This is how I'm working now with AI workflows

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Hey folks, I'm gonna try to continue on from the last video I was doing. Um, I was talking about some of the uh different ways I'm trying to leverage AI aside from just uh straight up writing code. I kind of ran out of time towards the end of it, but figured I'd just continue. Um, I'm trying to rush home right now because I have to live stream in 30 minutes and I might just make I'm going to be late, but I might just make it if there's no traffic. But if uh you've watched any of my videos, then you know there's always traffic. So, um that sucks, but oh well, that's my fault. Um so in general when I've been talking about AI things I'm talking about how you know building uh I don't know like building software leveraging agents been talking more and more about how I'm trying to use like templates and instructions and talked about like I don't know uh messing around with my own like like orchestrator, I guess.

So, that's all fine and well, but I want to talk a little bit more about uh how I'm trying to explore some like productivity things, I guess. And uh nothing I'm going to say is going to be like sort of disappointing. It's not going to be groundbreaking. It's just like these are things that I'm I'm messing around with and and trying out and seeing if I can uh improve my productivity. um find different ways to make things less stressful, less monotonous, uh more, I don't know, regular, so to speak, so that they're not just like if if and when I get around to it. So, figured I'd talk about some of that. Um depending on how much I talk through, some of this will be workrelated ideas, some will be like purely things that I'm doing at home, but be a grab bag of all sorts of stuff.

So, let's see. Um to continue just on the you know the the train of coding topics specifically uh one of the things that I've talked about is um this repository I'm building up for myself. It's opinionated so it's it's just going to remain private because it's very much like how I build software. um like basically me sharing it's not really going to I don't think going to benefit anyone else but I think if you like the concept like definitely build your own but it's uh you know reusable sets of instructions that if I were to go start a new project like go use these instructions that I built up to guide agents and and things like that. Same with starting with templates. So, as I've been building this up and as I've been building, you know, other little side projects and things like that, one of the things that comes up is like, okay, well, started with a template.

That's great. Worked well. And sorry, you got to switch some lanes here. Um, come on people. Okay. Um, and then once you start building from the template and adding more features and you know you're building different types of products and things like that, you're going to come up with more patterns, more use cases, more things, right? And more variety. And so that means that the more little side things I'm building, the more of this opportunity to go, hey, wait, like is this a pattern or a feature or a whatever that I want to bring back to sort of this core repository where I have these patterns and instructions and all that kind of stuff. basically like how can I take the learnings that I'm doing and bring them back to this shared repository so that the next time in the future then you know the

next thing's easier to build andor because of how I've built it I can synchronize some of the instructions and stuff like that um so that even an older project I can sync over instructions and it gets the benefit so um this is of course like something that takes manual effort and it's kind of like only when I think about oh yeah you know what like this is a as it as it's being built I'm going oh this is like a really good example of um of you know something I should probably pour it over that works right but it's like if I remember to do it um if I make time to do it um and if I happen to notice the pattern and recognize it and so that's just not consistent and it's not reliable and it's more manual effort.

So, um, one of the things that I said is like the more that I'm trying to play around with scheduling skills and stuff, um, this is one example where I was like, cool, let me let me build a skill uh, that basically looks across my repositories and I can have my own list of uh, repos. So, I think there's like 18 is what it was telling me that I have configured. So there's like 18 repositories that it'll look across and it runs on a, you know, every other day or something. And one sec. Can I get over here? Jeez, this traffic is just spot is so bad. Yeah. So, it looks across these 18 repos uh every other day and then it looks for the patterns and I'm just starting with the instruction files, but uh for what it's worth, if I expand this later, it would do a more thorough analysis to look at the changes and see like uh I am just going to make up an example.

I see that you're using um you know this library for job scheduling in C right like I use quartz there's ticker Q there's other ones uh can't remember it's another really popular one anyway uh you're using this cool and I see that you also like you know have these patterns in your code cool um I see you have instructions to guide it cool um can we bring that back as like something that we us as a component in some of the templates. So the next time you're building a web app and you're like, do you need job scheduling like we just scaffold the whole thing in for you the way that you like to build things right with all the agent instructions that you're used to doing. So great, like just go do it. Um cuz otherwise I'd be doing it manually, right? So, this is one example of a thing that I built as a skill.

And by the way, I'm saying I built I don't I don't build things myself anymore. This is all, you know, co-pilot, go build the skill. Um, it's running in I've just built this like this morning. So, um I think the sorry, the first run it did was last night. Um, and then I had it run on the schedule this morning. So, haven't really had like time with it, but uh, sent the email, uh, came up with a bunch of patterns. I can already tell there's going to be some noise for sure. Uh, so it's like, oh, you know, this is a pattern that is recommended. Maybe we should pull back into the the core repository. And I'm like, h that's not just not just not good. There's some good examples too where it's like it picked up on inconsistencies.

Uh it picked up on not only inconsistencies across the repos but inconsistencies in my own instructions where it's like hey like you have instructions that we've seeded over to these repositories and like also they have conflicting guidance. So like you should you should probably fix this in the core repo. So there's already value. I think it's pretty cool. But that's one example. And uh I wanted to start with that one just cuz it kind of ties into some of the other like I don't know like more meta AI building that I'm doing. So that's one. Um, another one, uh, for those of you that watch Code Commute on Spotify, um, I've told people that Code Commute for me is like a it's a fun channel to to make content for because the amount of effort that goes in after the content is recorded is very low.

And that's important for me because as a content creator, that's the kind of stuff that crushes me, right? Like this is why I build brand ghost. This is why having something that's low production effort like code commute is nice. But um a lot of people requested Spotify and I said okay I will have a Spotify set up and Spotify is actually a pain in the ass for me and I still think it's worth it. I still want to offer it and I'm, you know, people people asked for it and like, hey, I'm here to deliver, but uh I was falling behind with it because it's actually a ton of manual effort because there's no API for it, right? Like when I build Brand Ghost, there's an API for all of the social media platforms that that I'm automating. I'm not going to automate the social media platforms for paying customers where it's against the terms of services.

Only if they legitimately have an API. Um, but Spotify doesn't. And so it's really shitty because if I want to go schedule Spotify stuff, I have to basically double the work I'm doing that I would do for YouTube and do it to Spotify. And it's not a lot of work. It's just it's time consuming, right? I have to upload the video and wait on that. And then as it's uploading, I edit some of the parameters, whatever. Then I wait for it to finish processing and then I schedule it. So if I go to upload, you know, seven episodes, that's that could be like an hour or more of my time just kind of sitting there not doing a lot of high value activity. So, this is another one that I put as a skill. Um, and so I have a session that will run with co-pilot where it knows how to go look for my latest YouTube videos that haven't been posted um to Spotify.

It will go schedule them on Spotify. uh there's been enough of a backlog that when it was running um you know it filled up I think a couple of months worth and then it got to the end of it. So, um, yeah. So, now all of the stuff on Spotify is automatically scheduled there. And this is, I mean, this kind of thing is literally how Brand Ghost was born, right? Like I was building Brand Ghost basically doing this not with AI. Um, because we when I started Brand Ghost, that wasn't really a thing. Um, so yeah, just like building automation, right? And so I can do Spotify now. Would love to be able to offer what I just built. It's not like groundbreaking, right? I'd love to offer that in Brand Ghost, but I can't. And I can't because I I don't know. Like that could break at any moment.

Uh I'm not going to risk someone else's account. Maybe that's violating uh Spotify's terms of service for my own use. I'm like I don't really think I'm not like uh abusing it, right? But if if someone were to use a platform I built that that took advantage of that and then I don't know like mass uploaded and spammed or something that could be that could be pretty bad. So I can't offer it in brand ghost but I use it for myself now. So that's another one. um related to content. Uh I haven't been making YouTube videos recently aside from code commute, but like dev leader uh I'm I'm months behind and it's uh it's bad. like I I definitely I definitely like am not intending to give up on it or anything like that, but I just uh I don't know. Kind of like related to what I was talking about in the videos uh prior to this.

Um, it's like there's just there's literally I'm trying to do too many things and uh what's fallen off is YouTube videos this time and like I I hate that. I am fortunate that I have these YouTube videos. I'm fortunate that I have this live stream that I'm racing home to go do. Um I'm actually I'm not even speeding when I say racing. I'm going 60 Oh, okay. Sorry, I lied. Maybe I'm going 63 m an hour now. So, speeding a little bit. Um, but like I have these on a regular basis, but my main channel is kind of like and that's where my primary content is. Like that's kind of kind of dead. Um, and again, I I shouldn't say dead. It's currently dead. Um, which sucks, but I I built a skill that will go actually uh mine my my agent sessions because I'm spending all of my time in co-pilot building things.

I'm having it mine my agent sessions and look for content ideas. So, what what was I spending time on, right? like look at the sessions, see what I was spending time on because that's actually stuff that I'm legitimately doing. I should talk about these types of things. I should make videos on this. I should write articles about it because that's literally what I'm spending time on. Uh aside from, you know, workrelated things. Um so like what why not, right? And if you haven't uh I don't know, I think there's actually some people that that watch my videos that are content creators, but I think the overwhelming majority of people aren't. And so if you're not familiar with content creation, uh it can be really challenging if you're like, you know, like putting the content together is is one thing, like to to film it or to write about it, and then there's editing and then publishing and scheduling, whatever.

There's all these parts. But if you have a lot of content ideas and you can just kind of keep churning through them, great. But there's it's such a shitty feeling when you're like, I actually don't have any ideas for stuff to make. Kind of like like writer's block, right? It's not that there's nothing that you could make, but nothing feels like it's going to be a good option kind of thing. And so I've had times where I'm like, "Okay, I got a full weekend to go make some content, and I'm like, I I have no idea what I want to go make a video about." So, this skill looks at my sessions, puts together content ideas, emails me. Um, it'll be blog ideas, it'll be um, you know, video ideas, all sorts of stuff. Um, and then I can expand this, right? I can I can tailor it so that it gives me better examples.

um maybe you know over longer periods of time maybe it's like here's an idea for a course that might be good could be could be anything um but it it harvests my sessions and I think that's been uh been handy. I need to get back into recording videos and I think that'll be more beneficial. Um what else I use for brand ghost? I use something that uh on a daily basis will go crawl my uh graphana stack and harvest logs and then looks for trends. So couple of things, right? It will it'll see if something is spiked up. um it will see if things are recurring and basically is connected to Graphana and GitHub and basically is a I don't know like lowgrade service health uh automatic bug filing uh which is cool. So that's caught lots of cool stuff. Um, right. There was a period a couple of weeks back now.

I don't know. I still don't know what happened, but um, literally no code changes on our part for Brand Ghost and all of a sudden like the meta platform was just like randomly rejecting some things and it was like not specific to users. It was some some video uploads for no reason. Um, all of the calls for metrics and I think something else. But just out of nowhere, they just like this was going crazy with errors and I'm like, this doesn't make sense. And I was trying to research if meta change anything for their API, whatever. Nothing. But um using this kind of thing was super helpful because it it helped me catch that it was happening. It also caught that from the original fix uh that parts of it had recovered and actually there was a couple I think there was one or two like sort of uh latent things or unproven if they would be fixed and and showed like hey everything else dropped these ones didn't.

So like that's not not the fix here. Um, but yeah, so I I run this thing on a daily basis, which is super helpful, but you know, it's not zero effort. I still have to go look at it. I don't automatically assign bugs to to this thing to go fix because it's not perfect and I don't want to risk like just a whole bunch of random getting built. It's not actually an issue. So, that's one thing. Um, I don't think this one's run yet, but for Brand Ghost as well, I have it uh I think it does it once a month or something. And I think it messed up the first like monthly run, of course. So, I don't think it's actually worked successfully yet, but it's supposed to go look at a bunch of different social media platforms for their API docs to see

what's changed and then report back to me like, hey, look, like um you know, Pinterest has has something new like this is something you should consider or you know, breaking change or you know, new API in their uh suns setting another one. So, like we should file an issue for this. So that's just another thing that runs on a semi-regular basis. By the way, that's the theme here. All of these things are scheduled and and run on a recurring basis. So that's a whole pile of things from outside of work. Um the ones that I'm going to try doing at work, I have kind of two two that I'm going to start with. Um, one is for uh some configuration changes. So like on a maybe twice a day like once in the morning and once before the end of the day uh check the status of some configurations that I might be able to move along.

This is the kind of thing that once some more first class automation systems are wired up that I don't maybe ever have to care about ever again. But they don't exist. Oh, sorry. They don't exist. That's fine. Um because it's like it's low effort, but it's low effort and if I miss doing it, then it kind of just is overall like a little bit of a slowdown. So, if I can have something check for me and say like, hey, like this one's good to go, like move it along, then then great. So, just a little reminder thing. So, I'll do probably a skill like that. I have another one that's like following up on sorry that I have to go build still, but it will follow up on uh some different support tasks.

there's some stuff that is very slow moving with some support channels because the data that has to get collected um you know sometimes someone will say like hey help out with this and we go cool like you know we need a b and c from you and then by the time they get back to us it's like it's usually not within a day and sometimes it could be a week or something. Um, so we get that information. And so if I have something that's running on a regular basis, then at least I can be informed when that stuff comes in. They might be saying like, "Isn't that what emails for? Like, aren't there already notifications and stuff?" Like, yes. Um, but problem is right now that kind of stuff just gets buried. It's not obvious um just based on the systems and stuff that are used.

So instead of me trying to keep track of it mentally and all the things that are moving, just having something that kind of automates that part for me, right? It's not the maybe another theme you'll see with some of this stuff is like a bunch of it's not actually high effort, but they are little things that I have to do regularly. And when you stack up a ton of little things, they're just extra for you to have to think about. and I I don't want to be thinking about extra I want to be thinking about the stuff that's important. So, those are two things I'm probably once I do a bit of work item organization, which was another theme I talked about previous video. I'll probably do a I don't know uh once or twice a week triage. Where all these yawns coming from?

Um, and that way across the three teams I have, I can I can see like what work items are being filed that have not been scheduled or whatever else and then see like how do I, you know, how do I allocate priority to this? Is this something where I need to think about how I get this done now? Is this something I can put for um, you know, some sometime coming up? Is this something where I'm like, hey, cool. I read it. Like, makes sense. But literally at this point, like no no idea when that's getting scheduled is for the future. Um, how do I Yeah, basically make sure that I have something to remind me to keep my my triage list down. And so again, it's it's not groundbreaking. That's not I'm not going to win any trophies for having the most creative AI usage, but uh this is more just like this is a simple thing to hook up and I think for me will add a lot of value.

And uh I guess if I haven't been making it clear something to mention, I've kind of hinted at this a couple of times, but one of the really nice things about this is like it's not it's not me spending time building some complex customcoded system. This is me using AI to go build the AI automation for itself, right? It's a it's a skill that it runs that it built itself and then it's just hooked up to a schedule. So, um very it's just very low effort, right? You have this conversation with clott co-pilot to put something together for yourself and it's it's I think it's super cool that it's like it's just that easy to to do. Uh, and then maybe the final thing I'll just talk about here is because I'm almost home and I am going to be maybe on time. We'll see.

I one of the little side projects I have I think I've talked about this maybe a couple months back is this uh little uh sort of dashboard for looking at my co-pilot sessions because one of the things that's driven me nuts is that I think we've all experienced this in some way but especially for browser tabs right probably lost all of your browser tabs because I think all of us have too many tabs open at the same time something happens, you lose them all and it's uh it's devastating because it's like your brain just got turned off. You have to start fresh, right? How do you how are you possibly going to get all 10,000 tabs brought back? I think a lot of this stuff's obviously gotten better. So, uh the the browser history and and memory of your your sessions and tabs is just so much better now.

not um this kind of concept for for PowerShell windows and PowerShell tabs for my co-pilot sessions was lacking um at least I have not at the time I'm recording this I still haven't seen like an offering from Microsoft that does this uh in a way that I like. So, if I have my entire PowerShell window crash or Windows decided to update, I've like permanently disabled this to do automatically now, but uh if it decides to, then I lose all that stuff. I've literally had, you know, over 10 co-pilot sessions going, docked a another co-pilot tab into the PowerShell window and the whole thing just closed. And I'm like, oh my god. Like, how do I even get back to this stuff? So, this little dashboard tool that I was building, the uh the session storage for Copilot, it's in a datab. called the chronicle database. So this I built something called Darnia uh for the Chronicles of Narnia.

So clever. And so into this tool I just expanded it so that I can u basically keep track of uh like grouped sessions and favorite sessions and stuff like that. So that if I lose everything because it closes or I want to restart my computer, it's no problem. I can just, you know, go to the go to the dashboard, restore everything. Um, and just uh, yeah, just a little example of a tool that uh, you know, I vibe coded because I had a problem I wanted to solve, put it together. But the other thing that's in Narnia is like a first class like scheduling of some of these skills because I realized as I was putting these together, I'm like, "Oh man, like this is an absolute mess because I have like 50 different ways I'm doing this now." So, uh, I actually schedule them using Narnia itself.

So, I can say to co-pilot like, you know, here's the skill we built. Go schedule it to run in Narnia on this cadence. And it'll go do that. So then I can see in a dashboard on Narnia all my scheduled skills, um their run history, if they fail, like what are the logs like, that kind of thing. Yeah. So just like handful of different ways I'm trying to automate things for productivity. Like I said, nothing I'm saying in this video am I trying to convince you this is like groundbreaking. I invented it. just in case you're curious how I'm trying to use things. That's what I'm up to. Um, and I think I will make it inside at 6:59 with 1 minute to spare, which isn't enough time to connect to all the streaming channels, but hey, better than I thought. Cool. So, I'll see you guys on the live stream.

See you.