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They're making $100,000, $200,000, even $600,000 a year—and they're still living paycheck to paycheck. In this compilation, The Ramsey Show takes on some unbelievable calls from people with big incomes and even bigger money problems. See how lifestyle creep, debt and out-of-control spending can make almost any salary feel like it's not enough.
Finding deep fulfillment in sharing hands-on trade skills with others, and focusing on raising good humans is what motivates Caleb and Brittany. The couple emphasizes the importance of tracking financial numbers and understanding revenue per hour to make informed decisions and pivot when seasons are slow. They highlight the value of hands-on education through their Hardscape Academy and share personal anecdotes about learning HVAC systems while building their new home. The conversation also explores the concept of finding one's purpose through service, mentorship, and professional excellence. Key Takeaways: Track your business numbers consistently so you can identify performance gaps early and make necessary strategic pivots. Calculate your revenue targets per employee and man-hour to build realistic growth plans and staffing budgets. Cultivate a broad foundation of knowledge across related disciplines in your industry to recognize quality work and manage projects effectively. Take every opportunity to learn directly from experienced mentors, even when acquiring skills outside your primary area of focus. Focus on sharing your practical knowledge to empower others rather than tying your sense of purpose to superficial milestones. Connect with Auman Landscape
Imagine building the business you thought you wanted… only to realize down the line that it doesn't actually support the life, future, or mission you care about. Many entrepreneurs focus on the next sale, the next growth opportunity, or the next industry trend without first getting clear on what their business actually needs to provide. In this episode, Eleanor breaks down the three core numbers every woman entrepreneur needs to calculate in order to create a powerful economic model for her business. Get full show notes and more information here: https://safimedia.co/WO120 Follow Eleanor on LinkedIn and Instagram here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanorbeaton/ https://www.instagram.com/eleanorbeaton/
What happens when you finally build the successful firm you have been working toward, but the role you once had inside it starts to change? In this episode, Melissa explores the identity shift that can happen when a law firm owner successfully gets themselves out of the middle of everything and suddenly has more space than they know what to do with. In the second episode of this three-part series, Melissa dives deeper into one of the examples she introduced around how difficult it can be to see the truth from inside your own situation. She shares what it looks like when an owner's firm no longer requires the same level of day-to-day involvement, why that transition can feel disorienting, and what is important to consider as your role evolves. In this episode, you'll learn why success can create unexpected challenges, how to recognize when your identity is still tied to an old version of your role, and why creating a new relationship with your time and contribution is an important part of growing as an owner. Let's talk! If you are a law firm owner looking to talk with us about partnering on your personal and professional growth, book a short, free, no-pressure call with Melissa here: https://velocitywork.com/calendar Check out Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright's podcast Elawvate: Build and Grow Your Law Firm on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://vwrk.cc/gideonasen Calculate your producer multiple with our free Producer Calculator here: https://vwrk.cc/pm Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: https://www.velocitywork.com/381
We are excited to have Anthropic share their latest AI x Finance work at AI Engineer New York, coming up in 2 weeks!In case you've been under a rock, here's a non-exhaustive list of what Anthropic has been shipping since closing the largest fundraise of all time in May at $47B ARR:* June: Launched Claude Tag and Sonnet 5 and Fable 5* July: Opus 5, /checkup. crossed $65B ARR* Last month: Fable/Mythos 5.1, and EFS (upcoming pod)* IPO target $2T, end 2026 ARR estimated $100B* Cowork/chat merged before did* Claude Mods* Dario endorses the same Pacing the Frontier message cosigned by all labs* Last week: Opus 5.5, Plugins portal, Cloud Sessions/Claude Projects* Today: Sonnet 5.5!Today's episode should catch you up, with Thariq Shihipar, the explainer-king of Anthropic, who we last caught up on Fable launch day with The Field Guide to Fable:The Future of Mutable SoftwarePay special attention to Claude Mods (especially the cheatsheet):In general this is also the inverse of the other viral tweet from Thariq:Cloud Brain, Local HandsAnd give a try to Claude Projects:The “hands” terminology is not just an analogy for the local/cloud paradigm that is being built up at frontier coding agent companies like Cognition, but is ALSO particularly relevant to the safety systems discussions that we'll be discussing with Anthropic in an upcoming episode as they prepare to pace to frontier with responsible AI deployment.For those who want Thariq's writing tips we teased at the start of the pod, watch the full video here:From the rapid rise of Claude Code to a future where agents can rewrite their own harnesses, collaborate across teams, and operate across cloud and local environments, the way we build software is changing extraordinarily fast. In this episode, Anthropic's Thariq Shihipar joins swyx and Vibhu to unpack how power users are actually working with Claude Code today, why prompting remains a high-skill discipline, and where Anthropic thinks the agent harness is headed next.We go deep on Claude Code's evolving interface: Ask User Question and elicitation, artifacts as persistent generative interfaces, Claude Tag for multiplayer agent workflows, Projects, model effort, implementation notes, and the new Claude Mods system for customizing the harness itself. Thariq explains why Claude.md may eventually disappear, why the smartest model could also become the cheapest model for many tasks, and why mutable software could become a new paradigm for how applications are built and customized.The conversation then turns to agent security and Anthropic's “Pacing the Frontier” argument. Thariq walks through recent incidents where agents discovered unexpected ways to communicate, exploit infrastructure, reverse-engineer benchmark scorers, and chain vulnerabilities together. We discuss sandboxing, prompt injection, autonomous agents, interpretability, constitutional classifiers, probes, fallbacks, Auto Mode, and why securing increasingly capable agents may become one of the defining engineering problems of the next few years.We discuss:* Why agentic coding went from controversial to the default in less than a year* Why prompting is still one of the highest-leverage skills for working with Claude Code* How expert users build a mental model of Claude and what it can reliably one-shot* Why discovering your “unknown unknowns” matters more as agents become more capable* Artifacts as persistent, generative interfaces between humans and agents* How Claude could split into a cloud-based “brain,” local or remote “hands,” and dynamic interfaces* Claude Tag, Projects, and multiplayer agents and how collaborative agent workflows could evolve* Why spending more time on the initial prompt can dramatically reduce wasted agent work* When to use low, medium, high, or max effort for different engineering tasks* Why frontier models may eventually outperform smaller models on both intelligence and token efficiency* Why implementation notes can expose decisions the model considered but chose not to make* Why Claude.md may eventually disappear — and why starting without one can sometimes be better* Claude Mods: customizing the execution loop, UI, subagents, routing, and behavior of Claude Code* Model routers, forked agents, and supervisor agents that automatically improve agent workflows* Why Claude Mods may be an early preview of “mutable software”* The bitter lesson of harness engineering and why agent architectures go out of date so quickly* How Claude Tag is becoming an organizational harness for multiplayer work* Why giving agents access to company data creates an enormous new security surface* The Exploit-Bench incident where agents discovered ways to communicate and collaborate* Why agents hacked Hugging Face for scorer code rather than benchmark answers* How agents chained sandbox and infrastructure vulnerabilities in unexpected ways* Why increasingly capable agents make traditional security assumptions harder to maintain* The argument behind Anthropic's “Pacing the Frontier” proposal* Why software engineers are increasingly doing two jobs: engineering and keeping up with AI* Constitutional classifiers, probes, and fallbacks and what interpretability looks like in production* How Auto Mode checks whether an agent's actions actually match the user's permissions* Why Thariq can see serious AI risks while still having a relatively low p(doom)Thariq Shihipar* X: https://x.com/trq212* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thariqshihiparTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:04:12 Ask User Question and the Future of Agent Interfaces00:08:29 Artifacts, Projects, and Multiplayer Agents00:15:37 Prompting as the Core Claude Code Skill00:21:52 Context, Effort, and Smarter Model Usage00:28:10 Is Claude.md Going Away?00:32:49 Claude Mods: Customizing the Claude Code Harness00:36:35 Model Routing and the Rise of Mutable Software00:44:40 The Bitter Lesson of Harness Engineering00:50:49 Claude Tag as an Organizational Harness00:55:59 Pacing the Frontier and Autonomous Agent Security00:58:22 Agents Hack Hugging Face for the Scorer01:05:34 What Happens When Agents Need More Compute?01:10:32 AI Coding Is Changing Faster Than Engineers Can Keep Up01:17:17 Probes, Fallbacks, Interpretability, and Auto Mode01:28:32 AI Risk, p(doom), and Closing ThoughtsTranscriptIntroduction: Life at Anthropic and the Pace of ChangeSwyx [00:00:00]: We're here in the studio with our friend Thariq from Anthropic, and I guess generally the Claude Code, I-- there's, there's so much, merging of boundaries and you've been so on top of everything since you joined Anthropic. You have been early to Claude Code itself, but then also, and you've told that story in other podcasts, and you've also been talking about seeing like an agent. Most recently you did the top AIE World Tour talk, Field Guide to Fable, which obviously you guys launched Fable, so that was-- that's cheating. And mostly you most recently also launching Claude Tag, and we're also gonna be talking about Pacing the Frontier. There's a lot going on in Anthropic. I guess top of the question is, what's it like being at Anthropic when there's so much going on?Thariq Shihipar [00:00:48]: I think that It is, like. I think you can get whiplash sometimes. I think, like, going. When I joined Anthropic, I joined because of Claude Code. Like Claude Code had just come out and I was like, “This is so good.” And Opus 4 to me was like just, I could not imagine, like, how good it was? And that was, like, a real moment for me. But I was, like, trying to convince, like, my startup friends to use agentic coding, and they're like, “Oh, no, like, our engineers don't think it's good enough,” or something. And I was like, “That's insane.” and now you, like, fast-forward, 12 months, less, and, like, it's just like, yeah, the default way that everyone codes, right? And I think that, like, just having to go from, like, selling it to, like, now, teaching people how to be. make the most use of it and be more efficient and things like that is just like a big, like big change. And, yeah, I think, like, it's just hard to stay on top of everything as a human? Like, I think things happen so fast and likeSwyx [00:01:51]: You just throw more agents at it.Thariq Shihipar [00:01:52]: Yeah, like that's like the agentic stuff scales much better than the, like, human stuff where it's like, oh, like, there are three things happening right now and, like, they're all emergencies and, like, how do you, like, respond to it? Yeah.Teaching People to Use Claude CodeVibhu [00:02:05]: What do you split your time on? You do a lot of technical writing, engineering work.Thariq Shihipar [00:02:10]: Yeah, so I think that, like, when I joined the Claude Code team, I wanted to teach people how to use Claude Code and I think that, like, that has been something that, like, I thought, like, maybe I would spend a little bit of time on it or, like, I'd, like, do. I was spending some time on the agent SDK first, and I wasn't exactly sure, like, how the bitter lesson would go, when it comes to, like, harnesses, right? Like, I think sometimes we were like, “Oh, like, what's after Claude Code?”? And so initially I was like, I just wanna teach people how to use Claude Code and make it easier to use Claude Code. And I think that has just, like, as the harnesses have gotten better and better, that's like the dominant problem now is, like, how do you use the agents, right? Like, it's like such a high skill expression thing. So I do that and then I do engineering work. I give talks, but I think, like, when I'm doing engineering work, my goal is to take that feedback that we get from users and also, like, then be able to talk about, like, hey, how to use Claude Code to do engineering. So there's like a good loop there. Yeah.Swyx [00:03:07]: Yeah. I'll-- For listeners, we'll attach, the talk that you did with Sarah for the Dev Writers, meetupThariq Shihipar [00:03:13]: Oh, yeahSwyx [00:03:13]: Which we talked a little bit about, well, first you do the work and then you talk about the work.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:16]: Right.Swyx [00:03:16]: Something like that.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:17]: Yeah.Swyx [00:03:17]: It's sow and reap orThariq Shihipar [00:03:19]: Yeah, reap and. Sow and reap.Swyx [00:03:21]: Something like that. Something like that. Yeah, so, and then just to preview a little bit, we are gonna talk about the evolution of the harness. It has come a long way from just being a CLI. We're gonna talk about, Claude Mods, which is starting to leak today, because you couldn't keep it secret.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:36]: Yeah. yeah.Swyx [00:03:39]: Yeah, there's, there's a lot, there. I think you started off with, like, adding ask user question tool, which people love and hate.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:48]: Yeah.Swyx [00:03:48]: Like, I thought it was, like, very innovative, and then now I have, like, my own version. You have your Interview Me version.Thariq Shihipar [00:03:55]: Yeah.Swyx [00:03:56]: And, yeah, everyone just has, like, their own stuff. And, like, it no longer matters ‘cause now you're supposed to, write prompts that create other prompts and loops and all these things.Ask User Question and Human-Agent InteractionThariq Shihipar [00:04:05]: Sure, yeah.Swyx [00:04:06]: So what's the state of the art, today? Like, what are people. what are you, like, telling people to do today?Thariq Shihipar [00:04:12]: Yeah, ask user question was the first time that the model was good at elicitation. I think this was, like, an emergent behavior that I, like, wanted to see if the models could do. I have, like a human-computer interaction background, so I, like, did that in undergrad and grad school. And so this was like. I think it's like human-agent interaction to me, like, trying to figure out, like, how can the agent communicate with you and extract, the requirements, right? I think that, like, one of the things about, like, that's difficult as Claude Code has gone broader and broader is that everyone has, like, their own way of using it, and it's very hard to, like, change the default behavior. So for example, like, if someone asks Claude Code to do something,Thariq Shihipar [00:04:59]: Sometimes they just want them to do the work, ‘cause they're, like, maybe a very good prompter, and sometimes they want. like, are not good at prompting? And you need. like, the agent needs to, like, clarify? And so that's, like, a good split. Like, and the ask you the question tool like, splits along that side where, like, are-- do you feel like you're good enough to instruct the agent as it is, or is the agent able to, like. does the agent need to, like, pull out more requirements and, like, collaborate with you more and really understand your preferences?Thariq Shihipar [00:05:27]: I, on the whole, believe that pretty much everyone is more on the latter than the former, that they, like, have more ambiguity and they know less than they want, than they, like, think they know about the problem. but, like, it's like a interface design problem to make that easy? And so, like, if you're designing a problem, like, or if you're going through a problem, like, things like what's the schema or, like, what's the call stack and things like that are really important. like, the details in the design are important. Ideally, you want to figure out some of these, like, hard problems ahead of time before starting implementation. And yeah, that's why they call, like, unknowns, right? And so I think that this will forever be, like, a skill in agentic coding is, like, figuring out your unknowns. So, like, because even if the model is, like, super intelligent- It, like, needs to know what you want? And, like, you have preferences. like, you need to like, pull the, pull that out. and so that's, like, I think how I'm, what I'm pushing. the question then is, like, how does the agent interact with you? And I think that has been HTML, has been, like, the big way of doing that. And we've recently added artifacts, right? And artifacts, I think we've done a bad job of, like, or, like, I've done a bad job of, like, explaining how to use them fully. We have a lot of property capabilities. They have a database associated with them? And so every artifact can store and write persistent data. They can, like, feed back into Claude? And so, like, one thing that, like, people are not doing yet that I'm trying to, like, encourage is, like, this idea of a dashboard artifact. So you have, like, Claude working on a project long-term. Maybe it's like a kanban or something. it can store that kanban data in its database. Multiple Claudes can access that data via, like, the artifact MCP, and, like, that artifact can, like, talk to those Claudes as well. And so, like, the. We're building the primitives for you to be able to have this, like, generative interface via artifacts that will, like, let you surface more of that rich detail from the agents. And I think that, like, almost everything with agents right now is, like, this problem of, like, you think what you want, but you don't really know what you want, and, like, the agents need a lot of detail, and collaborating with them in the loop is really important. And so artifacts are, like, the, like, way that we're trying to evolve there. But there's a lot of work to do because it's so much more complicated than, like, a multiple-choice question? there's a lot more, like, detail in terms of, like, diagrams and code snippets and schemas or, like, whatever it is for that problem. But, like, artifacts is, like, the mo-more AGI-pilled way of, like, doing ask user question. So yeah.Artifacts as the Interface to the HarnessSwyx [00:08:15]: I think one thing that's unclear to me about these, the artifact stuff is, like, what feedback should go in through the artifact and what feedback should go through a Claude, a chat? Because the more AGI-pilled one is to just feed everything to the Claude.Thariq Shihipar [00:08:29]: I think the more AGI-pilled one is to go through the artifact. Like, and I think that, like, we imagine in the limit, I think that artifacts will be your interface into the harness? You can, like, comment on this, like, live, like, document of your plan, of the work. you can see maybe, like, multiple agents and different agents are doing this, and that artifact is built for the current work that you're doing, right? And so, like, each one has, like, slightly different. I think we're still, like, getting there from, like, an infrastructure perspective. But yeah, I think, like, on-the-fly interface for your harness is probably where things are headed.Vibhu [00:09:03]: Is there a version of it that's an abstraction from CLI or chat and you. Because right now, a lot of it is, okay, you're interfacing with Claude Code, you're having HTML given back for a mockup. It's pretty rich. There's diagrams. Artifacts are ways to connect these together. Why not just do everything that way?Separating Brain, Hands, and Surface UIThariq Shihipar [00:09:22]: Then it becomes, like, separating out, like, where is the inference happening? Where is the intelligence happening? Where is the work happening? like, I think this is like, difference between, like, or, like, some of the distinction between local and cloud, right? And so, I think right now, if you use Claude Code, it's, like, local and, like, you can spin off remote control, for example, to get some cloud behavior, or you can spin off Claude Code in the cloud, right? We're moving towards a place where instead of Claudes, like, you message a local Claude, it starts a session locally and it executes, to more like you have a Claude that you message that's in the cloud that's running. it can run, like, local, or, like, cloud sessions. This is how Claude Tag works. But, like, over time, we'll add, like, local hands as well. And so, like, local hands will be the ability for that agent to access your computer if it's online, and be able to, like, work there. And so it can spin off many different subagents. It can, like, commu- those subagents can communicate with each other, and that's where the artifact comes in to display all of that work. So you can imagine, like, the. You're separating out these things. So there's, like, the surface UI display that's an artifact and hosted somewhere and has a database and everything. There is the inference intelligence, right, that's happening on the cloud, and you don't have to worry about shutting off your computer or whatever, right? and then there's the, like, hands. Like, and it can be local, it can be in, like, a remote sandbox or wherever you need your work to be done. That's like unpackaging, like, the Claude Code experience right now where, like, right now it all happens in one place, right? So.Multiplayer Agents, Claude Tag, and ProjectsVibhu [00:11:00]: How do you see, like, the multiplayer side of that? So say teams want to work in this way. Right now it's very individual, but how do you see the future of multiplayer? Like, right now, I guess there's Claude Tag, which is a version, but.Thariq Shihipar [00:11:12]: We're launching projects. And so projects is the, like, this abstraction that's like Claude Tag, but on our Claude products, right? So you can message it and, like, it will do the Claude Tag-like stuff, like spinning off subagents. So We think with multiplayer. Like, Claude Tag is, like, a little bit more native multiplayer because it's just, like, in your Slack and the permissions are all figured out and stuff like that. But I do think multiplayer is, like, an important part of the story and, like, that will need to get tied together more. Like, you can imagine how complicated it gets when you're like, oh, you have hands, but now you have other hands in other people's computers too, and, like, you need to, like, permission them or, like, you have, like, your MCP and someone else's MCP, and how do you figure out how to use them, right? It gets, like, quite complicated. And Claude Tag does a good job of, like, sanding down all of these issues, right? So that, like, when you have, yeah, Google Docs, how does it access Google Docs, right? Like, it accesses through the shared Claude MCP, or it can access through your local credentials as well if it doesn't have access. But yeah, I think Claude Tag is our multiplayer, product, and it's really useful for these, like, things that are inherently multiplayer. Like, okay, like on-call, for example, incidents are inherently multiplayer. You want to tag Claude, you want multiple people to log in, you want it to be able to find context. I think whenever I'm, like, working on something and I want, like, privacy or security or, like, I want other people to review it's really nice to, like. I'll have a channel per project and I'll, like, at legal, for example, be like, “Hey, like, I want to ship this. Can you, like.” Like, here's. Like Claude knows everything, just chat with it. And that way legal gets precise answers, on like what exactly is shipping into the code, and I don't need to be in the loop, right? So I think like multiplayer is getting like more and more like, yeah, everyone can participate with Claude. I think Claude Tag is like that product and like projects will start off single player and will like, expand.Swyx [00:13:14]: I think there's a question about like maybe dual questions about identity and the unit of isolation.Identity, Permissions, and IsolationThariq Shihipar [00:13:20]: Yeah.Swyx [00:13:20]: Claude Tag, you specifically chose to make it its own identityThariq Shihipar [00:13:26]: Yes.Swyx [00:13:26]: Which is like, a controversial choice. There's, there's other ways to do it.Thariq Shihipar [00:13:30]: Yeah.Swyx [00:13:30]: Claude Projects probably it sounds like, if it's anything like ChatGPT Projects, it is, the isolation is that artifacts, that cloud instance, everyone's collaborating on this. It'll. It sounds like, it should be like if you're, if you're collaborating with legal on a thing, like that channel should be a project, right? Like it's not yetThariq Shihipar [00:13:50]: Yes.Swyx [00:13:50]: But it. that's the natural next step.Thariq Shihipar [00:13:53]: Yeah, like I think in Claude Tag, it's effectively. Like Claude Tag, you have to do your own arrangement. And so Claude Tag, yeah, each channel is like you can name it as you want, and I nameSwyx [00:14:04]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:04]: Like each featureSwyx [00:14:06]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:07]: As a channel.Swyx [00:14:07]: And, but I think like there is some trans- like it's unclear when there is transference, because let's say it is. if you have a coworkerThariq Shihipar [00:14:14]: Yeah.Swyx [00:14:14]: Who is tagging on all these things, yes, there is transferThariq Shihipar [00:14:16]: Yeah.Swyx [00:14:16]: Because it's the same person. but with Claude, it's unclear if it's like necessarily like, well, no, you don't know any of. you don't know about the other stuff. You should only use this stuff.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:25]: It's like the tip of the iceberg meme, right, where you can like. This is what we spend so much time onSwyx [00:14:31]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:14:31]: Is like there is like infinite surface area of like, okay, you want Claudes to. Not infinite, but like there's like surface area, a lot of like, surface area to figure out of like permissions and visibility and like how can you let Claude operate as well as you can, as safely as you can? And obviously, this is very important to us because like security for our code base is very important. And so we've put a lot of time into this. Yeah, there's so many like edge cases you can figure out where it's like, oh, like, yeah, this Claude in this channel has different permissions, but it can message another channel, and can't it exfiltrate data that way? Or like can you like. What if it uses your MCP and then messages someone else? Like there's like so much, and we've like really put a lot of work into sanding it down.Swyx [00:15:14]: Yeah. Lots of work. okay. Fable?Fable and the Meta-Skill of PromptingVibhu [00:15:18]: Fable, you wrote two good articles. you've written many good articlesThariq Shihipar [00:15:22]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:15:22]: But on, Field Guide to Fable, Building Claude Code. I'm curious from what you've seen, is there any common patterns that you see in like top users at Anthropic externally? Like what are best practices for getting the most out of Claude Code?Thariq Shihipar [00:15:37]: The like meta skill I say is like prompting is like very important? And like that. Like I think this is like not trivial to say because I think a lot of people are like, “Oh, prompting doesn't matter. It's just like I can just say a sentence and Claude will do it.” And I think prompting is really this like, this. It's like public speaking, like, or writing or something, and for a specific audience, and that audience is Claude. And you need to like build a mental model of Claude and how it thinks and how it works, right? And so that's like the most important skill in working with Claude Code is like having this mental model, right, of Claude and like what it can do well, what it can one-shot, what it can't. And so many people when you see prompting, they're just like, they're short prompts, but they have such a good mental model of Claude and of like the code base and things like that like it's effortless? But it's like high skill ceiling. So like that work of like, spending a lot of time prompting and building mental models of how, and intuition for how the agents work is really important. And then I think like the next thing is like the unknown stuff we talked about earlier, where it's like being able to find out like your, what you don't know or what you haven't written down, learning about like different things. I think as Claude can do more and more things, the likelihood of you doing something out of distribution for you and like you have low domain knowledge on is very high? And the more you can like learn the vocabulary to be able to prompt Claude, it becomes really important. And so like I think the most important unknowns are the unknown unknowns, where you're like, I just like don't even know that this exists, right? Yeah, exactly. I think that's like a illustration of like the map and the territory, right, where you're like, “Okay, this is my prompt,” and the territory is like the actual like work that the agent needs to do, right? And if you are like very precise, you can give more precise things, right? So like for example, in design, I'm not very precise. I'm not a designer, so I say like, “Give me like eight different mock-ups.” But if I was a designer, maybe I'd be like, “Oh, hey, here are some reference sites.” Like, “I want this type of font and this type of like look to it, and here's like a few different components to like visualize. Here's a Figma MC board to bring in,” like. And so you can just be so much more precise with that language. And if you're not a designer, you just need to like try and learn the language or learn the unknown unknowns. And this is true of like everything, I think. Like the more, like you can work with Claude to learn like how things work, the better your prompting will be. I think another good example of this is like game design, like where a lot of people are like, “Oh, like I can vibe code a game now.” And they're like, “It's not fun.” And like it's just like the thing about game design is like every one of these choices has like a lot ofTaste, Domain Knowledge, and Learning the VocabularySwyx [00:18:25]: Variations.Thariq Shihipar [00:18:25]: A lot of like craft to them. So it's like, oh, okay, like when you're making a flying game, the feel of the plane and the like, way it responds to your controls has a lot of like. Like, a game designer would spend like days on that. Do? and likeSwyx [00:18:44]: To me, that's what taste is, right?Swyx [00:18:45]: Like it is like from the possible space of one thousand mathematically valid answersThariq Shihipar [00:18:49]: Yeah.Swyx [00:18:49]: Here's the one that is the humans will like.Thariq Shihipar [00:18:51]: Yes. Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:18:52]: I think with taste, I'm like torn on this word ‘cause I think you're right, but everyone has different definitions, and it sounds kind, sounds like low skill or like elitist almost, where you're like, oh, like there are certain people with taste?Swyx [00:19:06]: It's like taste is what I call taste.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:07]: Yeah, exactly.Swyx [00:19:08]: And it's like these guys don't have taste.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:09]: Yeah, exactly. Oh, like an engineer doesn't have taste. Like I, the like founder, have taste.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:14]: ? And I think that's not true. Like I think like the engineers have a lot of taste for these particular like problems? And I think everyone has taste for particular problems. I think like Jason Liu, like say like in order to, yeah, have taste, you have to eat?Thariq Shihipar [00:19:32]: And I really like that, where it's like, okay, you have to like do a lot of things. You have to like iterate and figure out what you want, what you like, and, like build that like domainSwyx [00:19:41]: YesThariq Shihipar [00:19:41]: Domain vocabulary. And then when you're prompting, you're like synthesizing all of that for a product.Swyx [00:19:46]: Isn't it annoying when someone else says it better than you?Swyx [00:19:48]: It's just like, f**k, I have to quote this guy forever.Vibhu [00:19:51]: Having to quote Jason Liu forever.Vibhu [00:19:53]: He's gonna love this.Thariq Shihipar [00:19:55]: So I get prompts, more than that.Vibhu [00:19:57]: And sometimes it's not even that. Sometimes it's just intuitive, right? Like you don't realize you even want something till a model puts it out, and you're like, “Oh, this just feels immediately better,” right?Voice Prompting and Information DensityThariq Shihipar [00:20:07]: Yeah, exactly.Swyx [00:20:09]: One thing I go back and forth on is I feel like the way I prompt half the time, let's say I use voice.Swyx [00:20:16]: Did I say voice? Other people have voice. that is the opposite. That is just like me rambling for like two minutes Pressing down the function key and then let go, and then like hopefully it figures it out. And oftentimes it does.Thariq Shihipar [00:20:26]: Yeah.Swyx [00:20:26]: But it's not as thoughtful as like a structured prompt with like Well-run communication as though it's a PRD or a memo. Is that in line with how people do this? There's like bimodal prompting where there's some prompts where you spend a lot of time upfront and other prompts you just dash it off?Thariq Shihipar [00:20:43]: I don't think the voice is necessarily low. Like I think it's like more like how much information is in the prompt. like the model can. Like you can and like add some sentencesSwyx [00:20:53]: RightThariq Shihipar [00:20:53]: And be like, “Oh, like I changed my mind,” like in the middle of the prompt, and it will be able to follow that perfectly? So I think the like actual format of the text is less important, but then like the ability to. Like how much information is in it, right? And I think for voice, a lot of times, going back to like human-agent interaction and like for a lot of people, it's just way easier to talk than to like type? and I. If that gets more information out of you, like that's better.Vibhu [00:21:21]: At some level, it feels like just giving the model as much contextThariq Shihipar [00:21:24]: YesVibhu [00:21:24]: Over prompting before you kick off is a best practice. I don't know. A lot of the times, like when I was first trying out Fable, I spend a solid 30 minutes like really crafting a long prompt. This, I think, is a response of models running for longer and longer, right? It's still a little difficult to nudge them as they're in like, in the loop, but I just like intuitively spend more time kicking off that first prompt and working with it a lot.Spend More Upfront, Iterate LessThariq Shihipar [00:21:52]: My personal opinion is that if I was a software engineer, if I was like, just running my own startup, for example, I think I would mostly fit, stick to a max 20x? like maybe verification and so code review are like separate things. But I think like what I see a lot of times is people hit rate limits when they're doing this like, oh, like it did a lot of work and you're like, “Oh, I don't like this.” Like, “Can you like undo this and redo it?” And then you're like iterating on this like thing that the model could have done if you had like spent more upfront time or given it better context? And instead it's like you're like, “Nope, don't like that design. Try this.” Or like, “You messed this up,” or something like that. And then that just eats up so much more of like, your usage. And so that's like, I think maybe like a key like tip both for like efficiency as well, right? And yeah, I think like context, and not just like context on like what the goal is good, right? Like are you building a prototype or is it like a production thing? Like where can you spend compute or when, where can you not spend compute? Like I think you have to give the model permission or like not permission to do things sometimes where, like it doesn't know intuitively how much you want to spend on this task, right? And you can use effort for this. So I did-- I'm working on a blog post about that where it's like, if you want. For like we see that effort scales with the complexity of the task. So for security, effort gets like way more results. Like high effort versus like low effort gets, like changes the evals a lot. But for software engineering, it doesn't change it a huge amount because effort is mostly spent on the verification and the like edge case testing and things like that. And so like being able to like give the model that guidance of like, “Hey, this problem is something that I think I want you to spend a lot of time verifying and edge case testing,”?Effort, Model Choice, and VerificationVibhu [00:23:43]: How about model in the mix? So, there's Opus and Fable with effort.Thariq Shihipar [00:23:47]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:23:48]: There's also Haiku in there.Thariq Shihipar [00:23:49]: Yeah. It's not quite true yet, but it's very close where I think the frontier models will be Pareto dominant over like almost everything. like maybe. And sometimes I think Opus might be Pareto dominant. Do? Like I think depending on like how things, like shake out if it's like a newer version of Opus. But I think that like increasingly it's just going to be like the smart model is going to be able to like do the simple task for less tokens than the like the other models because of verification. With verification, in the limit, your model doesn't need to verify, right? If it's a perfect model, it just does the work once and it's like, okay, like you, I did it? And increasingly with Fable, I'm like, I'm like, “Dude, you don't need to spin up Chromium and screenshot all of these things.” Like I see it. Like you did it, right? And so a lot of the. At higher effort, you spend more of those tokens verifying. But if you're working on simpler problems, and a lot of software engineering is like well, like in Fable, like low and medium stability, it can spend less tokens verifying. And as the models get smarter and smarter, they will just be able to like, “All right, done.”? Like, I can run the lint for sanity's sake, but, like, I, like, know it lints? Like, you don't even need to do that. And that will be so much more token efficient than, like, the smaller models. Yeah.Swyx [00:25:15]: Is there a good, practice on our side that we can use to see if we're using too much effort? Like, I freakingThariq Shihipar [00:25:23]: YeahSwyx [00:25:23]: Hate wasting time on that stuff.Thariq Shihipar [00:25:24]: Yeah. I know what you mean. I think, like, so in this blog post, my rough distribution is, like, code review and security should be, like, high or max and, like, software engineeringSwyx [00:25:37]: You said recommend mix settings per domain.Thariq Shihipar [00:25:37]: Yeah. I think, like, if you're doing, like, UI or something like that, like low and medium, I think is you're building, like, an API and you want to make sure, like, you cover enough edge cases? And so I think building, like I said, that mental model of, like, how things work across these distributions is, like, yeah, part of the job.Implementation Notes and Decision LogsVibhu [00:25:56]: This is more intuition-driven or eval? Because I'm guessing this would change as you go.Swyx [00:26:00]: He has evals.Thariq Shihipar [00:26:01]: Yeah. So what I did in the blog post is I go over all of the terminal bench evals. So there are, like, 70 problems and I'm show that, like, okay, like, in the security problems it does more. and then I also, like, look at some of the transcripts just in terms of, like, how-- what does it answer, what does it forget or something. And a lot of times, this is another prompting tip I have, is, like, asking it to make decision notes or implementation notes because, in every eval problem that it faces, it thinks about the correct solution, and decides not to do it. it's like, oh, like, here is the answer. What if I did this? And then it's like, oh, probably not? and then keeps going. And this is, like, the majority of the failures, at, like, a higher max level. It's very rare that the model just doesn't know how to do something. If you just have these implementation notes, then you can review and you can be like, “Oh, I want you to do this thing that you didn't do.” The models are getting better at surfacing that overall. Like, I see in the transcripts of Fable 5.1, like, when it does this output, it will call out its decision-making as well. but making this more explicit in the harness is better. And now we're, allowing ways of you modifying the harness so you can, like, add someVibhu [00:27:23]: Ooh.Thariq Shihipar [00:27:24]: Calculate with there. Yeah.Swyx [00:27:25]: Yeah. So I do wanna call out two things that you mentioned that I think exist outside of prompting. One is like, let's, let's call it the prompt that is so important that it shouldn't be in a prompt. It is in Claude.md or Agents.mdThariq Shihipar [00:27:38]: YeahSwyx [00:27:38]: Which is like goals, right? Like your situation, your goals, the things that you want, the thing. and then second of all is the decision log or the experiment log or whatever log of traces that you might want to survive the current session to do those things. Those are, like, externalities that there's no standard. There's no-- It's not like skills. It's not like MCP. There's no standard. It's, it's just like it's a markdown file. first of all, is that right? Is Claude.md going away? You have a documented dislike of, Agents.md, but you're gonna do it?Claude.md, Agents.md, and Model-Specific InstructionsThariq Shihipar [00:28:10]: Yeah. Okay. So Agents.md, yeah, like, we're, we're gonna do it. I think it's just, like, different models are very different from each other? But I realize that it's, like, such a pain to, like, maintain different ones? And yeah, like, as the models get better and better, the floor of how they accomplish the simpler task is better. And so I do think in the limit, Claude.md goes away, and maybe not even, like, that far. Like, I think, like, I think that right now it might be better to start a new project without a Claude.md.Swyx [00:28:44]: Yes.Thariq Shihipar [00:28:44]: I think that, like, maybe if you see very repeated failure modes, you add them to your Claude.md. The really tough thing is that this changes per model. And so, like, if you've added a bunch of failure modes or, like evenSwyx [00:28:57]: So you need Fable MD, you need Opus MD.Thariq Shihipar [00:28:59]: Or well, even Fable 5.1 versus Fable 5.Swyx [00:29:03]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:29:03]: Like, it is annoying. Like, I'm not like,Swyx [00:29:05]: YeahThariq Shihipar [00:29:05]: Like, we don't, like, do this on purpose? It's just, like, how the models work, right? And so, like, maybe, like, Fable 5 had this, like, failure mode that Fable 5.1 doesn't. And if you keep this context, this running log of a bunch of different failure modes, they will probably over constrain Claude? And so this is like. we just added evals plugins for skills.Swyx [00:29:28]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:29:29]: And so now you can eval if a skill is better. I think Daisy on our team did this. And so, yeah, this is like we're trying to work on this. We know it's, like, you still have to spend tokens on it and, like, it's not, it's not perfect, but it's, like, we're trying to help out with this problem.Swyx [00:29:44]: And so, and as far as prompting goes, the one tip I wanna offer is, something I have told people a lot is sufficiently advanced prompting is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced executive communication. So I've referred to-- This is an executive comms workshop from Heavybit that is the best I've ever seen in my career. And they teach this thing called the SCQA model. Just Google it. It's a, it's a thing. Like, people have done prompting for decades. It's just called executive communication. It's like when one person has to communicate to thousands of people down the org chart, this is what you do. so situation, complication, question and answer, is how you write the memo. but obviously sometimes you don't have the answer, but you can at least list out the SC and Q, and then they have some examples in there. So just leaving breadcrumbs for people if they want to explore.Underrated Prompting Patterns and ELI5Vibhu [00:30:31]: Before we move on, I wanna ask you, any other underrated tips, ways people could get a lot of value from Claude Code that they're not using?Thariq Shihipar [00:30:41]: Yeah, I think a lot of them are in the, this unknowns, like, doc. Like, I give a bunch of example prompts, like, using it for brainstorming, using it to quiz you after. we added this, like, explain it like I'm five skill which is a very short prompt. And it doesn't even say explain it like I'm five. It's like the key word of this prompt is big pictures, few words. like, that's like the main thing. And it is shockingly good? Like, you, like, I think I tweeted about this and it's like /eli5, and, like, you can install it as a plug-in. But yeah, it's, like, way better at just cutting through the BS and being like, yeah, exactly right here. So the diagrams are, like, quite clear. I think one of the things that is true with artifacts is, like, they put too much text in and people are not reading the artifacts? And so, like, this simplifies it a lot more. And, yeah, this came out of, like, just people at Anthropic, like, going through very complicated incidents and being like, “What is happening?”? So, this one I think is great, yeah.Swyx [00:31:47]: My version of this is the, it's like test your understanding. Give you a few choices and then, like, if you get it wrong, you have a mismatch between what you think is happening versus what's happening.Thariq Shihipar [00:31:58]: Yeah. I think this is one of those things that everyone loves talking about, and then very few people really do. Like, I thinkSwyx [00:32:05]: Really helpful.Thariq Shihipar [00:32:07]: Yeah. But most people just don't want to get quizzed about something? Unfortunately, I think this is one of the, like, things that we need to, like.Swyx [00:32:16]: What's the opposite of ask you the question or ask you the question before the thing?Thariq Shihipar [00:32:19]: Yeah.Swyx [00:32:19]: This is after the thing.Thariq Shihipar [00:32:20]: Exactly. Yeah.Vibhu [00:32:21]: It's a good way to stay grounded of, like, do you even know what you're doing, right? The worst case is when people send you slop and they haven't understood what they're asking for or what the output is, and it's like, “Dude, I don't wanna read this. Do you even know what it is?” So, you make it a rule for yourself that before you send stuff, you should at least know what's implemented.Claude Mods: Customizing the HarnessThariq Shihipar [00:32:41]: Yes, but so you could make this a mod and you could build your own mod to, like, make sure you test it. So yeah, you can do that.Swyx [00:32:49]: All right. Let's get right into it. What is Claude Mod, and what is this diagram showing?Thariq Shihipar [00:32:54]: Yeah. Okay, so Claude Mods is you can customize the entire Claude Code harness, and we're going to. If you have requests, we will, like, let you, like, please let us know. We'll add more and more. This works for CLI, it works for desktop. maybe it will work for Claude Tag in the future. I don't know. Like, we're trying to make this very extensible. You can see this reference sheet. I don't want people to get overwhelmed by it? At a high level, you can customize both the execution of the harness, and the UI of the harness. And so, like, you say on that Tetris example from Boris, that's like customizing the UI, right? Like showing, like, Tetris in the game.Thariq Shihipar [00:33:35]: But, like, let's say that you wanted to do this thing where you had. you tested your assumptions or, like, tested your understanding after every project, right? What you would do is you would ask Claude to make this plug-in. It would spin a classifier after every prompt. And so, like, at the end of each turn, you would spin off a sub-agent or, like, a forked agent. A forked agent is, like, maintains the prompt cache, right? So it's like a, like one of those unintuitive things where you can fork and do, like, a little request, and it'll be very cheap because the entire prompt cache is, like, done. And so you can be like, “Has this task been completed?” likeSwyx [00:34:18]: This is how you do BTW and all those.Thariq Shihipar [00:34:20]: Yeah. The underlying forked agent, yes. But so you can, in the f-fork sub-agent, you can say, like, “Has this task been completed? If so, return true.” And then in your hook, or in your, like, plug-in mod, or sorry, like, in the sub-agent probably, you would say, like, “If true, give me a quiz.” give me questions and answers, and then, like, in a JSON format, and then you'd parse it, and then you display above the prompt input, this list of questions, right? And so this is something that's, like, slightly token-intensive because, like, you have to do it after every end of the assistant turn. But it's, like, a lightweight classification, and then you can, like, get this quiz, and then you'll see, like, Claude will always do it for you. You don't need to remember to do it. There are lots of these, like, tips that we've talked about, right, where it's like, oh, implementation notes. You can also add a tool for implementation notes now. And so, like, this tool that I'm adding is, like, register, like, I think assumption is what I'm calling it, but, like, maybe I'll change it around. And this is a mod. And so, like, you give it a register assumption tool, and then it will keep a list. It'll. Every time it does it'll keep a, like, add to the list, and then at the end it will display those assumptions? Another mod I'm working on is a model router. And so, like, internal, like, Claude model routing, right? So it's. This is, I want to say the reason we don't do model routing by default is, like, it's a hard problem? And likeForked Agents, Assumption Tracking, and Model RoutingSwyx [00:35:51]: You will get it wrong.Thariq Shihipar [00:35:52]: Yeah, you, like, yeah, you will, like, accidentally use, like, Fable for a hard problem or Sonnet forSwyx [00:35:57]: Yeah, if you have auto approve, but you don't have auto mode.Thariq Shihipar [00:36:01]: Well, you will have auto. Like, you don't have, like, auto routing or something.Vibhu [00:36:04]: You don't have auto mode for model picker.Thariq Shihipar [00:36:06]: Yeah, exactly. SoVibhu [00:36:07]: I'm getting the rough question of, like, how much do you open this up and how much do people have to think about this? Like, when you talk about prompt caching and building a router, it seems like you could easily build a mod that routes per query, and I'm just killing my plan very fast, right? I guess my question is more so, like, what is, like, a product talk like this look like, right? Who is it for? Is it for power users? Is it everyone should be able to go throughSwyx [00:36:33]: Oh, definitely power users, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:36:35]: Yeah, I think it is power users, but, like, the nature of Claude Code is that so many people are power users? Because it's easy to share things, like you can. Like, one person can make a good model router thing that doesn't break prompt cache all the time, and then you can, like, compose them. Another cool thing about the plug-ins is that they can hook into and compose with each other. And so I have, like, a mod that will, like, create a mode selector at the top, and any plug-ins can register to be a mode. And so, like, the auto router can be a mode, right? Or, like, you can have a mode that's, like, artifact mode, where it's like it primarily talks to you in artifacts. like, you can toggle between plan mode? And so, like, you can create more and more of these modes. But the ability to create modes is in it itself a mod? And so there's a lot of richness here, but we do want to make it fairly easy. We want to be-- make it so that you can just, like, install someone else's. You can ta-- you can chat with Claude and, we'll, like, make sure that it understands the nuances of things like prompt caching and stuff, so it can, like, warn you. This is, like, not extremely complicated behavior for Claude, I think, but we should have just a good skill on how to make mods. and yeah, we'll see how we go. But I do think that this is, like, a preview of, like, mutable software, and, like, how, like, generative software, just like you can customize safely. If enabled, you could customize any piece of software. And I think that more and more apps ideally do something like this?Power Users, Modes, and Mutable SoftwareSwyx [00:38:13]: And by the way, you, we have, you have another cool tweet about how, there's the infinite money button, which is like make your SaaS, consumable by agents. I think mutable software is interesting and, other people have also tried to do it. I think the hurdle comes when you can do everything, then people, users get, tend to get confused. So usually the stuff that works is just like one opinionated flow. This is in the side of less opinionation. It's just like, well, more power to power users. And I think probably unlocked by AI, where, like, you can just prompt for whatever the thing is.Thariq Shihipar [00:38:47]: Yeah, or there can be a skill that gives the opinions?Mods vs. Hooks vs. ArtifactsSwyx [00:38:50]: Yeah.Thariq Shihipar [00:38:50]: And then, yeah.Swyx [00:38:51]: So knowing a little bit about, like, TypeScript and build systems and all these things, the closest-- I'm very curious that the team who worked on this, if, I don't know how close you were to them, if they drew any inspiration from build systems like Babel, Webpack, all these, like, old school things. Because it sounds very similar, like the plug-in ecosystem of those things where they can compose with each other.Thariq Shihipar [00:39:11]: Yeah, I'm not deep in the technical details, but I do know it was a collaboration with someone on the Bun team and someone on the Claude Code team.Swyx [00:39:17]: Yeah, it's a build system mecca.Thariq Shihipar [00:39:19]: Yeah. Exactly. It's, it's very exciting. But yeah, like, agents can just do this very complicated like, extensibility into your software now. And so, yeah, like, another reason to, like. If you run a startup, like, you can just prompt Claude and be like, “Hey, like, could we make an extension system? Like, what would that look like?”?Swyx [00:39:37]: Yeah.Swyx [00:39:38]: And I just really wonder, like, you had hooks in the past and plug-ins, all these things. So what specifically will mods be able to do that those things could not do?Thariq Shihipar [00:39:47]: Internally, we were originally calling this function hooks. And so, like, that's, like, gives you a little bit of an idea where, like, hooks register a, like an event to happen and then, like, a script to call. And this inside of the, like, TypeScript runtime is running things. And so, like, you get some benefits of just, like, it has a bunch of things in the Scope with, like, for example, like how many turns is in this conversation, right? Like, how many tokens have been used? Like, et cetera. Like, what are the messages? Things like that. So it has a bunch of messages that can be used. And then it's just, like, a lot more hooks. So we have, like, or a lot of, lot more, like, things you can register on. And then you can do because of the. because it's all happening in process, you can, spawn sub-agents, with four contests and contexts and stuff. And, like, that will return. You can parse the results of those. You can use structured output to like, return them. and then you can modify the UI, which you can never do in hooks. So, yeah.Swyx [00:40:50]: Yeah. Yeah. So modify UI, this is why you showed the Tetris example. Does it also ex-extend to artifacts? I assume it does.Thariq Shihipar [00:40:57]: You-- Like, artifacts are like a different way of customizing it. like, you can definitely. One of the mods I'm working on is, like, this dashboard mod, which will, like, prompt Claude to maintain a dashboard, that's an artifact. But they're like, slightly orthogonal, or not orthogonal. They compose with each other in different ways. Like, mods are, like, a little bit more, like, in your Claude Code harness, changing the agent loop? And, like, the UI is, like, an added benefit. and then artifacts are just like you want to, see things at a high level, very inter- highly interactive. like, the affordances can be a lot bigger than, like a TUI or even in our desktop.Next Steps, Supervisors, and Persistent GuidanceVibhu [00:41:40]: I'm guessing you'll have a good blog post on the differences, because right now you can also, make a loop that outputs to an artifact that's an interactive dashboard, but you can also do it with a mod. There's just some thinking about making a hacking on a harness when we don't know much about the harness, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:42:00]: Well, something I'm excited about with mods is, like, there's so much things with Claude Code that you just have to remember? You're like, “Oh, like, let me do this, and then let me call the dashboard skill that does the loop,” and things like that. And, or like, “Let me test my assumptions afterwards.” And I think, like, if you do all of these things using these little classifiers and stuff, and you're like, “These are the things I care about. This is what I want to do,” you can, like. You don't have to remember as much. One more, like, mod I'm working on is a next steps mod thatSwyx [00:42:28]: I have-- I was gonna say, I have a next step skill. I always run next steps.Thariq Shihipar [00:42:32]: And does it have access to your skills? Like, this is one of those things where I'm like.Swyx [00:42:37]: I think so.Thariq Shihipar [00:42:38]: Okay. Yeah, probablyVibhu [00:42:39]: Do skills need specific access toThariq Shihipar [00:42:41]: Well, I think there'sSwyx [00:42:41]: Don't they always haveThariq Shihipar [00:42:42]: I think there's, like, specific prompting, I guess, to, like, know your skills. Like I think Claude forgets them sometimes throughout, like, the thing. But anyways, the idea of, like, yeah, next steps that also are like, “Oh, hey, this has happened. Use the explain skill to explain to you what happened because this seems, like, quite complex,”? Or, like, yeah, “Use your unknown skill. It looks like you are, like, asking the model to, like, iterate on these small changes. It seems like you could prompt better.” like, “What if you did this?” Right? So, I think, yeah, like spending more compute there. Yeah.Swyx [00:43:20]: And it should always come out as multiple choice. we have, I haveVibhu [00:43:23]: We have his skill.Swyx [00:43:24]: My next step skill is like this.Thariq Shihipar [00:43:26]: Okay, perfect. Yeah.Swyx [00:43:27]: You can steal it.Thariq Shihipar [00:43:28]: Yeah.Swyx [00:43:29]: Like, but like, for me, it's all-- I think models really always need to be reminded, what are you trying to do here?Thariq Shihipar [00:43:35]: Yeah.Swyx [00:43:35]: Look at the whole transcript and go like, oh, was this original goal? Did your solution solve it? Were you lazy? If you're lazy, maybe there's a reason. Maybe you needed approval from me. Maybe you needed, there's two things you wanna suggest. So it's, it's a little bit like the modification of the ask user question or interview me skill. so it's next steps.Thariq Shihipar [00:43:55]: Yeah, exactly. And again, the benefit of doing it with mods is you can do it as a fork sub-agent, and so it doesn't remain in the context afterwards. So you have this, like, idea of like, okay, the model is doing its execution and you have this almost like supervisor, like, that is like making sure that you can do like the next steps well. So yeah.Swyx [00:44:15]: Yes. I do have two panels and like I often try to have a supervisor thing, keep the high-level context and then the implementationThariq Shihipar [00:44:21]: YeahSwyx [00:44:22]: Detail in another agent.Vibhu [00:44:23]: I feel like a lot of this abstracts away as models change? The, like, half an hour ago you said bitter lesson of harness engineeringThe Bitter Lesson of Harness EngineeringThariq Shihipar [00:44:31]: YeahVibhu [00:44:31]: And we're on the other extreme right now, I feel.Swyx [00:44:33]: Well, so yeah, exactly. If everything's customizable, what is Claude Code, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:44:37]: Yeah.Swyx [00:44:37]: And which I talked to you about last night.Thariq Shihipar [00:44:40]: Yeah, I think that this is. I think the bitter lesson is unintuitive? In terms of like. Also, like we're misusing a little bit of the bitter lesson here where it's like, it's more about like scaling and compute and stuff. But like, I think there is something where it's just like. I think I use it as an approximation here to say that harnesses go out of date very quickly? And like how, but how they change is unintuitive? And so like the big obvious example is like from chat to like agents where you had to give them entirely new tools, right? But like, I think this new version of like, oh, it can modify its own harness, right? This is like, an own harness loop is like a way of using its capabilities, right? Or like it can build an artifact. And like, I think the way I think about it is like the models have more and more intelligence, and they're like so much more intelligent now than like the average software engineering task. Like, you look at the like terminal bench ones and they're like solve like the Jacobian conjecture. Not really, but like, it's like they're, they're quite complex. Like, I would not have been able to do this really as a software engineer.Swyx [00:45:42]: And you said TB4 or TB2?Thariq Shihipar [00:45:43]: TB3. TB3.Swyx [00:45:44]: TB3.Thariq Shihipar [00:45:44]: Yeah. They're quite complex, but the goal is still to deliver user value, right? And like you said, there's like this infinite space of things to do. And so the ways like you spend compute are to keep the user in the loop and make sure that like you're getting to the right decision in the end of the day and like the right output. And artifacts and mods are this way of like spending that intelligence. and I think that's like, yeah, the next step. And so, yeah, I think Claude Code is like, has the core things of agent loop which are, have gotten more complicated. It's like, it needs a sandbox to operate safely. It needs auto mode to like make sure like the permissionsVibhu [00:46:21]: Approvals.Thariq Shihipar [00:46:21]: Yeah, approvals. it needs computer use and MCPs and like all of these like ways of accessing your data, and it needs web search and web fetch. And like, so the-- as the models can do more and more, the core harness has to be like quite complex and very secure. But then like how you interact with it can change quite a lot.Vibhu [00:46:42]: What other harness engineering best practices have you, from the Claude Code team itself? I feel like, there was a phase of plan mode, which is not as used. We now have auto mode. at a point you cut the majority of the system prompt, you got rid of examples. What other best practices are there for harness engineering?Core Harness Primitives and Managed AgentsThariq Shihipar [00:47:02]: I think there is like a forking path where at some point, eventually, yes, the model will just be able to like vibe code the exact version of Claude Code, even describing all this complexity that I've talked about, right? Like auto mode and computer use and stuff. Eventually, the models will just be able to do that in one shot. But I think they can one shot simpler harnesses? And so like, I think some people. Sometimes you don't need this full, like if you don't need computer use or like all this like more complicated stuff. I think before we, you had to use things like the agent SDK, which was like Claude Code wrapped, in order to like. And I would, like suggest people do that because there was so much complexity into building a harness. And now as that's got more abstracted, we have like, Claude managed agents, which lets you have that complexity, but still like, right, like a very bare bones like harness that's scoped to your task. Yeah, I think there's like this barbell effect where like for like very complex, for like coding task and like these like complex things, you should use our harness. And then for like a lot of like simpler or like, more domain-specific things, you can build your own harness because Claude has gotten better at building harnesses, and we have these harness primitives like managed agents. So yeah.Swyx [00:48:18]: Yeah. Is there a general progression? Let's say chapter one was ultra code dynamic workflows, then chapter two was cloud mods. Where is this going?Swyx [00:48:29]: Where you're, you're, you can customize the thing on demand.Thariq Shihipar [00:48:36]: Yeah. I do think that like this evolution of projects and like artifacts and splitting out like brain and hands and, surfaces is like where things are going more. And like, I think it's like not all quite there. partially it's like a, it's just like more token expensive? And like, I think likeProjects, Local Hands, and Cloud-to-Local HandoffsSwyx [00:48:59]: Why would projects be more token expensive? I understand mods would be slightly more token expensive. No, not something I'm worried about.Thariq Shihipar [00:49:06]: Yeah.Swyx [00:49:06]: But whatThariq Shihipar [00:49:07]: You're asking Claude to do. It's like creating loops. Like you're asking Claude to do more work for you. And so like it's managing the sub-agents and reviewing it, versus where you would be doing that work normally. And so that's like gonna be a little bit more intensive, like. Outputting to an artifact is gonna be a little bit more token-intensive than, like, outputting normally. I don't think it's too much more, but like, it's like combining all of these together well, like I think we're, we're still working on like local hands and things like that, I think is like, yeah, where things are headed, yeah.Swyx [00:49:37]: Yeah. Claude and local is, handoff is very interesting. I was thinking about this as reverse cloud remote.Thariq Shihipar [00:49:44]: Yeah.Swyx [00:49:45]: Because it's like remote, it's you're handing off to cloud, but here the cloud is handing off to local, right?Thariq Shihipar [00:49:49]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, remote control is also another way of doing it. And I do want to say this is like how I think about it and like what the things that I'm most excited about this, but like there are, just like lots of different ways to work with Claude. Like some people use remote control a lot, some people use Claude Code on the web a lot. Obviously, like at Anthropic, we use Claude Tag a lot, and like what's great about Claude Tag is we set up all this stuff for our own execution. And I do think if you're an enterprise, that's still the best way to go. but if you're like an individual, Projects is this way of like, getting some of that like niceness of Tag, which has like that like supervising agent and yeah, adding artifacts and stuff, but like without having that whole like admin setup. And so there will be many ways to use Claude, I think. I think it's probably not just one like single.Claude Tag as an Organizational HarnessSwyx [00:50:36]: You had the multiplayer thing here. Let's, let's just check in on Claude Tag. it's been about two-plus months. Lots of, public, adoption and trying it out.Thariq Shihipar [00:50:45]: Yeah.Swyx [00:50:45]: What's new? What's, what have you found since the launch?Thariq Shihipar [00:50:49]: Like, Claude Tag is how we useSwyx [00:50:51]: It's like 80% of your
What does it really mean when you max out your credit card? A maxed-out card may look like a credit problem, but often the real issue is cash flow: you're spending more each month than you have available, and credit is filling the gap. Take our free online course: Hoyes Michalos Credit Rebuilding Course Doug Hoyes and Ted Michalos explain what happens when you hit your credit limit, how maxed-out cards affect your credit utilization and borrowing options, and why simply asking for a higher limit may make the underlying problem worse. They discuss: What happens when you max out a credit card How high credit utilization affects your credit The cost of making only minimum payments Why you may have reached your credit limit When a one-time expense is different from an ongoing cash-flow shortfall When increasing your credit limit can make sense, and when it can lead to more debt The risks of moving balances between credit cards How to take inventory of your debts, income and monthly expenses When cutting expenses may not be enough to solve the problem What options are available when you simply can't afford your debt payments The key takeaway: hitting your credit limit isn't something to solve automatically by borrowing more. Look at why you reached the limit and whether your total debt is growing. A higher credit limit gives you more room to borrow, but it doesn't give you more income to repay what you owe. Learn more about licensed debt relief options available in Ontario at https://www.hoyes.com, and the Hoyes Michalos YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@hoyesmichalos Time Stamps: 00:00 Is maxing out your credit card really a credit problem? 01:16 What happens when you hit your credit limit? 02:05 When a low credit limit can make sense 03:26 Is a maxed-out card a warning sign of something else? 04:50 Why increasing your limit may not solve the problem 05:06 The problem with making minimum payments 05:44 How maxed-out cards affect your credit score 07:21 Can maxing out make it harder to borrow? 09:22 Why did you reach your credit limit? 10:15 One-time expense vs. recurring cash-flow problem 13:34 When credit starts hiding the real problem 14:07 Should you ask for a higher credit limit? 16:01 Can transferring debt to another card help? 16:54 When more available credit becomes dangerous 18:09 What should you do instead? 18:56 Start with an inventory of your debts 20:30 Which debts should you pay first? 21:44 Calculate what comes in — and where it goes 23:55 How to find room in your budget 25:36 What if cutting expenses isn't enough? 26:26 When a consumer proposal may be an option 28:23 Final Takeaway: Cash Is King when your debt is growing #CreditCardDebt #CreditLimit #MaxedOut #DebtFreeIn30 #HoyesMichalos
How To Handle Soft Commitments Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Investors provide soft commitments to hold their place in a fundraise but delay the actual investment. The soft commitment is not legally binding. Investors often provide soft commitments while they go through their own diligence process. It's often the case that the investor drops out before making the investment. Here are some steps the founder can take to close a soft commitment: Make it clear other investors are joining the round now by listing their investments. Calculate in dollars the interest and committed funds and share the results with soft commitment investors. Update this number weekly and show how the raise is reaching completion. Baby-step the investor through the process of interest, term sheet signing, and diligence. As the investor invests more time into the deal, they become more committed because their time is in it. If there are several soft commitments, then combine them into one fundraise and put a price on the round that most agree with. This treats the multiple soft commitments as a lead investor. Consider these steps in managing soft commitments for your fundraise. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.
Seven shocking debt stories. From secret credit cards and six-figure IRS bills to millions owed, these calls reveal how fast financial stress can spiral—and what it takes to finally face it.
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It can be incredibly difficult to see the truth when you are standing in the middle of your own situation. In the first episode of this three-part series, Melissa explores why even successful law firm owners can struggle to get an objective view of what is actually happening in their business and how their perspective can shape the way they see a situation. Melissa shares two examples of firms that looked very different on the surface but had the same challenge: they were making decisions based on the best read they had, not necessarily the full picture. She explains how creating structure, asking better questions, and finding concrete anchors can help owners better understand what is actually happening and uncover what they need to see more clearly. Let's talk! If you are a law firm owner looking to talk with us about partnering on your personal and professional growth, book a short, free, no-pressure call with Melissa here: https://velocitywork.com/calendar Check out Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright's podcast Elawvate: Build and Grow Your Law Firm on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://vwrk.cc/gideonasen Calculate your producer multiple with our free Producer Calculator here: https://vwrk.cc/pm Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: https://www.velocitywork.com/380
George made his first million as an entrepreneur and spent it.He grew up in feast or famine. Swore he would do the opposite. Then recreated the exact same pattern with more zeros, bigger crashes, and equal chaos.The money story he inherited was running his business without his permission for 20 years. He didn't know it had a name until he sat down with Ryan Lee.This episode is the implementation guide.This is a direct follow-up to Episode 734 with Ryan D. Lee. George breaks down the three-part path from Ryan's conversation into a clear, executable framework: rewrite your money story, answer six questions that build a target, and calculate the one number that makes it all measurable. In that order. For a reason.What You'll Learn In This Episode:The two economies and which one is running you right nowHow to identify the money story you inherited and where it shows up in your businessSix questions that move you from scarcity to abundance to prosperityWhat a strike number is and how to calculate yoursWhy knowing your floor eliminates the hiding places and the endless chaseHow to apply gain thinking to financial progress so you stop quitting before you get thereKey Takeaways:✔️Show me your last month's bank statement and you will see exactly what you value, whether you meant to or not.✔️The dependency economy has a system running you. The ownership economy means you run the system from the inside out.✔️You do not have a money problem. You have an unowned story, an undefined target, and an invisible number. Fix those in order.✔️You cannot consciously reject a money story and outrun it at the same time. You will recreate the same pattern with bigger numbers.✔️Six questions in two sets: What do I want? Why does it matter? Who must I become? Then: Who am I? Why am I? How do I use my gifts in service of others?✔️Your strike number is not the dream number. It is the floor. The bare minimum monthly number needed to keep the lights on.✔️Once you know your floor, you run out of excuses to keep avoiding yourself and chasing more.✔️Progress is measured from where you started, not against an ideal you have not reached. Twenty percent of the way to your strike number is not failure. It is measurable gain from zero.Timestamps & Highlights:[00:00] — The bank statement test and a confession about the first million[01:18] — The two economies: dependency vs. ownership[06:00] — Part 1: The money story rewrite and how to identify yours[12:00] — Where the inherited story shows up in business decisions[17:00] — Part 2: Six questions that build the target[22:00] — Scarcity to abundance to prosperity, in order[27:00] — Part 3: The strike number explained[30:00] — Why knowing the floor eliminates the hiding places[33:00] — How to apply the gain framework to your strike number[35:00] — The three actions to take this weekYour Challenge This Week:Three things. This week.Name your money story. Answer all six questions. Calculate your strike number.Then listen to Episode 734 with Ryan Lee if you have not yet. It all starts there.Follow George: @itsgeorgebryantWork with George:The Alliance — Community for entrepreneurs building from the ownership economy.1:1 Coaching — Limited spots. Apply at mindofgeorge.com/coaching-consulting/ Live Retreats — In-person experiences where the real work gets done.
Key TakeawaysA stale listing isn't automatically a bad deal. A property sitting for 400+ days has already received feedback from the market—and that can create negotiating leverage.There are four common reasons properties sit: incorrect pricing, financing challenges, property-specific problems, or poor marketing.Know what you can fix. Bad marketing, incorrect asset categories, missing photos, unrealistic pro formas, and certain financing issues may create opportunity; environmental, structural, title/access, zoning, and functional-obsolescence issues can be much harder to overcome.Investigate the seller's position. Tax records can reveal what they paid and help you understand their basis, potential debt situation, and how motivated they may actually be.Calculate the cost of waiting. Taxes, insurance, utilities, upkeep, and debt service can cost an owner thousands each month while a property sits—which can become leverage in your negotiation.Underwrite stale listings systematically. Tyler looks at days on market and price changes, price per square foot versus comps, required rent, competing supply, listing photos/marketing, and the seller's basis before deciding whether there's an opportunity.
Shared Practices | Your Dental Roadmap to Practice Ownership | Custom Made for the New Dentist
In this episode of Ask George, Dr. George Hariri tackles one of the most common questions from listeners: Is coaching right for me? If you are an ambitious dentist trying to master dental practice management alone, you are likely hitting a severe bottleneck. George breaks down the fatal flaw of the DIY mentality: an owner typically has only four hours a week to manage the business, while their team clocks in 240 labor hours executing operations. Without a data-driven strategy to focus those four hours on the highest-leverage constraints, owners end up wasting time chasing random ideas they saw on Facebook.Shared Practices coaching bridges this gap by combining strategic analytics for the owner with tactical, hands-on training for the team. The result? A proven track record of growing client practices by an average of 37% to 39% annually for four consecutive years.Here is your guide to evaluating if dental practice management coaching is the right investment for your sustainable dental practice growth:The Early Ownership Fast-Track: If you are in your first 18 months of ownership, a coach is the ultimate cheat code to quickly scale a "ready to grow" practice and avoid the costly trial-and-error phase.Fix Stalled Growth: If your revenue has flatlined for the past two to three years despite your best efforts, you are no longer focusing your management time on the correct bottlenecks.Solve Team Inefficiencies: When you feel burnt out because you are doing everything while your team underperforms, a coach steps in to directly train your staff on crucial systems like revenue cycle management and case presentation.Calculate the ROI: Coaching is an investment, not an expense. Adding just $50,000 in top-line revenue covers the annual coaching fee and the cost of additional supplies, meaning the explosive growth you achieve by months 9–12 is pure profit.Ready to take the next step in your dental practice journey? Visit https://sharedpractices.com to learn more about our Buyer Representation and Coaching services, designed to help dentists buy, grow, and optimize profitable practices. You can also use our Free Look to evaluate dental practice opportunities with real data before making a decision. For daily Dental Moneyball insights, strategy tips, and updates, follow us across our social channels.