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AI-First Playbook: Do a Team's Work With AI (2026) | Peter Yang

📌 Generate structured summaries with https://transkriptor.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=midroll&utm_campaign=siliconvalleygirl A year ago Peter Yang was drowning in meetings and paperwork. Then he rebuilt his entire workflow around AI. He left product roles at Meta, Reddit, and Roblox to go solo. Today he runs a 140K newsletter and has built 16 apps without writing a line of code. In this episode he breaks down how: how to move from using AI like a search engine to building systems that run your work, how to build a personal AI that knows your strategy, and the one thing to do this week to get ahead. *Timestamps:* 00:00 — Intro 02:51 — How his AI posting system works across platforms 08:54 — The weekly strategic brief Peter built in Codex 11:59 — The 5 Layers of AI Adoption framework explained 14:09 — How to move from Level 1 to Level 5 (practical walkthrough) 24:32 —  AI that learns your decision-making style 25:53 — Step-by-step: how to go from Level 2 to Level 5 27:57 — Peter's honest fear about AI 29:06 — Peter's radical solution for raising kids in the AI era 30:18 — Action plan: what to do this week to stay ahead *Links:* 📩 Follow my Future-Proof Newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=Peter-Yang 🔗 My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ 📌 My Companies & Products: https://partnerships.marinamogilko.co

Marina MogilkohostPeter Yangguest
Jun 16, 202629mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:51

    Intro

    1. MM

      It almost feels like cheating

    2. PY

      I fear that I'm getting dumber and, and lazier. Like, if I'm on a flight and there's no, like, internet connection, like, that... I just don't feel like working anymore

    3. MM

      That's Peter Yang. He spent a decade building products at Reddit, Meta, and Roblox. Now he runs a newsletter for 140,000 people with no team, almost all of it through AI

    4. PY

      Unlike, like, a employee is never gonna leave you

    5. MM

      And it's only getting exponentially better

    6. PY

      Last 10%, you gotta add your human touch to it. And you don't have to be a creator to make this. I see a lot of creators, they, they like, they get AI to generate, like, 10 posts per hour, and, like, the slop goes viral. This is heartening

    7. MM

      For someone who's trying to stay ahead in this AI era, what should they be doing?

    8. PY

      So step number one is use Codex or Cloud Code, and step two is to

    9. MM

      So I really wanted to make this podcast practical for everyone who's watching. There is something that's going on in AI right now that everyone is talking about is self-improving.

    10. PY

      Mm-hmm.

    11. MM

      And you've recently built call it self-improving skills, and the whole narrative is, like, stop prompting your AI, make it figure out what to do next. Can you talk about that? And is self-improving a reality for people who are just using AI versus researchers?

    12. PY

      Yeah, there's, like, different ways to do it. I think, uh, first of all, like, you know, I think all your audience knows the skill is just, like, a text file with a bunch of instructions, right? And yeah, I have skills for making my podcast, for editing my newsletter posts, and so on. Most basic ways to do a self-improvement is after you use a skill and you have a back-and-forth conversation with the AI, 'cause it never gets it right in one, one shot. Then you just say, like, "Hey, based on our conversation, can you please update the skill to account for... You know, to try to get to it in one shot faster," right?

    13. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    14. PY

      And, and it'll make a bunch of changes, and you should review it, and then hopefully it'll do it better the next, next time

    15. MM

      When I integrated AI, uh, into every part of my work, it almost feels like cheating. And a year before that, you said you were drowning in meetings and projects. What are the top three things that you deployed in this year that dramatically changed how productive you are?

    16. PY

      Mm. So I... Well, I can tell all my creative work since we're both creators. And, uh, you know, being a creator is, like, a lot of repetitive work, right? Like, a lot of repetitive copy and pasting back and forth and, like, changing things from, like, a newsletter post to, like, a, like, You- YouTube description to, like, social posts. There's, like, a lot of kind of like different formats. And I, I, I just decided to spend one day, like, just, like, you know, no meetings, and just sat down with Codex and be like, "Hey," I, I basically just brain dumped all my workflows to Codex, and here's how I do it manually. And I use this thing called Whisper Flow just to, like, brain dump-

    17. MM

      Yeah

    18. PY

      ... right, so my voice. So there's, like, a couple major ones like, uh, you know, prepping the podcast, post-production. There's editing my newsletter posts. There's posting to the various social media platforms. And then another one is I just, like, setting up an advisor to kind of give me, like, business advice, like checking ideas. [laughs]

    19. MM

      Mm. Is it, like, an agent that's running, or-

    20. PY

      It's, it's, it's, it's just, like, a skill that's linked to a Google Doc file-

    21. MM

      Mm-hmm

    22. PY

      ... that has, like, a bunch of personal information about my business, and then it kind

  2. 2:51 – 8:54

    How his AI posting system works across platforms

    1. PY

      of gives me advice.

    2. MM

      Uh-

    3. PY

      Yeah

    4. MM

      ... talk to me about, uh, posting on different platforms.

    5. PY

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      How does it work? Do you dictate something with your voice, or does it see what kind of videos you produce and repurposes them?

    7. PY

      Uh, I have some, like, uh, cron jobs, which is basically like, you know, like these kind of morning briefings, weekly reports that send me how, like, other channels are doing, what kind of videos are popular. Now I post to social media platforms through Codex directly. Bef- before I was using this tool called Typefulfully.

    8. MM

      Oh.

    9. PY

      These, like, social media tools.

    10. MM

      Uh-huh.

    11. PY

      But, like, some of the platforms I post to, like Substack Notes, they don't have any kind of, like, API in-integrations, right? So I, I just told Codex, "Hey, I, like, I, I, I want to schedule posts to Substack Notes. Can you help me figure it out?" And then it went into the browser and it sniffed out some internal APIs that they're using to post. [laughs] So it sniffed-

    12. MM

      Oh

    13. PY

      ... out internal APIs, and then it-

    14. MM

      But it could also do computer use, right?

    15. PY

      It can, it can also do computer use.

    16. MM

      Yeah.

    17. PY

      Yeah, so it can do both. But now, but now I can post to, like, four plat- I can post to X, LinkedIn Threads, and, uh, Substack Notes at the same time. And in, in, in the skill it has, like, some nuances. Like for example, on X you wanna tag the person that you interviewed, right?

    18. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    19. PY

      You wanna find the handle. But on LinkedIn you cannot really tag.

    20. MM

      Yeah.

    21. PY

      It's, it's kind of hard to tag. So, like, I ca- I kind of just brain dump to all the Codex, and now it can actually do the tweaks for, for me, so it kind of saves me a lot of time.

    22. MM

      Do you get the final approval before it posts, or it just goes ahead-

    23. PY

      Uh-

    24. MM

      ... and posts by itself?

    25. PY

      I still draft it. I, I don't just get it to generate copy to post. So I, I still... I, I just, like, you know, use Whisper Flow and brain, brain dump some ran- ran- random thing into Codex. [laughs]

    26. MM

      So you talk to it and-

    27. PY

      Yeah

    28. MM

      ... it takes your voice and just, like, creates different social media posts.

    29. PY

      It creates different social media posts. It also has my, you know, uh, examples of posts that I've done that have gone very viral.

    30. MM

      Mm-hmm.

  3. 8:54 – 11:59

    The weekly strategic brief Peter built in Codex

    1. PY

      'Cause you know, I, I spent a decade of my career just building products inside big companies, and I want to... Now that we have all these a- agents and tokens we can use, I wanna like build different tools, like open source tools or things that, you know, solve my own problems.

    2. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. PY

      Yeah. So I wanna do both. I don't wanna just be a creator. I wanna be a creator and a builder.

    4. MM

      Nice.

    5. PY

      So I'm gonna spend more time doing that.

    6. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    7. PY

      Yeah.

    8. MM

      How do you make decision when to build something and when it's okay the way it is?

    9. PY

      Um, it's usually... I, I, I feel like, you know, it's best to kind of build stuff to solve your own problems. So like, uh, for example, I, I built like a fitness app. I mean, everyone's building fitness apps, but I, I [laughs] I built a fitness app that helps me track my workouts, and then, uh, it has MCPs to kind of like send me emails all my heal- health.

    10. MM

      Mm.

    11. PY

      You know, that's one thing I built. I'm doing something else right now. You know in Gmail, like you get a lot of scam-

    12. MM

      Yeah

    13. PY

      ... scammers.

    14. MM

      Yeah.

    15. PY

      And, and like, um, my, my parents have no idea. Like they, like, you know, their bank sends them an email, but it's actually like XYZ@hotmail.com.

    16. MM

      Mm.

    17. PY

      Right? So I'm trying to build like some sort of extension to just hide that this is a scam. [laughs]

    18. MM

      Mm. How long does it take you to build something like that?

    19. PY

      I think to get to 80% there, it probably just takes a couple hour- hours.

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. PY

      'Cause you just make a plan and you get Codex to do it. But to actually make it good and to test it and polish it, that, that takes more time. That takes like a couple days or like, you know, depending on where your quality bar is-

    22. MM

      Yeah

    23. PY

      ... of like where you wanna go.

    24. MM

      Before we start building something, you have this system with five layers of AI adoption. Can you walk me through them? And let's decide which layer do we want to land on today.

    25. PY

      I made this five-layer thing actually like six months ago. So most people are in layer one, which is just using AI for everyday answers. They're using ChatGPT and Claude and asking questions. I think the second layer is like using AI for daily work. So you're still in ChatGPT and Claude, but you're using projects and other things to like, um, to not do too much copy and pasting, to like set up projects for different things like, I don't know, giving you life advice, a- automating your content stuff. But, um, because it's in ChatGPT and Claude, you still have to copy and paste the output to somewhere else, right?

    26. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    27. PY

      So it's, it's still like a lot of going back and forth.

    28. MM

      Yeah.

    29. PY

      Um, and then, and then I think this is more from like a product perspective, but then a lot of people, uh, in my... You know, as a product manager, you wanna use AI for prototyping. 'Cause like product managers, we all used to just write a bunch of doc documents-

    30. MM

      Yeah

  4. 11:59 – 14:09

    The 5 Layers of AI Adoption framework explained

    1. PY

      and automate as much as you can, right? And, and like, and it, it sounds like very complicated, but really it's just about like sitting down, like, like canceling all your meetings for a day and sitting down and like thinking through Your past week, all the time you spent time manually doing stuff, and, and just, like, sharing it with your AI f- friend. [laughs]

    2. MM

      Can you walk me through a process-

    3. PY

      Yeah

    4. MM

      ... that we just talked about, uh, in a very practical way-

    5. PY

      Yeah

    6. MM

      ... so that people who've been using AI on, like, Level 1, maybe some Level 2-

    7. PY

      Yeah

    8. MM

      ... can move to maybe ideally Level 5, uh, where it's more-

    9. PY

      I, I, I feel like the most practical step that most people should take is just to, like, stop using ChatGPT and Claude and just start using Codex or Claude Code. That's, like, step, step one. And, like, people get intimidated by this stuff, like Codex and Claude Code, like this is, like, a programming software.

    10. MM

      Sounds very-

    11. PY

      Right

    12. MM

      ... uh, nerdy. Yeah. [laughs]

    13. PY

      Yeah. But in reality, it, it, it's just like you j- you're still just chatting with the AI, right?

    14. MM

      Yeah.

    15. PY

      And, and, like, uh, when I use Codex, like 80% of the time I'm, I'm not building... I'm, I'm, I'm not coding-

    16. MM

      Mm-hmm

    17. PY

      ... or, or doing a, any of that.

    18. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    19. PY

      It's, it's just more powerful because, uh, you know, these two apps, they have, um... Y- you can build skills for them. They have access to APIs and integrations, so they can actually get work done across your other apps, and they're just, like, way more powerful than just default ChatGPT and Claude. So, so basically, like, what I recommend you do is use Codex or Claude Code and set up a new folder called, like, personal OS or whatever you wanna call it.

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. PY

      Just call it a folder, right? And then I asked it, like, what are the main workflows that it can do here? A- and you can kinda see here that, um-

    22. MM

      Oh, you asked Codex-

    23. PY

      Yeah

    24. MM

      ... to come up with-

    25. PY

      Well, th- this is all the stuff that I've set up over time.

    26. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    27. PY

      Right? So basically, like, you know, a- as we talked about, it uses, like, various different skills, and skills are just text files to do work for me. So like, for example, to, to edit my newsletter, it, it has this skill to shape a rough note into transcript, and then it also uses other skill called Last 3 Days to add fresh research, and it uses [laughs] another skill called No AI Slop-

    28. MM

      Wow

    29. PY

      ... to make the writing clearer.

    30. MM

      I like that. What, what if you don't ask it for Last 30 Days? It's just gonna-

  5. 14:09 – 24:32

    How to move from Level 1 to Level 5 (practical walkthrough)

    1. PY

      GitHub, and it does, like, searches across, like, Reddit, X, and all these other platforms.

    2. MM

      This is genius. I need this.

    3. PY

      And then it uses No AI Slop to-

    4. MM

      Yeah

    5. PY

      ... and, and, and, and then eventually the newsletter post gets to a, you know, point, and, uh, I use social writer skill to make, uh... to turn newsletter into, like, a bunch of threads.

    6. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    7. PY

      Right? So that's for newsletter, and then for podcast, it's a very similar format. Like, I, I use this podcast prep skill to research guests that I have, and then, and then, you know, as part of making stuff on YouTube, you need notes better anyway. You gotta have a really good thumbnail title and copy.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. PY

      So I have a whole skill to just, like, test different thumbnails and titles.

    10. MM

      Yeah.

    11. PY

      And then, and then based on that, I decide if the podcast is even worth doing, and then I, I do, like, a post-production skill-

    12. MM

      Mm

    13. PY

      ... like, turn into all kinds of stuff.

    14. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    15. PY

      Yeah. Sponsors, we both have sponsors. It's, like, a lot of work.

    16. MM

      Yep.

    17. PY

      So I, I, I ask it to keep track of my sponsors through different skills and also help me draft and brainstorm sponsor copy, help me, you know, schedule stuff on the inventory, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so, so I, I guess the TLDR is, like, uh, these workflows are done by connecting different skills together-

    18. MM

      Mm-hmm

    19. PY

      ... that, that you build. And, like, for all these skills, I, I don't actually-

    20. MM

      Can you show-

    21. PY

      Yeah

    22. MM

      ... one of them? Like, just go into, like, strategy, for example, where it's built, and, like-

    23. PY

      Yeah

    24. MM

      ... walk me through how you built it.

    25. PY

      Yeah, sure. L- let's just say open personal-

    26. MM

      Can you switch off the sound for-

    27. PY

      I think one of the most useful skills that I built is just, like, a personal advisor skill 'cause, 'cause, uh, I guess, um, my wife is tired of me asking for advice all, all the time. It literally is just a text file, right? So it's a text file. Give me your honest advice, and, you know, you're my trusted life and business advisor. [laughs]

    28. MM

      [laughs]

    29. PY

      And then keep your tone warm, right? And then, uh, this, this stuff is, like, a little bit more fa- fancy. There's, like, evals and stuff, but we can talk about that later.

    30. MM

      Learnings MD, is that your file?

  6. 24:32 – 25:53

    AI that learns your decision-making style

    1. PY

      talked about, and then build the skills and the integrations and, and then you're off to the races.

    2. MM

      What do you think your life is gonna look like in a year?

    3. PY

      A year? I've always worked in big companies where there's always been a lot of cross-functional alignment, right? You gotta align different teams and different orgs. I really actually do really miss my en- engineering team and people like that I enjoy working with at work. But I feel like these days, like, uh, this is like the era of solopreneurs, and I feel like you can get so much done with these agents, stuff that you don't wanna do, um, that you can... It, it really frees up your time to do stuff that gives you more ener- energy.

    4. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    5. PY

      You know? And even the stuff that's like strategic or gives me energy, I, I feel like now I have this partner that knows me-

    6. MM

      Yeah

    7. PY

      ... and can like s- like kinda be my pair- pair programmer or like partner to kind of figure stuff out.

    8. MM

      Do you think you're gonna be working less or more in a year? [laughs]

    9. PY

      Uh, well, I, I think I'm pretty type A, so I don't know if I'm gonna completely check out. But, um, I hope I'll be doing more work that I enjoy. Another thing, I, I feel like if you and I retire, we'll be bored out of our mind and probably go play golf or something. But it, it'll be very bor- boring.

    10. MM

      Of course.

    11. PY

      Right? Like we-

    12. MM

      Yeah, I think we're gonna keep working. [laughs]

    13. PY

      Yeah, we'll keep working, but we wanna do work that we actually enjoy, not like the monotonous copy and paste or like, you know, that, that kind of work.

    14. MM

      Do you have any fear around AI?

    15. PY

      Uh, I feel like I, I, I fear that I'm getting dumber-

    16. MM

      Mm

    17. PY

      ... and, and lazier.

    18. MM

      Mm.

    19. PY

      Like if I'm on a flight and there's no like internet connection like that, I, I just don't feel like working anymore 'cause

  7. 25:53 – 27:57

    Step-by-step: how to go from Level 2 to Level 5

    1. PY

      [laughs] I don't, I don't have this partner.

    2. MM

      That's... You know, that's-

    3. PY

      Yeah

    4. MM

      ... yeah, evolution.

    5. PY

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      If you take our grandparents-

    7. PY

      Yeah

    8. MM

      ... even my grandparents, like they would never understand my lifestyle 'cause they were [laughs] they were constantly working.

    9. PY

      Yeah, yeah.

    10. MM

      Uh, it's either at home, like my mom raised me while working, while cooking, while cleaning, and I'm like, "Oh, I can't clean. I have... I need a cleaner."

    11. PY

      You need a cleaner, yeah.

    12. MM

      I'm like, "Oh, I just bought a robot vacuum cleaner. I don't know how I lived without it."

    13. PY

      Yeah, yeah.

    14. MM

      We're becoming lazier and lazier, that's true.

    15. PY

      Yeah.

    16. MM

      Uh, but I think it's, it's actually... Then we have more time for kids and meaningful time with, uh-

    17. PY

      Yeah

    18. MM

      ... with our loved ones.

    19. PY

      I, I, I do worry about our, our kids 'cause like at, at least you and I grew up without AI, so we have like 20 years of like doing the basic stuff, like basic critical thinking skills and like, you know, learning how to do math and stuff. [laughs]

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. PY

      But I feel like our kids these days, they can, they can start using Codex right, right now. They can talk-

    22. MM

      Yeah

    23. PY

      ... they talk to a, you know, com- computer.

    24. MM

      Yeah.

    25. PY

      So like, uh, you kinda, kinda have to make sure they actually still learn their fundamentals.

    26. MM

      What's, what's your solution to that? What are you trying to do with your kids that's different from how you were raised?

    27. PY

      Uh, I, I have a kind of like a ra- radical thing. I, I, I feel like they need to, um... And maybe this is my bias, but I feel like they need to just like maybe start a business or some- something-

    28. MM

      Mm

    29. PY

      ... and learn to build things. 'Cause I, I, I feel like reflecting on my journey, uh, uh, my education, I didn't learn t- a ton from the classroom. I, I learned by like failing and like making mistakes.

    30. MM

      Yeah.

  8. 27:57 – 29:06

    Peter's honest fear about AI

    1. PY

      But, but I do think, um... But may- maybe people will get tired of the slop, and people will be like, "Hey, I actually want human craft and human to- touch on this stuff."

    2. MM

      Let's finish with an action plan-

    3. PY

      Yeah

    4. MM

      ... for, um, someone who's trying to stay ahead in this AI era. For the next week, what should they be doing?

    5. PY

      Okay. I think, um, to stay ahead, uh, get the $20 ChatGPT plan, download Codex, and just start saving time and, uh, u- building workflows and building skills to save time and asking Codex to do it. 'Cause I feel like that's more productive for you 'cause you will immediately recognize that you can start saving time versus what a lot of people do, which is like they, um, go on Twitter and try to like read all the news and like try to, you know, take some courses or s- or s- or something. Like, uh, switch from consumption mode to actual build mode.

    6. MM

      Output.

    7. PY

      Yeah.

    8. MM

      What if they come back and say, "Oh, I tried, but it didn't work. I don't know what you're talking about."

    9. PY

      Yeah.

    10. MM

      "It's so bad. It's so much easier to just do everything by yourself."

    11. PY

      By itself. [laughs] Well, it does take longer. So it's interesting 'cause like with AI, you have to set up the system first before you can see the fruits of the output, and it does take time to set up the system. But it probably only takes like one day-

    12. MM

      Mm

    13. PY

      ... to do it, right? And you have to have some patience 'cause,

  9. 29:06 – 30:18

    Peter's radical solution for raising kids in the AI era

    1. PY

      uh, even now with all this stuff I built, it still cannot one-shot exactly what I want.

    2. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. PY

      So there's always kind of a back and forth, and as long as you're patient and you give it like feedback and tell it to save it in its skills and memory, it will get better over, over time.

    4. MM

      Yeah.

    5. PY

      You know? And, uh, unlike like a em- employee, it's never gonna leave you. It's gonna be there.

    6. MM

      It's never gonna leave you.

    7. PY

      Yeah.

    8. MM

      And it's only getting exponentially better-

    9. PY

      Yeah, the model will get better

    10. MM

      ... every single month. [laughs]

    11. PY

      Yeah.

    12. MM

      Peter, thank you so much. It was a very, very productive conversation.

    13. PY

      Thanks, Marina. It was great.

    14. MM

      Thank you for coming.

Episode duration: 29:33

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