual tasks that have to push the business forward, like shipping the social posts for the day or whatever. And I don't really have an awesome answer for it outside of the fact that the playing around one, [54:25] is like kind of core to how we operate at every it's a thing that dan like pushes all of us to do it's one reason why i love working here it's also like [54:33] to me the best way to learn and makes me better at everything I do. And then the, the, the only kind of like guidance I've given myself is that like, [54:43] these automations and codecs [54:46] keep me on track to get the work done so that when I'm too deep in the [54:51] um in like playing around and building this like there's like a social automation tool i'm working on that i've been like deep in for a while [54:58] The codex automations make it so that I like, you know, make sure Brandon gets what he needs for this, like some like business plan we're we're doing.

[55:07] I do find myself over indexing on learning and playing because of how exciting and powerful the models have been. And that more I have to continue to pull myself into the required day-to-day tasks and the urgent stuff that's happening. Yeah. And I also sort of read your question, Rory, and you tell me if this is wrong, but as like, how do we do more of the... [55:30] AI stuff, the more of the playing, even... [55:33] to even get started on this stuff in our day-to-day [55:37] if we're like busy all the time and I, and what are the organizational practices that we have for that? And yeah, I just think like Austin said, like, it's just like a culture. It's a cultural thing. [55:47] We just love playing around and that's part of our job. And I think there's this [55:56] there's this thing happening right now where the tools and the workflows are changing so fast [56:01] that [56:02] Just focusing on how your job currently works, you can run as fast as possible. And so when using a new tool with a new paradigm and a new workflow is just going to beat you by default. [56:11] And so if you just give yourself some time to play around, it may feel like a waste of time, but you're leveling yourself up to a different game at a different level. And I think that's really important. And some of the organizational practices that we have to help people do that are really around. And so one of the things we do twice a year is called Think Week. [56:29] And we just literally don't do any of our day to day work and we just spend a week together just like playing around with new stuff and building stuff and learning and being together and you don't necessarily have to do a whole week of that but.

[56:43] I think it's really good to maybe do that once a quarter for a day or something like that. And just give people the time and space too if you can. [56:56] Sweet. All right, y'all. So that is our program for today. Thank you for coming. We love seeing you. We love doing this with you. Remember, every is the only subscription you need to stay at the edge of AI. We would love it if today you would go tell one of your friends to go subscribe to every. [57:14] We want to get more people in here. We just think we're right at this amazing point in history where we get to surf, ride this big wave together and figure it out together. And please, please tell your friends. [57:29] See ya. Thanks, y'all. [57:39] Oh my gosh, folks. You absolutely, positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI&I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard. But instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about chat GPT. [58:02] on the edge of your seat. [58:03] craving for more. It's not just a show. It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor. Hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life.

[58:16] And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you.