Peter Yang
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“The moat is quality over a long period of time."
Here's my new episode with @rileybrown, where he showed me how he uses Codex to run his entire content business (1.5M+ followers), including how to:
→ Create thumbnails, animations, and B-roll
→ Research and craft winning hooks
→ Use agents to find content ideas proactively
Some quotes from Riley:
“I’ll scrape a hundred thumbnails that performed really well and test putting my face on them." (Riley uses @paper to do this)
“I’ve never looked at a skill file once. If AI does a bad job, I just tell it to update the skill so it doesn’t make the same mistake again.”
“I’ll walk around for 10 minutes speaking all my ideas. When I come back, AI has created 80% of the diagrams I’ll use in my videos.”
I’ve admired Riley’s AI tutorials for a long time, so it was fascinating to see his process behind the scenes.
📌 Watch now:
Thanks to our sponsors:
Google AI Studio: Go from prompt to production fast
Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and videoSubstack just shipped AI slop detection to protect readers and featured my writing as an example of how to use AI to edit without pumping out slop.
Basically, I work with AI during the middle 50% of my writing process:
→ First 25%: I voice dictate or write a rough draft without AI.
→ Middle 50%: I use AI and my /no-ai-slop skill to fix grammar, improve clarity, and test my arguments.
→ Last 25%: I go through the piece line by line and edit it manually.
The difference between pumping out slop and making something you’re proud of is giving a damn and staying in the driver’s seat throughout this 25/50/25 process.
📌 More here:For me, the best use case for Fable isn't coding.
It’s giving it a ton of context about my business and life, then asking:
→ What opportunities am I missing?
→ What should I stop doing?
→ Where am I lying to myself?
Having a sharper second brain for business strategy has been the real unlock.
Feels like a no-brainer thing to try before June 22.
Should I make a video about this?I hate seeing all the mass layoffs. Here are 6 things you can do as an employee to take back control:
1. Read the signals
If business growth is stagnant and leadership is suddenly obsessed with "flatter orgs" or "restructuring for the agentic era," you already know what's coming.
2. Learn Codex or Claude Code
These apps are the best training grounds for working with AI agents. Tell them about your job and ask them what you can build. If your company doesn’t let you use these tools, use them for your personal projects.
3. Build side projects
Ship a small product or make an open-source contribution. If you work at a large company, your builder skills have probably atrophied. It’s time to bring them back.
4. Develop a GitHub history
If you do step 3 consistently, you’ll develop a body of work on GitHub over time. My friend @zarazhangrui is a great example — she built a frontend-slides skill that now has 16K GitHub stars and has been shipping non-stop since.
5. Become top 10% at your craft
AI gets people to average really fast. But that just means customers are willing to pay more for human craft and taste. Pick one skill you genuinely enjoy working on and put in the reps until you’re in the top 10% at it.
6. Let the market determine your value
Build in public, solve real user problems, and craft great products. That’s how you’ll get noticed by great employers, not by submitting 100s of resumes. And if all else fails, consider becoming a founder. I think entrepreneurship is the safest job in the AI era anyway.Dario: “We saw 80x growth earlier this year on usage and revenue”
“That’s why we are going to keep acquiring as much compute as we can”More observations from Shanghai:
1. A full-time, live-in nanny costs only $1,500/month and a personal chef costs $7/hour. There's alot of support for professional working couples here.
2. Didi (Chinese Uber) rides are $3-5 for most trips and you can order delivery for anything for a few bucks. Things are super convenient.
3. Speaking of cars, every Didi I've been in has been a Chinese EV. Feels like China has adopted EVs much faster than the US. Tesla has <5% market share here.
4. The best food is inside the high-end malls, which are everywhere. Service is outstanding at most places and you don't have to tip.
5. Now the tradeoffs - there are ALOT of people. Traffic is everywhere and motorbikes have no qualms about riding on the sidewalks. Have to be on the lookout for my kids.
6. I haven't seen a single blue sky day since I've been here. The air does feel a bit cleaner now thanks to the EVs.
Overall, if you make anywhere close to US tech salary here you can live very well.NoooooMy personal experience on the drawbacks of using Claude Code vs. OpenClaw as a personal assistant from my phone:
Claude Code
- Doesn't have dangerously skip permissions via remote control. Also remote control doesn't feel super reliable
- Doesn't have voice replies so doesn't feel as personal
OpenClaw
- Tends to forget things randomly stillAt this point Claude going down probably reduces overall white collar productivity by 20% https://t.co/ms99CZW11k