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Get a seat at the table and build the design career you want. This podcast is for designers looking to break in, level up, and take control of their careers—whether you're freelancing, climbing the corporate ladder, or just trying to get noticed. Every two weeks, we dive into career fundamentals, design best practices, and the hottest topics in the design community.
So what what I'm doing or what I did is I noticed within myself like, hey, wait a minute. I for the tenth week in a row, I'm explaining to Claude like, no, no, no. It should be less than 500 characters. Like, wait a minute. This should be a skill.
Nick:So then I'm doing it well for one final time and then I ask Claude, create a markdown file that I can use as a Claude skill based on our conversation. And then you have your file and you go into settings and you upload it, give it a name. And for moving forward, every new chat that you start, it's And we're officially live. We're officially live exactly. I mean, this is just an experiment.
Tyler:So, Nick, in a previous episode, I'd nicely teased that you have never vibe coded a thing. But in this episode, I wanna admit that I've never Claude skilled. So I I'd hope that this episode, you can kind of take the behind take me behind the curtain and and kind of teach me a couple things around Claude skills because Claude seems to be like the the tool of choice or it's slowly becoming the tool of choice for most designers and and people across tech these days.
Nick:It it does look like it, doesn't it? Like, cloud code being almost a default for designers and developers or anyone doing anything with with code or software. Mhmm. Yeah. So they have skills just like you and I have skills, you know, being able to ride a bike or write your name.
Nick:And it seems like that's the big new thing to have a whole set of skills attached to an agent going off in the background to do something for you. And I'm noticing within myself that I'm using it more these days and learning and figuring it out. And I think I wanted to start with something really practical, and that is that if you notice that you are doing something more than once and you have to provide the same context more or less more than once, that's something you can probably turn into a skill. And then the skill is usually a text file, whereas always a text file, I I must say, that you load in with your context, your message, and then it uses the skills that you describe within that file for a task at hand. So I think very practical example is if for this episode, when you upload on YouTube, there needs to be or, well, they they ask you for tags in the YouTube video.
Nick:So it's your name, my name, Design Table Podcast, product design. Like, there's a few there are a few things that you always want to have there, and then the rest is based on this conversation. So now we're talking about cloth skills. So one of the tags should probably be, you know, cloths cloth coat skills for product design. You know?
Nick:That's probably because that's the main topic. I'm explaining this to you now. It's like there should probably be this. You shouldn't do that, and this needs to be there. Like, that's everything that you think about when you start writing your tags.
Nick:And then you would say, oh, someone's pretty skilled. He knows what to do. But all that thinking is something you put in that skill file. So when I open Clause, I drop in the transcript of what we're recording now at the end, and then I tell it create YouTube tags for this episode. Mhmm.
Nick:And then the the skill already mentions, like, if Nick talks about YouTube uploading an episode, use this skill. So then it looks at its skill folder, it finds the correct skill, and then it sees, oh, okay. Well, Tyler White needs to be in Design Table Podcast needs to be in find the main topic, stay under 500 characters. So it uses all those things that it's learned in that skill, and it gives me a way better output compared to me having to, you know, explain it all the you know, every time. Every week that I'm working on the episodes, have to explain 500 characters, include the name blah blah blah, including, you know, feedback and trying again and updating.
Nick:That's just part of a skill. It saves you a lot of time, and the output is way better. And then this this is only a very simple example of doing one thing, YouTube tags. But it also works, for example and then I'll stop rambling. It also works when you have a new feature in your software and you want to do a a review skill or an SEO skill.
Nick:Like, I've built this website, this page, this new page, now do slash SEO cleanup, and then it checks your new creation in comparison to a few items on the list. Like, is the meta description there? Is there an h one? Is there an h two? Is there only one h one?
Nick:Like, all that kind of stuff. So then it becomes way bigger. Yeah. That I'll stop there because I've talking for a while. Like Yeah.
Nick:Does it does it make sense at all?
Tyler:It makes sense. Hopefully. Yeah. Because I because I recently switched from chatty GBT to Claude. That's, like, my main tool.
Tyler:So, like
Nick:like, did you did you cancel your subscription? Or
Tyler:No. Because I still or No. Because I still use, like the thing that Claude's missing is is the voice feature. So I like talking to my pretend friend back and forth as
Nick:part of my
Tyler:process, so it doesn't doesn't have that chat feature yet. So that's the only reason I'm keeping it, plus also the memory feature. But in ChatGPT, you have these things called GPTs where, like, you you train the different chats based on Yeah. What they need to execute on. I guess that's Claude's version of it for us.
Tyler:To your point, it's
Nick:a Yeah.
Tyler:It's a file on your desktop that you that it refers to, or is it something you have to upload? Like, how do how do you access, like, these these skills?
Nick:Yeah. You have you have a setting that you can, you know, in the in the desktop app at least where you can upload your file. So what what I'm doing or what I did is I noticed within myself, like, hey. Wait a minute. I for the tenth week in a row, I'm explaining to Claude, like, no.
Nick:No. No. It should be less than 500 characters. Like, wait a minute. This should be a skill.
Nick:So then I'm doing it well for one final time, and then I ask Claude, create a markdown file that I can use as a Claude skill based on our conversation. And then you have your file, and you go into settings, and you upload it. You give it a name. And then for and moving forward, every new chat that you start, it checks based on what you write, if it should use a skill, or you can say use this skill. You can be really specific about it.
Nick:So that's that's how it works. So it it does live within cloth. Like, it's easy to maintain, I would say.
Tyler:Okay. So I guess it's similar to I guess all LMs are, like, picking up this convention where it's like, you have a thing. It's I mean, a skill is basically a prompt. Right? At the end of the day, it
Nick:just is. More yeah. Yeah. But it's just like
Tyler:It's it's context that you're feeding the system, and then so it doesn't you don't have to kinda keep feeding it.
Nick:Yeah. Well, that's true. And I could it can go even beyond that. So if you know that you will provide a certain type of context, you can already prep the skill by putting in, like, when this skill is used, I will likely talk about client name, company size, you know, whatever, and then it already gets it. And here's how to handle it.
Nick:Like, you can pull put all of that in. So, like, if you like, we did an episode on prompting. Like, you always say, like, you start with context, and then likely you're going to add all sorts of constraints. Like, that second part, the constraints and what to do with the context Mhmm. Is part of the skill.
Tyler:Okay. So it's it's like similar because I've been using cursor a lot, and I have, like, a like, these dot MD files, which is, like, the similar thing where it's like it refers to these set of files that that guide the the system that I'm prompting to. Like, here are the rules that you need to follow every time I I I give you instructions so I don't have to keep giving them that massive prompt for context every time.
Nick:True. Yeah. That helps. And you can also do, like, the the slash and then skill name, I think, which is also helpful. Yeah.
Nick:So so that's that's it's it's pretty cool, but it's also relatively new. So we're all still figuring it out, and I'm by no means an expert there. Like, I have a few things on my list. For example, there is also a way to have a design skill, which is, you know, useful in code. So Mhmm.
Nick:I I just now I said, like, well, there's an SEO cleanup skill that you can do. But, you know, I I I think this word that I'm going to say now is almost as bad as vibe coding, but you can have a skill around your taste, which is the new thing design influencers say. You know? So you can have a skill around your taste when you select, well, I want the spacing always to be, you know, a multiple of four except for this case, blah blah blah, and check my code output against these rules and, you know, the types of shadow that you want and and gradient spacing and, you know, overall aesthetic. So that feels like the super advanced way of doing it, but I didn't get there yet, you know, because it's also, like, the invest the investment is is massive.
Nick:You know, you need to like, skill creating. In Claude, it's a lot of back and forth. You know? This is my new skill. Let's do a test.
Nick:Well, it's not quite right. Let's update the skill. You know, before you're done, you might as well have done a manual review. You know? So that's why I'm mostly sticking to the basics now.
Tyler:Okay. Fair. Yeah. I've been using like, connectors I've been using primarily instead of skills. Like, so just, like, connecting to Confluence or Atlassian.
Tyler:Yeah. Connecting to Figma MCP, connecting to Notion, or connecting to, like, an analytics tool. It's like it has that context, but it's like it's a it's a resource versus an instruction, which Yeah. This seems more like. Mhmm.
Nick:Yeah. That's true. Yeah. I I found an SEO skill made by someone else online and then including instructions how to get it into your code base. Mhmm.
Nick:And it was a full SEO audit of your website. So Oh, nice. Imagine, like, it was thousands of of lines of text. Like, it was a massive skill, including instructions on how to present your findings, sort it based on impacts, like high, medium, low. It it even gave you an option to do a, like, a quick audit or a full audit.
Nick:So when you run the skill, you get that question first. Like, do you want to do full or quick? Like, it was almost an app within an app. So it was very impressive. And then because that guy really knew what he was doing and I know a little bit of SEO, so I could, you know, more or less validate the output.
Nick:This makes sense. This doesn't make sense. It made a lot of sense. It was very impressive. Like, it was really helpful.
Nick:You would still need to have your own knowledge to, like like I just said, you know, figure out if, you know, if you can do this and you need to I felt the confidence to just let it run because I was able to see that it made sense. So, yeah, that was very impressive. That was, for me, the moment where I was like, wow. These skills, like, out of all the quick releases and bloat and AI tiredness that you might feel, like, this was the one thing that's probably going to stick around, like, the the cloud skills. Like, it really was a a wow moment for me.
Tyler:I'm curious. Like, because, like, this tool is being used more and more, like, the the only, like, issue I run into is, like, the the limit the daily more like the the the either monthly or the the daily limits that you run into depending on you're trying to execute. Exactly. Like, do you have a pro account? Do you have a max account?
Tyler:Like, what what what tier are you leveraging?
Nick:I have the the max five times. So, yeah, five and twenty times, I think. Or five and ten. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Tyler:Okay.
Nick:Yeah. So, yeah, you have free, you have pro, and then max five, and max 10, I think.
Tyler:Okay. Yeah. Because I have the the pro. The, yeah, I have the pro. So I I'm if I'm actually doing anything intensive, I'll hit my limit, like, once a day.
Nick:I had the same. I had the same. To just check, you know, live on the on the show, it's max 20 times is the highest tier. Mhmm. What what I think is challenging is that it's like, the number doesn't really make sense.
Nick:Like, it's like, max five, it's five times as much as pro. But I don't think they really tell you how much pro actually is. So you can check usage, but I think I mean, that's that's it's quite annoying. Like, I I would rather see, like, a little progress bar filling up to know when I'm about to run out. And I think in Cloud Code, they do tell you, like, hey.
Nick:You're in your last 20%. Just like you said, I ran out of out of usage on the pro, like, every day, but on on max five, I do not. And then, I I mean, I can I can talk myself out of it? Like, I I can tell myself that it's okay that I'm now paying five times as much because it also allows me to do way more client work. It's the same as last week's episode on on portfolio costs.
Nick:Like, for me as a freelancer, it makes a lot of sense to pay extra because it's an investment. Me paying more means me doing more output means more revenue. But if you are, like, employed, you have an in house job, like, yeah, it's almost a waste of your money if you paid for it. Like, would be nice if your employer paid for it.
Tyler:Some do. Like, I I pay for mine. I think we're gonna get we're rolling out, like, internally the the max. I don't know what what multiple we're getting, but, like, the the max version. Because we're switching from to to Claude.
Tyler:Yeah. But I'm curious, like, you so you use it on like, for your work. Like, what are the, like, what are the top three skills that you use, like, regularly during your week?
Nick:The the SEO one Okay. Is the I I think that's why I came up with it as an example because it's just most top of mind for me. Like, I think it's really helpful. Then there's a responsive ness responsive design ness one, if that's how I should put it. So imagine you have your your Figma, and then you're putting it into code, and and it's it's mostly desktop.
Nick:You know? Because it's, let's say, it's it's a business to business thing, so it's mostly in dashboards and and setting screens. But then they say, well, it should work on a they call it a business tablet, you know, iPad Pro, like something likely to to occur on the job. It should work there too. You know?
Nick:And then usually, you're doing the same things. You go from multi column to one column. And in Tailwind, your text dash five XL for a heading on a smaller screen. Usually, that five XL becomes one or two lower. Like, that's repetitive work.
Nick:You know? So I made a, you know, a a responsive design skill where I just mentioned, like, these are the things I most commonly do, see if it is relevant here, apply, and if uncertain, give me feedback, then we can work on it together, that kind of stuff. Those two are the main ones. And then the final one's more around
Tyler:Just on that one, like, how do you like, so you mentioned, like, it's it's fixing the responsiveness in the SEO. Like, what are you like, how is it connected to whatever platform you're you're have their code bases? Like, how is it can is it connected to your IDE? Like, how is it, like, how is
Nick:it being deployed? You can run you can run it in your Cloud Code sidebar in in cursor or in Visual Studio Code or whatever you use. So it's within that that that Cloud sidebar. For me, it's a sidebar at least. I have I have it always to the right of me.
Nick:So you can do slash and then name of skill.
Tyler:Okay. That's interesting. Right? Choose so you're basically choosing your LLM, and then one of them Claude, and that's what you're Yeah. That's what's running in your ID.
Tyler:Okay. Perfect.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's might be silly to say, but I am like, I use Claude only. Like, even if like, I do not have ChadGPT or Gemini or anything else.
Nick:Mhmm. Like, even if I want to look up, like, a fun fact about a TV show we're watching and we're curious about, like, an author, like, actor, sorry, if it's in another show that we see as well. Like, I don't open chat GBT. I just open Claude. Like, it's good enough.
Nick:You know, I'm not a I'm not a min max person that wants to get the best model for every situation. I just have one for just to keep it simple, not to be overwhelmed. Yeah. So for me, it's always class. That's what I'm what I'm saying.
Nick:And then the third one, the third skill is around content, but that's still in development. Like, I I'm not 100% happy with it yet.
Tyler:Okay. A bit more back and forth needed or, like
Nick:Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick:It's it's like and I don't I'm not going to go on a long run here, but I I think it's, like, social media, the the posts there. Like, we are getting used to a new normal. Like, first people wrote by hand, and then they found tips online how to get more engagement, like, that you still had to apply manually. Like, finish your social media post with a question. Right?
Nick:Yeah. Like, here's what I do, and then you end your message with, what do you do? Hopefully, getting more people to to reply to your message, and then that's good for your likes and your views. That was strange. People didn't like it, and then it became standard.
Nick:And we've had a few of those cycles, like new thing. Everyone does it. Everyone hates it. Everyone accepts it. Most recently, Amdash.
Nick:Oh, as I mentioned. It's it's yeah. It's it's AI, but now we're all using Emdashes, and nobody cares anymore. But we're currently in that new cycle of this that thing, and that's currently that's the the the repeating short sentence, you know, with, like, sentence of two words, you know, high impact periods, no nonsense periods. And it's not this, it's that.
Nick:Like, and it's it's really annoying for me to see, but that's default AI output. So I'm letting it run wild, do its thing, use the skill, and then I'm looking at it. I'm like, that's repetitive. That's what I see online all the time. And I attach too much value to it, I think, because I don't want to sound like it.
Nick:Like, it's my I do the same. Yeah. I'm I have a yeah. I put the bar I'm way too strict on myself because I care, but I know most people don't care. And someone shared with me this very interesting article, and I could see, like, it's fully AI.
Nick:I could see all the patterns there. And I asked him, what do you think? And he tell he told me, it's very pleasant to read. And I know that was a slap in my face, like, okay. This person that I respect that's very smart and good at his job, he doesn't see or he doesn't care.
Nick:So why do I care? And I'm still debating that and stuck on that skill. Like, this because every time I see something that's not like how I would write it and it's too AI too obviously AI generated, I go back in and fine tune the skill to just say, don't do that. Instead, do this thing. But I'm well aware of me having to accept the fact that it's, like, going to be 90% correct, and I would still have to fine tune a bit in the end.
Nick:That's great. So, yeah, I'm my own I'm my own worst enemy there, and that's why it's not finished yet. Like, I'm too strict No. On myself, I think.
Tyler:I have the same rules in my like, I have a like, I don't have a skill, but I just have, like, a I have a prompt that I store in in Notion that I kind of paste in every time I wanna do, like, a social media thing, but it's like it's like a page and a half of, like, context. Do not and EmDash is one of them. So, like, I there have a rule. No EmDashes. To your point, it's not this, but that like, that AI content like like Yeah.
Tyler:Sentence structure is really annoying. So Mhmm. Yeah. And it annoys me too. So it just feels like like when you're creating content, it's about something you base essentially want it to sound like how you speak.
Tyler:Yes. And you're trying to train it to do the same thing. But, like, in addition to, like, the retention trick, so it's like the question at the end. And then Yeah. There's, like, the engagement loop, which is, like, a quote from a famous per two quotes from a famous person and then, like, your personal quote to connect to elevate your your status to to to the same bar as, like, whoever you're quoting.
Tyler:Yeah, there's a bun I mean, it it's not like you're too strict about it. It's like it's there is value there because you wanna Yeah. Number one Yeah. You wanna make it sound authentically you, and then also the little engagement tricks as well.
Nick:Yeah. I well, exactly. And, yeah, I I I put a lot of pride in it. I I think I enjoy the the crafting process, building something. So I want it to be done well.
Nick:So I'm not as quick as some people, but I do really believe that the output will be better in the end. It's fun how you say the prompt that you've stored somewhere in a Notion. Like, that's basically the skill. But I think cloth skills just makes it easier to maintain. Like, it's there, and it tries to be smart to know when to pick it.
Nick:Like, you you would have to open Notion, find it, command c, command v, paste it in, edit it, make sure that it works for the current situation. Like, all of that is taken care of. You can just start your new Cloth Chat, and it figures out almost all the time correctly when to pick a skill and then also the correct one.
Tyler:So it's Yeah. Claw is missing. The one the one thing for me it's missing is the conversation. Like, the because what I do often is so I'm not usually, like, typing out. If I'm doing a post, for example, let's use, like, creating a post.
Tyler:Like, I'll open up an audio chat, and I'll speak my thoughts, and then I'll do, like, the back and forth. Like, let's today, we're gonna craft this LinkedIn post, and here's my idea. It's like, I wanna just have this structure, etcetera, etcetera. I just wanna, like, word vomit what I wanna say. Yeah.
Tyler:And then I'll have a bit of back and forth. I'll, like, read that back to me. It's like, oh, do you want something like this? No. No.
Tyler:No. Let's edit that word. I don't like that structure. Like, that's how I get my that's how I iterate in terms of content. Yeah.
Tyler:And then then I'll get a thing that I can get into my desktop, then I'll edit. I can prompt back and forth via text. But I just that talking part is what is really what that's the input that I that I really wanna Yeah. Like, give the system versus typing something out.
Nick:Mhmm. I do think the Claude app on mobile has voice input, I think, because I accidentally hit it sometimes. But I don't know if it can speak back to you.
Tyler:I need it to speak back to you, man. That's the one piece. I need to talk to my imaginary friend.
Nick:Yeah. Well, if they're smarter, probably listening to this, you know, or at least listening to transcripts from this, You know? And get Yeah. If you
Tyler:wanna talk about someone adoption tricks, like, get that feature. I'll I'll I'll throw chattypity in the garbage. Straight to the garbage.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Smart. Yeah.
Nick:Yeah. So yeah. I mean, so that's that's skills. Like, my my default thing to say in addition to anything new is to double check if it's useful for you and keep it simple. You know?
Nick:Because I think it's very easy to feel FOMO, you know, fear of missing out. If you feel like, oh, everyone's doing it. I need to find myself a problem to solve. You know, I already have the solution, but there's no real problem. Well, you know, sit this one out.
Nick:Don't use skills. That's what I wanted to say want to say. But what I'm doing is I'm looking at my week. Like, what what am I doing every week in terms of work? Well, I'm always, every Wednesday, prepping an episode to release.
Nick:What can I do? Like, what's repetitive? What's annoying? What's something I have to start from scratch every time? Well, then that's something that you can build a skill on on top of.
Nick:And that's something you can do, for example, also for new projects. Okay. Whenever I new start a new project, I create a Trello board. I create I send over certain emails, a questionnaire for new clients. I create a Figma board.
Nick:I schedule a meeting. Like, all of that can be automated, some of them using skills. But in that case, there's a real thing that you're already doing that you can then do way quicker, which leaves you with more time to do the actual work that you enjoy. But you you cannot convince me that you that you enjoy all that stuff. You know, setting up all the new blank stuff, like, would be wonderful if you would would have automated this.
Tyler:Yeah. That's probably the next step, right, to automate. Yeah. Like, I know I've been trying to get into perplex perplexity computer to kind of audit and do things for me as I sleep or as I do other things. I know Claude has a recent update
Nick:on him. Go work. That's what they have. Yeah. CoWork.
Tyler:Yeah. And it's time I use CoWork, but there's, like, a time feature where you can have it execute a task, like, every morning at 08:00. Should, like, pull pull these data sources and create, like, a dashboard for me. Yeah.
Nick:You have to you have to tell me something about this. If you not sure how advanced you are there, but let's let's, you know, switch seats for a moment because it looks very interesting. Like, co work slash perplexity, like, letting your computer do stuff while you you do something else. I assume the computer has to be on, right, and unlocked. Like, you Yeah.
Nick:Like, I would start something now, and then I would go downstairs for, you know, playing with the cat or going outside or whatever. And then it does its thing, and then when I come back, it's done. Right? Like, that's what it
Tyler:does. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Like, I use it I I use it during the like, I'll have, like, the the I don't know if I talked about this before, but I'll have the Clod plug in in in Chrome, and then it opens up that chat sidebar.
Tyler:And you can just give it access to I mean, there's two ways to do it. You can either open up in the sidebar or go directly from Cowork in the app, and it'll just open up a new tab and then execute on what you're whatever you tell it. Yeah. So, like, for example, I've I've programmed it to translate a Word doc to a Typeform. Like, it built a Typeform for me based on, like, the questions I had.
Tyler:Okay. And then I I I I didn't go and have a coffee. I just worked on something else while it did while it did that work for me. So it it was like navigating the UI, taking screenshots, pasting in content. It was interesting because it was using the little chat feature at the bottom to kind of prompt its way to getting the task done.
Nick:It's talking to itself.
Tyler:It was talking to yeah. Exactly. Okay.
Nick:Yeah. Because I have a a couple of questions there because I I'm currently at that stage where it looks really impressive to me, and I really want it to work for me, but I'm not sure yet if I'm so if it's going to help me solve a problem or if I first have to find the problem. So one of my questions is, does it take over your mouse while you're on the computer? Or
Tyler:No. Differently put,
Nick:like, can you like, so if if I tell Claude co work or Perplexity, like, sort this folder, give it such and such name structure so that it is easier for me to find. Like, will it do it while while I'm doing something else?
Tyler:Yeah. Exactly. I've never actually had it interact with something on my desktop computer. Like, it's it's usually in browser. So you'll see if you use it, like, in Chrome, it'll have this kind of orange highlight denoting that it's it's it has control over this specific tab.
Tyler:Not the whole computer, but a specific tab. And it'll do its thing. So it has, I guess, its own cursor that it's using. So it's there's no worry in terms of, like, you can still do other things. Yeah.
Tyler:But it's working within that specific tab doing doing the tasks you've kind of executed.
Nick:Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. And then the second thing is, like, I really want to be able to let Claude or Perplexity or any of these these, you know, co work type things work while I while I'm sleeping, but I just cannot think of something that would take the majority of my night. Like, I don't feel like I have so much, like, overhead lying around that it can take over.
Nick:So, like, what's something that that's big enough for you to consider let it run to consider as being active while you while you're sleeping, which is, like, six or eight hour time periods?
Tyler:Yeah. So, like, one thing I wanna experiment with with is building a feature. So, like, take like, whether it's, a POC or, like, of a feature, just build a feature on its own. So, like, how that like, how Envision is working or how it's how I see other people do it is basically you create a PRD of, like, the feature that you wanna work on. Mhmm.
Tyler:Yeah. And then you translate that PRD into I don't know what, like, Claude's version of a dot MD file is, but, like, just, like, you translate that PRD to a to a to a file, and it has, like, all the different features and then break up those it'll break up those features into, like, micro tasks. So it's like, it won't one shot the whole thing, but it'll go, okay. We have this giant feature to do. Maybe it's like an onboarding.
Tyler:Let's build step one and one one check, two, three, four. And then you can build in, like, QA as part of that feedback loop. Yeah. So at the end so, essentially, what you could do is, like, go to sleep, and then it'll have something that it's built based on, like, a constraint that you've given it. And, essentially, what this looks this is essentially what, like, engineering teams do.
Tyler:It's called, like, a spec driven development, which is essentially Right. What you often do for a junior is you they're not kind of you there's guardrails you give them. So it's like you create them a file with, like, instructions. It's like a template. You need to do this, this, this, this, and then the junior will kind of do the work based on, like, this high level guidance.
Tyler:But that kind of portion now has been given to an LLM to kind of execute on those parameters. So now a junior doesn't have to do it. Your your Claude or whatever LLM you're using can now execute on those instructions. So it's a similar thing. So it's like the low hanging fruit or things that you like, the easy task you wanna or the easy features, you can probably just let it do its thing.
Nick:Right. Well, that's yeah. I mean, that's that's pretty cool. So then you can also give it, like, five small features just to fill the night. Like, it doesn't have to be one big one.
Nick:Yeah.
Tyler:And, like, you're just basically being the orchestrator of, like, these agents that are doing doing their thing.
Nick:Yeah.
Tyler:Like, there's this big, like, debate now. It's like, companies are shrinking, but it's like, what is that the move? Like, is do you want to shrink your company and then, like, subsidize, like, the loss of headcount with an LLM or just arm your ex so it's like, do you wanna go from 400 to 100 and just arm that 100 with AI or just arm the 400 with AI, which is, like, the the move? Right? Like, do you wanna be more Yeah.
Nick:I would say it's
Tyler:efficient with less or more efficient exactly. So you wanna be more efficient with more?
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. I I would say that. Yeah. I would say growth mindset.
Nick:I think that's what what I'm going to do, it's on my my backlog list, is like, I have a a server at home, you know, backup server, media server, like, it's it's just sitting there. It's a Mac Mini, so I'm very cool.
Tyler:You are indeed.
Nick:But it's it's I and and I'm even cooler because I had the Mac Mini before it became cool.
Tyler:Of course. I'm your time.
Nick:I'm going to yep. Like we are. So I'm going to put some sort of, like, perplexity compute or agent thing on it that I can reference through Slack or whatever, and then let it work on a few things that I want to work on but don't really have the time to work on. You know, like, improvements that I ran into. You know, I was having a meeting with someone, and he shared a website with me.
Nick:He asked me, like, what do you think of the website? And I told him, well, the footer says copyright 2025, and he was so happy. Like, I was someone that also found that out. And then we conclude, like, if you have a product and it says copyright another year than the year we're currently in Mhmm. That's just like we discussed previous episode with the custom domain.
Nick:Like, that's a sign that you don't really care, and that's off putting. Yep. Like, I can just like, that meeting is being transcribed, and I'm like, oh, I should check my website and update to 2026 if I do not already have it. Like, that's something I I can just copy from the LLM transcript, put it in the Mac Mini, and, you know, have it complete that that work, right, while I'm doing something else.
Tyler:Yeah. That's the move. Like, the transcript to executable flow is like the it's what's becoming more and more used. So, like, into your example, like, just if you were able to kind of invite your MacBook to your meeting and then just say in the transcript, my MacBook or give it a nickname, whatever, George. George will execute on on Yeah.
Tyler:Updating that that date in the footer. He'll just do it on your behalf.
Nick:I'm going to, yeah, perhaps name it after a cat or something. Sure. Garfield? Make it fun. Yeah.
Nick:Well, my own. My my my my own cat.
Tyler:Oh, there you go.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean, that that sounds like it's it's the way to go, especially for smaller tasks. And then have it create a a PR that you can review in the morning.
Tyler:Yeah. I've it's like it's what like, essentially, you, like, if you're working for a client or working in house, like, the cost of engaging you, there should be, like what is the industry standards? Like, you should have a three x multiple of the value. It's like, it cost one one to to pay you, and then it you get three back. It's like, put a dollar in, I get $3 back.
Tyler:I think now with, like, the, like, these skills and this automation, it's where, like, the multiples are are it's going beyond the three. It's like ten ten or 20 x now.
Nick:Mhmm. Yeah. I think so. You can just do way more.
Tyler:Which, I mean, there's risk in that, but, yeah, we're doing more. Yeah.
Nick:Yeah. One thing, perhaps because maybe dedicate a whole episode to it. There's a downside to it as well, and that's just how much and I'm sure you have an opinion about this, but let's let's save it. Maybe a teaser for, like, 10 episodes down the road, but your user base has a limit to how much new features it can take at the same time. And the the best example of it is the tiredness that we're all feeling around, oh, man, a new tool today.
Nick:Every day is a new tool. And Anthropic, the company behind Cloud Cloud, they're they're releasing so many new features every week. I see so many people comment something like, I cannot keep up. So I'm sure you can launch a lot 10 times as fast, but your users cannot keep up 10 times as fast. So Yeah.
Nick:That's the new bottleneck. But let's let's save that for another time because I think that's a relief for many people who are scared that they cannot keep up or that they will lose their job. Yeah.
Tyler:For sure.
Nick:Yeah. Well, I hope this was useful for you, you know, the skill thingy.
Tyler:I I gotta try it. I'm gonna be trying it at at least one skill this week because I Yeah. I gotta I gotta learn from the best here. I feel like I'm behind. I got the FOMO as well.
Nick:Yeah. Well, you don't have to. You don't have to. Let like I said before, like, only use it if you feel like it's solving something that you're running into during the week. Like, do not find the problem that's not there.
Nick:Piece of a valuable piece of life wisdom there, I think. Just calm down a little bit.
Tyler:I think yeah.
Nick:I'll try to
Tyler:do that. Alright. Well Alright. Till next time.
Nick:Till next time.
Tyler:That was a great episode. So if you like this content and wanna hear more, please like and subscribe.
Nick:Yeah. And if you want to see more, please go to designtablepodcast.com, Spotify, Apple Music, all the big players, and more.