From journalist to app developer using Claude Code

1. 0:00 – 2:46

   Introduction to Daniel Roth

   1. CVClaire Vo0:00

      So you have actually named your Claudes, and then you give them instructions to listen to each other.

   2. DRDaniel Roth0:06

      Yes. They have to talk to each other. One is called, the builder app is called Bob, Bob the Builder, and he's got instructions to stop constantly, and you have to run everything by Ray, who's the review agent. Ray's job is senior software engineer who is obsessed with security. He reviews code at milestones, guards security architecture. And then the third agent is me. I am the person who breaks the tie that often happens between Bob wanting to do something and Ray saying you can't do it.

   3. CVClaire Vo0:31

      And you are doing all of this as someone who has not spent their career as a software engineer.

   4. DRDaniel Roth0:36

      For a while, I thought I'm like a mediocre PM, and then I was like, no, maybe I'm more like an architect, and now I realize, like, an architect actually knows real details. A PM is, like, super rigid, and keeps the entire app in their head, and they're able to really prioritize well. I'm a bad prioritizer. All I am is a really picky customer. So I think that is, like, the role of the vibe coder is what do I care about deeply? I'm, like, walking through this house, and I'm telling the architect, "Nope, I want this room blue. I know you don't think it's a good idea. I'm telling you this is what I want."

   5. CVClaire Vo1:03

      [upbeat music] Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today, I have Dan Roth, who's the editor of LinkedIn, and started his career as a business writer and editor, but has somehow become a software engineer vibe coding iOS apps all the way to the App Store. He's gonna show us his dueling Claude Code setup that lets Bob and Ray build high-quality production-grade software. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. AI has already changed how we work. Tools are helping teams write better code, analyze customer data, and even handle support tickets automatically. But there's a catch. These tools only work well when they have deep access to company systems. Your copilot needs to see your entire code base. Your chatbot needs to search across internal docs. And for enterprise buyers, that raises serious security concerns. That's why these apps face intense IT scrutiny from day one. To pass, they need secure authentication, access controls, audit logs, the whole suite of enterprise features. Building all that from scratch, it's a massive lift. That's where WorkOS comes in. WorkOS gives you drop-in APIs for enterprise features so your app can become enterprise-ready and scale upmarket faster. Think of it like Stripe for enterprise features. OpenAI, Perplexity, and Cursor are already using WorkOS to move faster and meet enterprise demands. Join them and hundreds of other industry leaders at workos.com. Start building

2. 2:46 – 5:56

   Daniel’s AI development workflow overview

   1. CVClaire Vo2:46

      today. Dan, welcome to How I AI. What I like about having people like me maybe that have a couple years of experience under their belt is we've seen technology shift over time, and we've seen markets shift over time, and we've seen our own career shift over time, and what I love about your story is you've seen a shift like this in an industry that you've been in, and you've seen how disruptive and scary it can feel, and now you're seeing this again, and you're really leaning into it. So tell us how you came from your background, which is non-technical, into now we're gonna see some power Claude Code tips and iOS apps kind of vibe coded all the way to the App Store.

   2. DRDaniel Roth3:29

      I was a longtime business writer. I was at Fortune, Wired, Forbes, and I remember being at Fortune during the, uh, introduction of blogging. And all of the sudden, everyone had access to something that I thought was something that was unique to writers. We were able to talk to the world in a way that no one else could, and that was kind of like a monopoly almost on this ability to get ideas out into the world. And then WordPress came around, and Tumblr, and suddenly everyone could talk to everyone, and you discovered this explosion of ideas. And I have... And it was scary at the time, and then it was ... You realize, oh, actually, you want to embrace this, more ideas, the better. And so, uh, you, as, as a writer, it changed, and as an editor, it changed how I thought about who I could go after. It opened up, like suddenly I realized there were way more people that could be sharing ideas and reporting than I ever thought were possible. A couple years ago, when, uh, generative AI started making its way into coding, and it became clear that any of us could build anything, I had the exact same idea, but it went from being this... I was on the opposite side of it. It was like, oh my God, I've had all these ideas of stuff I wanted to launch, and in the past I would've had to go convince an engineer or a PM to go team up with me on something, and I was just trying to influence what got built, and then I could suddenly start building. So it has become an obsession of mine of building, to the point now where when I'm with friends and family, they're like, "Please stop talking about the stuff that you're building."

   3. CVClaire Vo5:02

      [laughs]

   4. DRDaniel Roth5:02

      "You know, we don't want to hear about it anymore." And, uh, and I, I just have to, like, ratchet it back, but on the weekends, it is, like, that is what I love spending my time doing. So, like, while the Super Bowl was going on, I will be on my laptop building, either, like, working on some new feature for the apps that I have out there.

   5. CVClaire Vo5:18

      Well, what's really funny is you are not alone. We just had Guillermo, the CEO of Vercel, on, and he calls that request for prioritization, like, petitioning the government-

   6. DRDaniel Roth5:28

      Yeah

   7. CVClaire Vo5:28

      ... where anytime you had [laughs] something built, you had to go to the government, which we're unfortunately run by product managers, and say, "Please, oh, please, government, would you pass this resolution to ship my button in-

   8. DRDaniel Roth5:39

      Totally

   9. CVClaire Vo5:39

      ... in production?" And then we're also hearing from everybody, whether technical or not, that it's just really fun to build, and it's kind of new hobby, new, new space for learning, and, um, unfortunately, maybe or fortunately, where they're spending too much time.

   10. DRDaniel Roth5:55

       Yeah.

   11. CVClaire Vo5:55

       So,

3. 5:56 – 8:58

   Using Claude to prioritize feature ideas

   1. CVClaire Vo5:56

      well, what we're gonna benefit from your obsession now, and you're gonna show us how-You as somebody who has a non-technical background has used Claude Code and some other tools to build real production apps. So what do you do? What's, what's your special sauce?

   2. DRDaniel Roth6:09

      Sure. So first, I should just tell you I started this with a course I took on Cursor. So it started with how to use Cursor, and I can share that link with you on the... It's a free course, how to build with Cursor, how to build apps. And I watched that, and so I started with Cursor, and then a- over time, I stopped using Cursor 'cause I didn't really care where the files were kept. I wasn't going in and editing anything. I didn't actually need that. I just needed to tell people what I was do- I needed to tell Claude what I was doing.

   3. CVClaire Vo6:35

      [laughs]

   4. DRDaniel Roth6:35

      So Claude Code was the big unlock for me, and I'll show you what, how I build. Um, so if you can see my screen here, I'm gonna show you one, one thing I do is I keep... I use Claude, and I, I ratchet back and forth between the $20 a month plan and the $100 a month plan, depending on where I am in my building. So right now I'm in the $100 a month plan. Uh, I keep a Claude window up that has all of my... I keep a pr- I keep everything in projects, so this is my Commutely project, if you can see this.

   5. CVClaire Vo7:01

      Yep.

   6. DRDaniel Roth7:02

      And I keep one running feature here, which is Commutely feature idea and tracker. So this is as people talk to me about what they wish the app did, and this is an app for being able to basically never run for the New York City train.

   7. CVClaire Vo7:14

      [laughs]

   8. DRDaniel Roth7:14

      Again, you can know if it's... I, I keep missing the train, I'm like, "I'm gonna build an app that is just for me, that is basically like, 'Is the train almost here? Can I walk, or do I have to run?'" That is what it's designed to do. It was, it had perfect product market fit because I was the entire product.

   9. CVClaire Vo7:28

      We call this personalized, so the rise of personalized software right now.

   10. DRDaniel Roth7:32

       Yeah. It's amazing. It's the best. And then suddenly you discover other people care about this also, and it's like, "Whoa, I have a community." So this is from my community of train runners. They give me lots of feedback, and I've been keeping a, um, uh, a keep, I, I keep one Claude chat available here that is just all the feature ideas, and I've given it a prompt to basically rank it in terms of time it'll take to build and the growth that it will think that, uh, this feature should have for the, for the app. And so the, I'll read you the, the prompt at the top, which is basically, uh, "Let's use this as a running idea of ideas for Commutely as I log them, keep track of them, and offer guidance, time estimate to build, and estimated back-and-forth hours, potential impact score on two one to three scales, customer happiness and growth impact." And then I've given it a bunch of ideas, and I just keep feeding it new ideas. And it has this table here. Uh, so these are, if you can see, the Commutely features ranked by build time. And so what I do is when I have free time, I go into this chat, and I find a feature that I'm like, "Oh, I've got a couple hours. I can go and build something," and I'll look for it. So the things on my list to do are Siri integration, standalone widget. I've already built the SEO-friendly blog, location awareness. But I thought maybe for this it would be fun to build something I've been trying to do, which I built the scheduled automatic, um, updates, which is I know that every day at 7:30 AM I usually leave my house. I just want Commutely to tell me where the trains are.

4. 8:58 – 9:47

   Building vs. marketing

   1. DRDaniel Roth8:58

      So I built that, but no one's using it, and so I need to be able to build... I now have to think about discovery. By the way, this is the other part of this I've learned is, like, the building is one thing. The marketing is a total other part of it, so now I've gone from being a quasi-crappy PM to now being a quasi-crappy PMM as I learn how to basically do marketing for my app too.

   2. CVClaire Vo9:21

      Here's, here's a funny thing that I'm, I'm thinking as you say that is I know I'm a true product founder in that I will literally build everything on this list before I can will myself to do anything that is, like, even remotely called marketing. [laughs]

   3. DRDaniel Roth9:37

      Right.

   4. CVClaire Vo9:37

      And so if you can get over your, uh, y- what we say in the industry, you know, if you can climb Cringe Mountain and just become a marketer, [laughs] you will be very happy with the distribution of

5. 9:47 – 10:38

   Creating a retention plan for his app

   1. CVClaire Vo9:47

      your app.

   2. DRDaniel Roth9:47

      So I've already worked with, uh, Claude Code on coming up with a retention plan, and I save everything as .md fi- as Markdown files. So I've got e- within my Commutely project, there are just, there's a document folder, and then there's a list of Markdown files. And I just, every time I'm working with Commutely, uh, uh, every time I'm working with Claude, I'm saying, "Write it into a file. Log everything. Log everything." And I do that for two reasons. One is the context window. Claude is constantly forgetting what it's working on, and then I'm forgetting what I'm working on because I only do this on weekends. So there, on Saturday I'll pick it up, and I'll be like, "What? Wait, what am I building? I can't remember. And how far did I get?" So everything gets logged. That is one tip I try to give anyone that is in my, my shoes also. So we make these MD files. So this is retention plan, and it's come up with a, a general plan, but now I need to go build it.

6. 10:38 – 13:50

   Introducing Bob the Builder and Ray the Reviewer

   1. DRDaniel Roth10:39

      So I keep two tabs. I use Terminal, and I keep two tabs open. One is for building, and one is for reviewing. Now, I've given Claude two personalities, which I can bring up by using, one is called, the builder app is called Bob.

   2. CVClaire Vo10:55

      [laughs]

   3. DRDaniel Roth10:55

      Bob the Builder. And so I bring up Bob, and this is my builder app. And he's got instructions. Tell me your instructions on how you work. So this is just to show you what Bob is trying to do.

   4. CVClaire Vo11:09

      And quick question for folks-

   5. DRDaniel Roth11:10

      Yeah

   6. CVClaire Vo11:11

      ... that don't know how to do this. First of all, I have never seen somebody customize their Claude theme to let them know what version, um, flavor of Claude they have running. I've seen a lot of people that run multiple Claudes and multiple flavors.

   7. DRDaniel Roth11:22

      Yeah.

   8. CVClaire Vo11:23

      Um, so I've never seen that. Pro tip, you, you can do that. Second is how do you... Have you built these as aliases that have different settings? How do you build... Actually, how do you technically make Bob, if you could just-

   9. DRDaniel Roth11:33

      Yeah

   10. CVClaire Vo11:33

       ... give us some high level?

   11. DRDaniel Roth11:35

       This is not gonna be super satisfying because what I did was I go into Claude [laughs] and say, "I don't wanna have to tell you every single time what you are."

   12. CVClaire Vo11:42

       [laughs]

   13. DRDaniel Roth11:42

       "So this is your requirement as Bob." And let me, let me pull up what Bob is here. So, uh, well, here. This is, this is what I've taught Bob to do.

   14. CVClaire Vo11:50

       Yeah.

   15. DRDaniel Roth11:51

       This is basically my prompt on what I want Bob to do. So this is Bob telling me, "Bob's idea. Everything has to plan first. I've learned over time, like, you don't build until it's done planning."

   16. CVClaire Vo11:59

       Mm.

   17. DRDaniel Roth11:59

       And I've heard guests of yours say the same thing, like, plan, plan, plan first.And then everything has to be built in modules. I don't want, like, tons of spaghetti code. I learned that with my first project. The code gets unwieldy. So I say, "You're a lean builder," whatever that means. And then document everything. We talked about that. This is the important part, is I say to Claude, the... I say to Bob, "You have to stop constantly, and you have to run everything by Ray," who's the review agent.

   18. CVClaire Vo12:25

       [laughs]

   19. DRDaniel Roth12:26

       So let me get over to Ray. So this is Ray. Let me bring Ray up.

   20. CVClaire Vo12:29

       I love this so much. While you pull this over, so you have actually named your Claudes.

   21. DRDaniel Roth12:36

       Yes.

   22. CVClaire Vo12:36

       And then you give them instructions to listen to each other.

   23. DRDaniel Roth12:40

       Yes.

   24. CVClaire Vo12:40

       Oh, this is so good.

   25. DRDaniel Roth12:40

       They have to talk to each other. So Ray's job is y- senior software, uh, engineer who is obsessed with security-

   26. CVClaire Vo12:48

       [laughs]

   27. DRDaniel Roth12:49

       ... and with making sure that we don't, uh, leave what our, um, uh, our... any of our design guidance. So I've got a whole design document also, and then make sure. So here's what Ray does. Ray, what I do, I review Bob's plans before he builds. He reviews code at milestones, guards security architecture, and what he cares about, and this is what it was in my prompt, is member trust, security, architecture integrity, and quality. And I say it, and because Claude is always rubber-stamping everything, and I'm sure your viewers see this all the time.

   28. CVClaire Vo13:19

       Yeah.

   29. DRDaniel Roth13:19

       Everything's genius.

   30. CVClaire Vo13:20

       Yeah.
7. 13:50 – 14:37

   How Bob and Ray work together to build features

   1. CVClaire Vo13:50

      So Ray and Bob work together.

   2. DRDaniel Roth13:52

      Yes.

   3. CVClaire Vo13:52

      So how does Bob invoke Ray?

   4. DRDaniel Roth13:55

      So Bob has to... So let's do this. Say, I'm gonna say, "We were going to build, uh, the retention plan."

   5. CVClaire Vo14:05

      This plan.

   6. DRDaniel Roth14:05

      All right, so I use the app.

   7. CVClaire Vo14:06

      Mm-hmm.

   8. DRDaniel Roth14:07

      It re- it finds this retention plan MD, uh, and then I just say, because Bob knows what his role is, I say, "Get started."

   9. CVClaire Vo14:14

      Oh.

   10. DRDaniel Roth14:14

       So he should now go into plan. Bob sh- I shouldn't even use... I shouldn't personify these people. But so it-

   11. CVClaire Vo14:18

       Oh, no. Let's-

   12. DRDaniel Roth14:18

       ... now goes into-

   13. CVClaire Vo14:19

       Let's personify AI.

   14. DRDaniel Roth14:20

       [laughs]

   15. CVClaire Vo14:20

       I think it's very... It's, you know, it's just the way we work.

   16. DRDaniel Roth14:24

       Really?

   17. CVClaire Vo14:24

       We wanna know everything about it.

   18. DRDaniel Roth14:24

       I feel so creepy about it. Ugh, I hate it. I hate, I hate when I do it. [laughs] So it's starting to read this Markdown file that I showed you earlier of-

   19. CVClaire Vo14:31

       Mm-hmm

   20. DRDaniel Roth14:31

       ... what this retention plan is. I came up with this weeks ago, reviewed it. I thought it was pretty good, and now we gotta start building

8. 14:37 – 16:34

   Why Daniel focuses on learning the process

   1. DRDaniel Roth14:37

      it.

   2. CVClaire Vo14:37

      This is amazing. I think this is so fun.

   3. DRDaniel Roth14:40

      So once it's done here, it will spit out something that I have to then copy and paste into Ray. Now, what I've done in the past is I haven't built Ray. And I've just said, "Run this past the security agent." That works, but what I don't like about it is I can't see what the security agent is saying. So what, what the builder agent will often just say is, "Security passed it," or, "Security wants me to change one thing." But because I'm trying to learn this, it also, I wanna know what it's stumbling on.

   4. CVClaire Vo15:06

      I think that's an underappreciated workflow, which is, you know, earlier when you said, "I got out of Cursor 'cause I'm not looking at files and I'm not editing things," the software engineer in me just started, like, my ulcer starts-

   5. DRDaniel Roth15:18

      Totally

   6. CVClaire Vo15:18

      ... to just flare. Um, I am an aggressive code reader, but you are taking this, and I, I even think some of these, like, micro frictions that aren't necessarily like, yeah, could you spin up a, a Ray sub-agent and do all sorts of fancy stuff? But I do think putting a little bit of friction in the process where you're actually forced to, like, copy and paste, put it over, read what Ray says-

   7. DRDaniel Roth15:39

      Exactly

   8. CVClaire Vo15:39

      ... does help with learning. And so I don't want people to, especially people that are moving from non-technical into more technical tasks, to make it so efficient that you're not actually learning the process. Because then, like you, you can set up even more powerful systems.

   9. DRDaniel Roth15:54

      Couldn't agree with that more. That has been... And I'm not doing this just to build. I'm doing this to learn, but what I figured out early is that I'm not gonna learn how to code. Like, just being realistic, like, I tried to do that. I got s- I didn't find it that interesting, and I'm like, "I'm a total beginner." And I'm like, "What?" It's actually building code. I just wanna understand why it's building what it's doing, and the problems that I find that I can solve uniquely as a human are things of, like, should we prioritize this or not? Or you're... This seems like it's gonna be really expensive. Like, is this worth doing? Is this gonna break my budget? My budget for Commutely is zero, except what I'm paying for Claude. [laughs] And so I don't... I have to tell it all the time, like, "That seems expensive. I don't

9. 16:34 – 17:39

   The importance of using branches for development

   1. DRDaniel Roth16:34

      wanna do this." All right, so here, this is... It's now done here. It's come up with this, uh, this pretty long implementation plan.

   2. CVClaire Vo16:42

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DRDaniel Roth16:43

      So normally I would sit here and read this whole thing, uh, but I told it, build it. Everything that Bob does has to be done in a, in a branch. That's one lesson I've learned.

   4. CVClaire Vo16:51

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DRDaniel Roth16:51

      I used to ship everything to main, and I [laughs] learned the pain of that early on. Um-

   6. CVClaire Vo16:57

      I yelled at a friend recently. I was like, "Make a branch, dude."

   7. DRDaniel Roth17:00

      Yeah. [laughs]

   8. CVClaire Vo17:01

      Like, "You're stressing me out." [laughs]

   9. DRDaniel Roth17:03

      Oh my God. But what I, I didn't realize this, and I found this out from real engineers later, is it's not... When I merged the branch in my other app, I merged the branch into main, and it didn't work. There were, for some reason, it didn't, like, merge perfectly. It took me weeks to be able to figure out why it wasn't merging. So I ne- I didn't... This was a lesson to me is it doesn't always just work seamlessly. You probably know that well.

   10. CVClaire Vo17:25

       Yeah. [laughs]

   11. DRDaniel Roth17:25

       Okay. All right, so here I'm copying the plan here. Normally I would read this whole plan, but I'm not going to this time-

   12. CVClaire Vo17:31

       Yeah

   13. DRDaniel Roth17:31

       ... 'cause I'm just gonna build this into a branch and then work on it later. So Ray is now ready for this. I paste it in. There we go.

10. 17:39 – 21:12

    Managing AI agents like managing a team

    1. DRDaniel Roth17:39

       And now Ray's gonna s- get to work.

    2. CVClaire Vo17:41

       And so what Ray is doing here is the sort of, um, is this architecturally correct? Is it secure? Are there any, you know, as we say, there be dragons. Like, is there anything in there that you need to be worried about that Bob mixed? And I really like this. We, we haven't actually seen somebody do a persona-to-persona handoff.

    3. DRDaniel Roth18:00

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CVClaire Vo18:01

       What we have seen is a lot of people will maybe use, like, an Opus 4.5 or an Anthropic model to build the plan, and then they'll actually hand it to, like, a Codex model.To review it, Codex is like a little, a little mean, um, senior [chuckles] staff engineer.

    5. DRDaniel Roth18:15

       Totally.

    6. CVClaire Vo18:15

       And so it is, it is kinda nice to have that, um, hand off and k- you know, what I say is, like, dueling agents to just get q- very similar to when you're working in a team. I think you can appreciate this, right? You write code, and you're... Or you write a, in my experience in product, like, you write a product idea, and then you bring somebody else into it, and they're like, "Oh, but you forgot we have to have this compliance thing," or-

    7. DRDaniel Roth18:36

       Exactly

    8. CVClaire Vo18:36

       ... "Don't you remember that when we did the data analysis on this, customers hated that piece?" Or design says, "Actually, this is really technically hard to implement in our design system." And so I do think just taking some, um, taking some flows from your organizational process and then figuring out how to make them agentic is a really natural way for people who especially have been managers-

    9. DRDaniel Roth18:57

       Yep

    10. CVClaire Vo18:58

        ... to start building out their own little AI productivity stack.

    11. DRDaniel Roth19:02

        It's such a great call. That manager, that idea of being a manager for this, you are managing these agents.

    12. CVClaire Vo19:06

        Yep.

    13. DRDaniel Roth19:07

        So, like, one of the things I find a lot with Commutely is it depends on, this app is really built around live activity-

    14. CVClaire Vo19:14

        Mm

    15. DRDaniel Roth19:14

        ... on iOS. That is where you are tracking your train, is, your phone is locked, you just go and look at it. Live activity has, it turns out, to have all kinds of limitations, and Claude will forget those limitations all the time. And so it will suggest things like, "Oh, you should just do this," and I'm like, "We know, we've learned this already. Don't you remember, like, two weeks ago, we tried to build it?" It turns out that, like, it can't actually ping the MTA's API when it's, when, when the, the app is not, uh, in, in, in, on, on the screen. And so I... It's like being a manager of, I've read this somewhere else, this is not my thing, but someone once said that managing AI is almost like managing a really smart but hungover intern.

    16. CVClaire Vo19:54

        [laughs]

    17. DRDaniel Roth19:54

        [laughs] And I feel that way all the time. It's like you're a genius, but you don't have it this morning. Just remember we've gone over this already.

    18. CVClaire Vo20:01

        Well, and AI is very similar to how I've positioned the benefits of what we call early career talent.

    19. DRDaniel Roth20:07

        Yeah.

    20. CVClaire Vo20:07

        Which is, like, very capable, very excited, too inexperienced to know they shouldn't do something, so occasionally you get greatness.

    21. DRDaniel Roth20:15

        Right.

    22. CVClaire Vo20:16

        But we should use a branch in a PR just, [laughs] just in case.

    23. DRDaniel Roth20:19

        That's exactly it.

    24. CVClaire Vo20:21

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11. 21:12 – 23:06

    Navigating the App Store

    1. CVClaire Vo21:12

       Great, so now Bob has raised some edge case concerns, which I think are really useful.

    2. DRDaniel Roth21:17

       Ray, Ray has raised the edge case concerns.

    3. CVClaire Vo21:19

       Yep.

    4. DRDaniel Roth21:20

       Yeah.

    5. CVClaire Vo21:20

       Ray has, and then, um, says Bob's plan is solid.

    6. DRDaniel Roth21:23

       Yep.

    7. CVClaire Vo21:23

       So then do you pass this back to, to Bob?

    8. DRDaniel Roth21:26

       Yeah, exactly.

    9. CVClaire Vo21:27

       Ugh, love it.

    10. DRDaniel Roth21:27

        So now I copy and paste this right back. Uh, it's got the green light, and then Bob's gonna go build. Now, the next step in this is that I will then take this and put it into Xcode and do a new build, uh, and then test it out in the simulator, see if it works, test it on my phone, and then I usually ship it to Apple right then. So I've been trying to do weekly updates to Apple. I will say the hardest part of building my two apps has been the App Store.

    11. CVClaire Vo21:52

        [laughs]

    12. DRDaniel Roth21:53

        I had no idea. N- navigating the App Store is a whole separate... I've got, I have so many chats where I'm like, "What does Apple want from me here?" And just getting Claude to teach me how to use the App Store has been a real... I feel like that's almost the last friction left in being a builder is navigating the App Store.

    13. CVClaire Vo22:10

        I have a couple related requests for startups. We're all, we have, we have all the coding agents we need.

    14. DRDaniel Roth22:15

        Yeah.

    15. CVClaire Vo22:15

        We're, they're gonna get better. We're, we're fine. We are spoiled for choice. We need AI for app store submissions. We need AI for, uh, SAP Ariba submitting procurement req- [laughs]

    16. DRDaniel Roth22:27

        Nice

    17. CVClaire Vo22:27

        ... requests and PO.

    18. DRDaniel Roth22:27

        Yeah.

    19. CVClaire Vo22:28

        And we still need that perfect AI CRM. So, uh, all the builders out there, if you could give us these very boring but very high value problem solved, you have a lot of customers waiting out there.

    20. DRDaniel Roth22:40

        You know, one that I might build actually to solve, again, this idea of solving for your own problems, is app store designs. So the, right now the way that I do, you know, when you, when you, when you do something in the App Store, you have to show what your app looks like.

    21. CVClaire Vo22:54

        Mm-hmm.

    22. DRDaniel Roth22:54

        And I've been using Canva for it, but it's really... Canva's AI I don't love. I find, like, I'm not getting what I need. So I might try to build an app that just takes people's screenshots and turns it into something for the App Store.

    23. CVClaire Vo23:05

        I, I

12. 23:06 – 25:00

    Being a “picky customer” rather than a PM

    1. CVClaire Vo23:06

       love it. Okay, so-

    2. DRDaniel Roth23:07

       All right

    3. CVClaire Vo23:07

       ... Ray approved of the plan. Bob is asking some design questions.

    4. DRDaniel Roth23:11

       Exactly. So this is great. So this is, I've, I have, I've written about this in the past, but, like, at, for a while I thought, "Oh, I'm, I'm, like, a, a mediocre PM." And then I was like, "No, maybe I'm more like an architect." And now I realize, like, an architect actually knows real details. A PM is, like, super rigid and, like, has, understands the, keeps the entire app in their head, and they're able to really prioritize well. I'm a bad prioritizer. All I am is a really picky customer.

    5. CVClaire Vo23:36

       [laughs]

    6. DRDaniel Roth23:37

       So I think that is, like, the role of the vibe coder is what do I care about deeply? I'm, like, walking through this house, and I'm telling the architect, "Nope, I want this room blue. I know you don't think it's a good idea. I'm telling you this is what I want." So the picky customer is, I think, the role. That is at least my role. That's how I think about my role. So in this case, Bob is saying, uh, there's some UX decision I have to decide.

    7. CVClaire Vo23:58

       I like this concept of a picky customer because I was going to say what I feel like is Q- QA that's just looking at little edges [chuckles] and-

    8. DRDaniel Roth24:08

       Yeah

    9. CVClaire Vo24:08

       ... and saying, "No, that's wrong, and that button isn't quite doing." So I like elevating this to, no, no, no, no, I'm not doing quality assurance.

    10. DRDaniel Roth24:15

        Yeah.

    11. CVClaire Vo24:16

        I am going through and being my own pickiest customer, you know? I'm, I'm sniffing my champagne before I drink it, a- as we say. And so-

    12. DRDaniel Roth24:23

        Exactly

    13. CVClaire Vo24:23

        ... that's a really fun, fun way to think about your role when you're building for yourself.

    14. DRDaniel Roth24:28

        Yeah, and it also does, like in my other app, which is a podcast clipping app, the, there was all this, it, it took a little while for the video to be made of the podcast clip, and there was some kind of error. There was a message just saying, "Your video is being created." And I'm like, "Actually, I want this to have a better voice. I want this-

    15. CVClaire Vo24:44

        Yeah

    16. DRDaniel Roth24:44

        ... to be funny. I want it to say like, 'Oh my God, you clipped a great part of the podcast.'"

    17. CVClaire Vo24:47

        Yeah.

    18. DRDaniel Roth24:48

        And so as the picky customer, I could say, "This is the voice of this thing. Make it funny," and wrote some, uh, copy for that. And so that's, that's how I, I think about it, more than QA, 'cause you wanna bring your personality into it.

    19. CVClaire Vo24:59

        Yep.

13. 25:00 – 28:14

    Testing in Xcode and shipping to the App Store

    1. DRDaniel Roth25:00

       All right. So in this case, it's asking me some options. It's giving me some options. I could pick my own option. Just for the sake of time, I'm gonna just say, let's k- let's keep the M- MTA blue. All right, and it's gonna start building.

    2. CVClaire Vo25:12

       Great. And you're doing this all on the weekend, so are you doing... I have to ask, are you running multiple Bobs and multiple Rays? Do you single do it? What's your own, what is your own capacity for agentic management?

    3. DRDaniel Roth25:26

       Bob is allowed to spin off sub-Bobs.

    4. CVClaire Vo25:28

       [laughs]

    5. DRDaniel Roth25:29

       So that is the one thing. What it... My, my prompt says, "You are allowed to have agents that you manage. You're responsible for these agents. I'm holding you accountable."

    6. CVClaire Vo25:37

       [laughs]

    7. DRDaniel Roth25:37

       "Uh, and your sub-agents can't create their own sub-agents." So that's my rule on how to do this.

    8. CVClaire Vo25:42

       Got it. So Bob can spawn, but he's ultimately the directly responsible individual.

    9. DRDaniel Roth25:46

       Exactly. That's it.

    10. CVClaire Vo25:48

        Got it.

    11. DRDaniel Roth25:48

        Ray cannot spawn.

    12. CVClaire Vo25:49

        I, I love it.

    13. DRDaniel Roth25:50

        Ray, Ray is Ray.

    14. CVClaire Vo25:50

        Oh, Ray cannot spawn?

    15. DRDaniel Roth25:51

        No.

    16. CVClaire Vo25:51

        There's only one, one gatekeeper-

    17. DRDaniel Roth25:53

        Exactly

    18. CVClaire Vo25:53

        ... and that gatekeeper is Ray, and there shall be no more.

    19. DRDaniel Roth25:55

        That's right.

    20. CVClaire Vo25:55

        I love it.

    21. DRDaniel Roth25:55

        Exactly.

    22. CVClaire Vo25:56

        That's very principal engineer energy, this, like, one guy.

    23. DRDaniel Roth26:00

        Yeah.

    24. CVClaire Vo26:00

        And you go to him, and you're like, "Hey, can we do this?" And-

    25. DRDaniel Roth26:03

        Exactly

    26. CVClaire Vo26:03

        ... only he can say yes or no, and he neither manages nor can be managed. That is, [laughs] that is your Ray.

    27. DRDaniel Roth26:10

        Totally. Well, Claire, like, one of the things that I have... I'm, I'm able to do this because I've now worked inside of a tech company for 15 years.

    28. CVClaire Vo26:16

        Yeah. Yeah.

    29. DRDaniel Roth26:17

        And so I've watched how... So a lot of this is based on people that I've worked on, worked with.

    30. CVClaire Vo26:20

        [laughs]
14. 28:14 – 30:00

    Quick recap

    1. DRDaniel Roth28:14

       Store.

    2. CVClaire Vo28:14

       And then you have all this extra time, so you can make it to your train on time.

    3. DRDaniel Roth28:19

       Exactly. [laughs] That's exactly it.

    4. CVClaire Vo28:21

       This is an awesome flow. Just to recap for folks, so what we saw is sort of dueling Claude Codes. One's a builder. One's sort of like an architect reviewer type. You build your... You have a w- a standing prioritization roadmap chat in the Claude web or desktop app, where you're always putting in ideas, reprioritizing them against, like, a simple three-point framework. On the weekends, you pluck one of those. You make a PRD. You give Bob the PRD. Bob invokes plan mode in Claude Code. It builds a plan. You copy and paste that over to Ray. Ray either greenlights it or gives feedback. You give it back to Bob. Bob builds. Love it. And then you used, um, keyboard commands you don't even know in Xcode, and you ship it to the App Store.

    5. DRDaniel Roth29:13

       That is 100% right.

    6. CVClaire Vo29:15

       And you are doing all of this as someone who has not spent their career as a software engineer.

    7. DRDaniel Roth29:21

       I've been around a lot of software engineers. I've watched them work, but no, I have never done any of this myself.

    8. CVClaire Vo29:27

       This is, I mean, this is a flow we really haven't seen. I think it's a useful, really repeatable one that others can use, and, um, I, you know, if anybody in San Francisco, you [laughs] used, uh, public transport anymore, then I would definitely request a regional option for us. But in the meantime, if you could build a Commutely that tells me, like, when I need to yell at my kids, at what level to get out-

    9. DRDaniel Roth29:52

       Got it

    10. CVClaire Vo29:52

        ... of the door to school on time-

    11. DRDaniel Roth29:54

        Yeah, apparently

    12. CVClaire Vo29:54

        ... that would be... Yeah, apparently.

    13. DRDaniel Roth29:56

        Apparently is next.

    14. CVClaire Vo29:56

        Exactly. That's what we need. I'm gonna, I'm gonna replicate your flow and build

15. 30:00 – 31:38

    Creating terminal aliases with Claude

    1. CVClaire Vo30:00

       that next.

    2. DRDaniel Roth30:00

       Nice. All right, so here it is. Commutely is now opening on this, uh... Oh, nope, I don't have Metro up. I can never remember the command. Uh...

    3. CVClaire Vo30:09

       I'm gonna have to suggest for anybody who can never remember the command-

    4. DRDaniel Roth30:13

       Yeah

    5. CVClaire Vo30:13

       ... you should watch our episode with John Lindquist, who shows us how to set up terminal aliases. You can just ask Claude to set up a terminal alias.Um, that will then run these, like, regular things that you need to run. So if you wanted to type in metro-

    6. DRDaniel Roth30:28

       Yeah

    7. CVClaire Vo30:28

       ... and have the terminal run it, you could create a terminal alias using Claude Code to just make-

    8. DRDaniel Roth30:33

       That's so much better

    9. CVClaire Vo30:33

       ... a quick shortcut. Yep.

    10. DRDaniel Roth30:34

        I have it, like, in a notes file somewhere, which I-

    11. CVClaire Vo30:36

        Yep

    12. DRDaniel Roth30:36

        ... can then never find, so this, that's much handier.

    13. CVClaire Vo30:38

        Let's go back to Claude Code. I was just- I gotta have you do this. We'll do it live. This is gonna be a live How I AI. And say, can you make me an alias for the metro command so it's easier to run in the future?

    14. DRDaniel Roth30:51

        By the way, I've really tried to not say p- can you or please.

    15. CVClaire Vo30:55

        Oh.

    16. DRDaniel Roth30:55

        This is part of how I'm, like, making sure that I don't personify this thing. This is how I stop the robots-

    17. CVClaire Vo31:00

        Hold on

    18. DRDaniel Roth31:00

        ... from taking over.

    19. CVClaire Vo31:01

        This is, this is one of two things. This'll go to our last question, which is how do you talk to, talk to the bots.

    20. DRDaniel Roth31:06

        Yeah.

    21. CVClaire Vo31:06

        I am so Southern. I am like, "Would you pretty please do this?"

    22. DRDaniel Roth31:10

        Ugh.

    23. CVClaire Vo31:11

        I w- "Please, sir. Yes, ma'am." Um, the other thing is actually [laughs] quick parenting tip, I always find ask my kids, like, "Would you... Do you want to unload the dishwasher?" And they're like, "No, I don't wanna unload the dishwasher."

    24. DRDaniel Roth31:23

        Love it.

    25. CVClaire Vo31:23

        And so that's another, another thing [laughs] is you don't want your AI to say no. Okay, so now anytime you type in metro, it'll restart the bundler. I-

    26. DRDaniel Roth31:32

        Amazing. Thank you

    27. CVClaire Vo31:33

        ... did it for you. You're so welcome.

    28. DRDaniel Roth31:34

        Phenomenal.

    29. CVClaire Vo31:34

        How I AI, live.

    30. DRDaniel Roth31:36

        Wow. Just learned something new. I love

16. 31:38 – 32:10

    Demo of his Commutely app

    1. DRDaniel Roth31:38

       that.

    2. CVClaire Vo31:39

       Okay, so let's see if it's running now.

    3. DRDaniel Roth31:40

       Okay. So let's open the simulator.

    4. CVClaire Vo31:43

       Ah. Look at it.

    5. DRDaniel Roth31:44

       There it is.

    6. CVClaire Vo31:44

       Oh.

    7. DRDaniel Roth31:44

       So this is exactly what I wanted to build. Uh, this was a hidden feature on Commutely, is that you could set it up to go off at certain times. Bob and Ray just worked together to build this thing, and now every day, 7:00 AM weekdays, I can get this. But now if I go to my morning commute, it's gonna show me these trains are ready. I get this. If I go to the lock screen, it'll show up here. So-

    8. CVClaire Vo32:05

       I love it

    9. DRDaniel Roth32:06

       ... if you were at 14th Street, your next train's coming in five minutes. You gotta start running.

    10. CVClaire Vo32:09

        [laughs]

17. 32:10 – 35:05

    Using Copilot to manage work responsibilities

    1. CVClaire Vo32:10

       I love it. Okay, download this app on the App Store. Give Dan all the feedback so he can give it to Claude, Bob-

    2. DRDaniel Roth32:17

       Please

    3. CVClaire Vo32:17

       ... and Ray. All right, Dan, let's hop to some lightning round questions, and then I will-

    4. DRDaniel Roth32:21

       Got it

    5. CVClaire Vo32:21

       ... get back, get you back to your day job so when we get to the end of the week, and on the weekend you can start playing with some more Claude Code.

    6. DRDaniel Roth32:27

       Thank you.

    7. CVClaire Vo32:27

       So the first question I have for you is, are there any sort of non-coding workflows or tips or tricks that you think are really useful that people can pick up in, like, five minutes that you think are gonna make their life better?

    8. DRDaniel Roth32:39

       We've talked this entire episode about something I just do on weekends, but most of my time is actually spent at work. T- I run a 400-person team. I've got a context switch all day long. I rely on Copilot constantly to do that because it has access to all my files and my entire, uh, team. So I... My command that I start the day, uh, with or I end the day with usually is, what did I drop the ball on?

    9. CVClaire Vo33:02

       Mm-hmm.

    10. DRDaniel Roth33:02

        And I'll show you that. What did I drop the ball on? And then I usually, now, and then for the point of this show, I'm gonna say anonymize.

    11. CVClaire Vo33:11

        Perfect.

    12. DRDaniel Roth33:11

        [laughs] Any names or project names as this will be seen by people I don't work with.

    13. CVClaire Vo33:22

        Perfect.

    14. DRDaniel Roth33:23

        [laughs] Okay. Uh, it's gonna go through Outlook. It's gonna go through Teams. It's gonna go through any updated files. It knows who I report to. It knows who reports to me, and it keeps track of things that I'm constantly clicking on during the day. So it'll find, it'll go through all my emails and find places where I'm not responding or teams where I'm not responding. And what's great is it's not just places where I've been at mentioned. It's stuff that it knows that I am actually interested in, so projects that I've been, like, cons- ki- kind of, like, following over time.

    15. CVClaire Vo33:53

        What I think is really useful about this is we've seen a lot of people do their morning daily digest, but we haven't seen anybody do their evening nightly nudge, which is, hey, you got through your whole day, and you forgot X, Y, and Z, and how many of us, especially managers, wanna start the morning with nothing to do-

    16. DRDaniel Roth34:11

        Yeah

    17. CVClaire Vo34:12

        ... and having wrapped it up all in the evening. So I think just even take AI out of it, moving that practice from up front in your morning to in the afternoon when you can actually do something about the stuff that ate your plate during the day is a really great idea.

    18. DRDaniel Roth34:24

        That's exactly it. For me, this is my 30 minutes before I leave. I ask this, I do this prompt, and then I can go through here. So here's an inbound escalation from a longtime creator. Someone's unhappy with me. Uh, I didn't reply. I f- I have a draft reply that I never b- sent. Uh, I'm meeting a follow-up-

    19. CVClaire Vo34:41

        My gosh. This is my life

    20. DRDaniel Roth34:42

        ... for your privacy. [laughs] And this is it. This is, like, you get... At some point, you start managing so many different projects, you're like, "I know I'm dropping the ball. Just tell me what I am dropping the ball on." So this is my savior. This is, like, what I count on AI to be able to do to make me better at my job so that I can spend the weekends building money-losing apps like Commutely.

    21. CVClaire Vo34:59

        [laughs]

    22. DRDaniel Roth35:00

        [laughs]

    23. CVClaire Vo35:01

        Yeah, you can vibe code code. You cannot vibe code gross margins, so. [laughs]

    24. DRDaniel Roth35:04

        That's true.

18. 35:05 – 38:05

    How Daniel talks to AI without personifying it

    1. DRDaniel Roth35:05

       That is true.

    2. CVClaire Vo35:05

       All right. And then my last question I ask everybody, but when AI is not giving you what you want, you've said you don't wanna personify AI, um, which I, I do, so we're on opposite sides of this.

    3. DRDaniel Roth35:17

       Yeah.

    4. CVClaire Vo35:17

       Very interesting. What is your... Then what is your tactic? Do you, do you, like, kill Bob and his spawns? Like, do you, yeah, are you an all-caps person? What's your prompting strategy?

    5. DRDaniel Roth35:28

       I mean, there are times where... So I'm usually really just straightforward. I just, I'm like, "This is what you're doing." I try not to say please or thank you because, again, I just don't want, you know, at some point when we get to AGI, they're gonna be running the show, and I just, I, I'm, I'm fighting until we get to that point. I'm holding on to my humanity. Um, and then, but I'll usually just, I usually just spend a lot of time saying, "We've gone over this already. You've talked about this. Go search your memory to go find the time where we've done this." And it is, it's a lot of parenting. I have, like you, I have three boys, and I rely on a lot of the things where I'm like, "We've talked about this, remember?" And, you know, and your kids are like you. You, you, you know that they are, they wanna do the right thing, and so it's just a lot of, like, helping them get there. There's something we say at, that, that I learned from a former manager and that we say a lot at LinkedIn, which is assume best intentions, and that is how... That's, by the way, a big change from how newsrooms work, which is my last life, which was you assume worst intentions all the time. At, at tech companies, you assume best intentions. I've now taken that to my family, and I've taken it also to building with AI. So I assume the AI has best intentions but has to be reminded about how we work. So I don't yell. I'm pretty clear, and I try to give it a little bit of grace.

    6. CVClaire Vo36:42

       Perfect. Well, Dan, this was awesome. I think it's a great overview for technical, non-technical, busy, busier alike. So thank you for sharing your flows with us and our audience. Where can we find you, and how can we be helpful?

    7. DRDaniel Roth36:55

       So I'm on LinkedIn, not surprisingly. Find me. You can follow me on LinkedIn. Uh, it's Daniel Roth at LinkedIn. Uh, and I've got, I keep a running newsletter called Forward Deployed Editor, which tracks how I'm learning how to AI, and it talks, it, it's really designed for people who are non-technical to be able to get, to be able to build cool things. And so I try to talk about what I'm failing, it's mostly what I'm failing at, uh, what I'm learning, what didn't work, how to avoid making the same mistakes I've made. And so if you can follow that, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'm always constantly posting on LinkedIn great content that creators are posting around the world, so hope you'll follow me there.

    8. CVClaire Vo37:32

       Great. Well, thanks for joining How I AI.

    9. DRDaniel Roth37:35

       Thanks for having me.

    10. CVClaire Vo37:36

        [upbeat music] Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube, or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review, which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiaipod.com. See you next time.

Episode duration: 38:05