How I AII built a custom Slack inbox. It was easier than you think. | Yash Tekriwal (Clay)
Episode Details
EPISODE INFO
- Released
- April 8, 2026
- Duration
- 44m
- Channel
- How I AI
- Watch on YouTube
- ▶ Open ↗
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Yash Tekriwal is the head of education at Clay. A self-described hyper-optimizer, Yash has built multiple custom productivity applications using Perplexity Computer and OpenClaw to manage his overwhelming daily workflow—including a Slack digest system that categorizes over 150 daily notifications into actionable priorities, and a consolidated news/email/Slack dashboard that serves as his personal command center. *What you’ll learn:*
- How Yash built a custom Slack digest that categorizes 150+ daily notifications into action-required, need-to-read, and FYI buckets
- Why Perplexity Computer beats Claude Code and Codex for building personal productivity apps
- His “anti-to-do list” framework: spending an hour daily automating tasks you never want to do again
- How to use AI for deterministic tasks (APIs, structured data) vs. subjective tasks (categorization, summarization)
- Why the SaaS apocalypse narrative is wrong—and why we’re about to see an explosion of micro-software
- How his team uses Perplexity Computer to prototype design systems and communicate with cross-functional partners
*Brought to you by:* Guru—The AI layer of truth: http://getguru.com/ ThoughtSpot—Build AI-powered analytics into your product: http://go.thoughtspot.com/howIAI *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Yash (02:38) The burden of 150 daily Slack notifications (05:45) When to use AI for tasks vs. building deterministic code (06:38) Building the Slack digest with OpenClaw (11:33) Introducing Perplexity Computer and the visual dashboard (14:28) Three reasons Perplexity Computer beats Claude Code (16:14) Using connectors to automate meeting follow-ups across Notion and Asana (18:21) The Kanban-style Slack dashboard (20:15) The long tail of customer requests and the future of micro-software (24:09) The anti-to-do list framework (26:21) Building a consolidated news, email, and Slack digest (29:48) How Perplexity Computer handles authentication and deployment (31:46) Team use case: Prototyping persona-based learning journeys for Clay University (35:49) Lightning round and final thoughts *Tools referenced:*
- Perplexity Computer: https://www.perplexity.ai/computer/new
- OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/
- Discord: https://discord.com/
- Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code
- Codex: https://openai.com/codex/
- Asana: https://asana.com/
- Airtable: https://airtable.com/
- Figma: https://www.figma.com/
- Vercel: https://vercel.com/
- ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/
*Other references:*
- Slack: https://slack.com/
- Notion: https://www.notion.so/
- Superhuman: https://superhuman.com/
- Clay University: https://www.clay.com/university
- Kanban boards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board
*Where to find Yash Tekriwal:* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yashtekriwal/ X: https://x.com/yash_tek Company: https://www.clay.com/ *Where to find Claire Vo:* ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co._
SPEAKERS
Yash Tekriwal
guestHead of Education at Clay, sharing workflows and tutorials using Perplexity Computer and automation tools.
Claire Vo
hostProduct leader and host of How I AI, interviewing builders about practical AI workflows and tools.
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of How I AI, featuring Yash Tekriwal and Claire Vo, I built a custom Slack inbox. It was easier than you think. | Yash Tekriwal (Clay) explores build a custom Slack inbox using Perplexity Computer and connectors Yash explains how 100–150 daily Slack notifications create anxiety even though most are low-priority FYIs, motivating a system to classify messages by urgency and type.
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