The 5 Levels of AI-Native: How to Get From Level 1 to Level 5 in 30 days | Peter Yang

19 Jun 2026 · 29 min · 13 chapters

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In short

Peter Yang explains his “5 levels of AI-native” framework and a practical path to move from basic chat use to building AI workflows/agents that automate knowledge work in about 30 days, emphasizing “last 10%” human judgment.

Guest backgrounds

Peter Yang spent a decade building products at Reddit, Meta, and Roblox. He now runs an AI-driven newsletter for ~140,000 people solo (no team).

Key claims

Most people are stuck at Level 1–2; the fastest upgrade is switching from ChatGPT/Claude to Codex/“Cursor Code” to create reusable “skills” (text-file workflows with integrations). Self-improvement is real via updating skills after back-and-forth and using memory (e.g., learnings.md). AI can draft, repurpose, and schedule across platforms, but humans must review and add taste.

Notable examples

Using Codex/WhisperFlow/SuperWhisper to turn voice dumps into newsletter/social posts for X, LinkedIn, Threads, Substack; using analytics to adjust LinkedIn link strategy; using transcripts to identify video cut moments; building a “personal advisor” skill that references a Google Doc of principles and energy; planning an AI “chief of staff” via Telegram/Slack/meeting transcripts.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

AI's Impact on Productivity

1:15 to 2:44

Discover how AI can enhance productivity in creative work.

“And it's only getting exponentially better.”

Self-Improving AI Skills

2:46 to 4:30

Learn about creating self-improving AI skills and their applications.

“What are the top three things that you deployed in this year that dramatically changed how productive you are?”

Using AI for Content Creation

4:34 to 6:44

Explore how AI assists in creating and editing content across platforms.

“So I had no idea about that So I'm gonna do more of that now.”

AI in Building Apps

6:46 to 10:20

Understand the different levels of AI adoption in app development.

Practical Steps to AI Adoption

13:28 to 14:01

Get actionable advice on transitioning from basic to advanced AI use.

“in a very practical way so that people who've been using AI on like level one, maybe some level two, can move to maybe ideally level five, where it's more...”

Building AI Workflows with Codex

14:01 to 17:32

Learn how to leverage Codex and Cloud Code for personal workflows.

“And when I use Codex 80 % of the time, I'm not coding or doing any of that.”

Creating a Personal Advisor Skill

17:33 to 21:45

Discover how to create an AI personal advisor that learns from your interactions.

“how do you prompt so that every conversation contributes to that file?”

Principles for Decision-Making

21:46 to 22:50

Understand the importance of setting principles to guide your AI's advice.

Transitioning to AI-Driven Work

22:51 to 25:15

Explore how to transition your work to be more AI-driven for efficiency.

“It's like OpenClaw, but it's a little bit more reliable.”

The Future of Work with AI

25:16 to 26:18

Discuss how AI is reshaping the future of work and personal productivity.

“So just ask the right questions, and then set up the workflows like we just talked about, and then build the skills and integrations, and then you're off to the races.”
Show all 13 chapters

Concerns About AI and Creativity

26:19 to 28:03

Examine the fears around AI impacting creativity and personal development.

“partner that knows me yeah and can like just like kind of be my pair programmer or like partner to kind of figure stuff out.”

Navigating the Creator Economy

28:03 to 29:15

Learn about the challenges and principles needed to succeed in the creator economy.

“I do think it's a problem because I see a lot of creators just making a slop.”

Action Plan for AI Productivity

29:16 to 30:39

Discover practical steps to enhance productivity using AI tools.

“Let's finish with an action plan for someone who's trying to stay ahead in this AI era.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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0:55Peter Yang:It almost feels like cheating. I fear that I'm getting dumber and lazier. Like if I'm on a flight and there's no like internet connection like that, I just don't feel like working anymore. That's Peter Yang. He spent a decade building products at Reddit, Meta, and Roblox. Now he runs a newsletter for 140 ,000 people with no team. Almost all of it through AI. I'm like an employee is never going to leave you. And it's only getting exponentially better. Last 10%, you got to add your human touch to it. And you don't have to be a creator to make this. I see a lot of creators, they like to get AI to generate like 10 posts per hour.

1:26and like the slop goes viral. This is heartening.

1:29Peter Yang:For someone who's trying to stay ahead in this AI era, what should they be doing? So step number one is use codex or clock code. And step two is to... So I really wanted to make this podcast practical for everyone who's watching. There is something that's going on in AI right now that everyone is talking about is self-improving. And you recently build cloud self-improving skills. And the whole narrative is like, stop prompting your AI, make it figure out what to do next. Can you talk about that? And is self-improving a reality for people who are just using AI versus researchers? Yeah, there's like different ways to do it.

2:07I think, first of all, like, you know, I think all your audience knows the skill is just like a text file with a bunch of instructions, right? And yeah, I have skills for making my podcast, for editing my newsletter posts and so on. Most basic ways to do a self-improvement is after you use a skill and you have a back and forth conversation with AI, because it never gets it right in one shot. Then you just say like, hey, based on our conversation, can you please update the scale to account for, you know, to try to get to it in one shot faster, right? And then it'll make a bunch of changes, and you should review it.

2:35And then hopefully, you'll do it better the next time.

2:37Peter Yang:When I integrated AI into every part of my work, it almost feels like cheating. And a year before that, you said you were drowning in meetings and projects. What are the top three things that you deployed in this year that dramatically changed how productive you are? So I can tell my creative work, since we're both creators and uh you know being a creator is like a lot of repetitive work right like a lot of repetitive copy and paste name back and forth and like changing things from like a newsletter post to like uh like youtube description to like social posts there's like a lot of kind of like different formats and i i just decided to spend one day like just like you know no meetings and just sat down with codex and be like hey i basically just brain dumped all my workflows to codex and here's how i do it manually and i use a thing called whisper flow just like bring it up yeah so my voice so there's like a couple major ones like uh you know prepping the podcast post-production there's editing my newsletter posts there's posting to the various social media platforms and then another one is like setting up an advisor to kind of give me like business advice like checking ideas is it like an agent that's running it's just like a skill that's a thing to a google doc file that has like a bunch of personal information about my business and then it kind of gives me advice.

3:48Peter Yang:Talk to me about posting on different platforms. How does it work? Do you dictate something with your voice or does it see what kind of videos you produce and repurposes them? I have some like crown jobs, which is basically like, you know, like this morning briefings, weekly reports that send me how like other channels are doing, what kind of videos are popular. Now I post to your social media platforms through Codex directly. Before I was using this tool called Typeful Fully, these like social media tools. but like some of the platforms I post to like Substack Notes they don't have any kind of like API integrations right so I just told Kodesh hey like I want to schedule posts to Substack Notes can you help me figure it out and then it went to the browser and it sniffed out some internal APIs that they're using to post so it sniffed out internal APIs but it could also do computer use right it can also do computers yeah so you can do both but now I can post to like four platforms I can post to X, LinkedIn, Threads and Substack Notes at the same time and in the skill it has like some nuances like for example on X you want to tag the person that you interviewed right you want to find the handle but on LinkedIn you can already tag it's kind of hard to tag so like I can't just bring dump it all to Codex and now I can actually do the tweaks for me so it kind of saves me a lot of time do you get the final approval before it posts or it just goes ahead and posts by itself I still draft it I don't just get it to generate copy to post so I still I just like you know use Whisperflow and bring dump some random thing into codex so you talk to it it takes your voice and just like creates different social media posts it creates some media posts it also has my you know examples of posts that i've done that have gone very viral so it can help me like uh clean up my brain dump into like a more polished post yeah and then i'll take a look and i'll be like okay go post it to all four platforms does it have access to your analytics to assess what's going on right now uh it does yes it has access to analytics from various platforms and also typefully the thing i use also has analytics So it did some analysis like for example, it found that on LinkedIn I don't know if it's good or not But like if you just do a post with a bunch of links to all your tutorials and stuff It tends to do better than if you do a single one.

5:51So I had no idea about that So I'm gonna do more of that now.

5:55Peter Yang:What about newsletter? Is it the same process where you talk about what you want to have a new newsletter and it creates it? Newsletter depends on what kind of post I'm making. So for example, like I think by the time this goes out I have published a post about why I'm leaving my job. So that one I just kind of like went on a walk and kind of dictated to Whisper Flority's voice tools and kind of just like brain dumped my real thoughts. To Codex, direct into Codex, right? I don't know. I could do it to Codex, but I use this tool called Super Whisper that records like 10 minutes of my brain dump.

6:27And then I copy and paste the whole thing into Codex. Because Codex, I'm just worried like if I dictate for 10 minutes, Codex will get confused.

6:32Peter Yang:That's my worry too. Or something stops working and it just keeps processing and nothing happens. That happened to me a couple of times. and it's not just codex i think it's the context field that is not designed for a 10 minute prompt and how many how many edits do you typically do with uh in this process um it's interesting because like with ai i'm kind of giving a feedback for it to edit it's actually hard to just edit yourself and just give it feedback right so like i i bring up it i give it a codex it does a bunch of editing and it uses my best examples to edit and then inevitably do something wrong so i have the read through and I kind of voice takes a bunch of feedback and it doesn't our past and then maybe the last 10 % I have to manually change stuff yeah like it's actually important like I always emphasize like last 10 % you gotta add your human touch to it you can't just like AI sloppify everything basically all your written content is yeah created with the help of AI talk to me about the strategic uh thing that you're doing is that like in the morning it briefs you on what's performing what's not or every week it sends me a brief about how much money i made this week and and also like um how did my past 30 days content perform and also like all the other channels that make similar content is there any kind of outliers you know so uh and it does that for youtube and also for sub stack and and for sub stack it doesn't have api so it has to use browser use to look up everything yeah so that would take me like an hour to do manually but like it does it you mentioned some of your editing is done with ai yeah is that where you do you dump a transcript and it edits it out or what's the process yeah for video editing i feel like maybe i haven't gotten deep into it yet but i still use like a human like a video editor uh but the transcript is very useful because i dumped the transcript into codex and it tells me here's the moments where like you had like all awkward pauses or like stuff you should cut here's the time stamps and also for like the intro here's kind of like we should pick like here's like the the spicy quotes from the interview yeah it's it's fascinating how this has become so much faster versus a year ago yeah it's just uh yeah it's a different reality these days so you've described all of these things that you've built how often do you build something new pretty much every single time i thought ai something something changes right like i'll take some skills or something changes but you're someone like from zero to one or well my hope is that i can uh streamline a lot of my content production and you know for the audience i'm not going to sloppify everything i'm still applying taste but i'm going to streamline a little bit so i can save more time because i actually want to be a builder because you know i spent a decade of my career just building products inside big companies and i want to now that we have all these agents and tokens we can use i want to like build different tools like open source tools or things that you know solve my own problems yeah so i want to do both i don't want to just be a creator i want to be a creator and a builder nice so i'm going to spend more time doing that how do you make decision when to build something and when it's okay the way it is um it's usually i i feel like you know it's best to kind of build stuff to solve your own problems so like uh for example i i built like a fitness app i mean everyone's doing fitness apps but i i built a fitness app that helps me trap my workouts and then uh it has mcps to kind of like send me emails on my health you know that's one thing i built i'm doing something else right now you know in gmail like you get a lot of scam scammers and and like um my parents have no idea like they like you know their bank sends them an email but it's actually like xyz at hotmail.com right so i'm trying to build like some sort of extension to just highlight that this is a scam how long does it take you to build something like that i think to get to 80 there it probably just takes a couple hours because you just make a plan and you get caught let's do it but you actually make it good and to test it and polish it that that takes more time That takes a couple of days or like, you know, depending on where your quality bar is, where you want to go.

10:21Peter Yang:Before we start building something, you have this system with five layers of AI adoption. Can you walk me through them? And let's decide which layer do we want to land on today? I made this five layer thing actually like six months ago. So most people are in layer one, which is just using AI for everyday answers. They're using ChatGPT and Cloud and asking questions. I think the second layer is like using AI for daily work. So you're still in ChatGPT and Cloud, but you're using projects. and other things to like, to not do too much copy and pasting, to like set up projects for different things like, I don't know, giving you a life advice, automating your content stuff.

10:56But because it's in Chat, you still have to copy and paste the output to somewhere else, right? So it's still like a lot of going back and forth. And then I think this is more from like a product perspective, but then a lot of people in my, you know, as a product manager, you want to use AI for prototyping. Because like product managers, we all used to just write a bunch of documents. that none of our engineers want to actually read. So now with all these tools like Lovable and like Replit and, you know, Codex and everything else, you can actually build prototypes of your products. So like I usually take a screenshot of my product and be like, hey, can you make a prototype of this and make some changes and show it to my engineer and the designer.

11:34So that's then. And then you can use AI level four to build different apps. So like there's never been building a personal app for yourself and trying to like build an app that like millions of people use, right? So when I say building apps, a lot of it is just like personal apps for itself.

11:48Peter Yang:Where do the agents go in these layers? Well, if you're just building an app, you can just put it on Vercel or something, and then have a link that people can use. So it's not really looping or anything. Okay. And that's layer four? Layer four, yeah. And layer five? Layer five is what we've been talking about, which is you actually use AI as a personal agent to try to streamline and automate as much as you can. right and like and it sounds like very complicated but really it's just about like sitting down like like canceling all your meetings for a day and sitting down and like thinking through your past week all the time you spend time manually doing stuff and just like sharing it with your ai friend when you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work use indeed sponsored jobs it gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more.

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13:27Peter Yang:Can you walk me through a process that we just talked about in a very practical way so that people who've been using AI on like level one, maybe some level two, can move to maybe ideally level five, where it's more... I feel like the most practical step that most people should take is just to like stop using chat, gpt, and claw and just start using codecs or claw code. That's like step one. And like people get intimidated by this stuff, like codecs and claw code, like this is like a programming software. Sounds very nerdy, yeah. But in reality, it's just like, you're still just chatting with the AI, right?

14:01And when I use Codex 80 % of the time, I'm not coding or doing any of that. It's just more powerful because these two apps, you can build skills for them. They have access to APIs and integrations so they can actually get work done across your other apps. And they're just way more powerful than just default chat, QB, and Cloud. So basically, what I recommend you do is use Codex or Cloud Code and set up a new folder, call it PersonalOS or whatever you want to call it. Just call it a folder, right? and then I asked it like what are the main workflows that it can do here and you can kind

14:35Peter Yang:of see here that um oh you asked codex yeah come up with well this is all the stuff I've set up over time right so basically like you know as we talked about it uses like various different skills and skills are just text files to do work for me so like for example to to edit my newsletter it has this skill to shape a rough note into transcript and then it also uses other skill called last three days to add fresh research and then uses another skill called no ai slop to make the writing clear i like that what what if you don't ask it for last 30 days it's just gonna yeah admit i think somewhere in the skill i have some instructions like hey do some online searches to you know make sure i'm like you know saying stuff that's actually true another thing you like people should recognize is that there's a lot of like open source skills that are really good you know so last 30 days is like some open source skills that i found on github and it does like searches across like reddit x and all these other platforms i need this and then it uses no yes lob too and and then eventually the newsletter post gets to a good enough point and i used social writer skill to make uh to turn newsletter into like a bunch of threads right so that's for newsletter and then for podcasts it's a very similar format like i use this podcast prep skill to research guests that i have and then and then you know as part of making stuff on youtube you know this is better anyway you're gonna have a really good thumbnail title and copy so I have a whole skill to just like test different thumbnails and titles and then based on that I decided the podcast is even worth doing and then I do like a post-production skill like turn it into all kinds of stuff yeah sponsors we both have sponsors it's like a lot of work so I asked it to keep track of my sponsors through different skills and also help me draft and brainstorm sponsor copy help me you know schedule stuff on the inventory and all that kind of stuff yeah so I guess the TRDR is like these workflows are done by connecting different skills together that you build and like for all these skills i don't actually can you show one of them like just go into like strategy for example where it's built and like walking through how you built it yeah sure let's just say open personal i think one of the most useful skills that i built is just like a personal advisor skill because uh i guess um my wife is tired of me asking for advice all the time it literally is just a text file right so it's a text file to give me honest advice and you know you're my trusted life and business advice and then keep your tone warm right and then uh this stuff is like a little bit more fancy there's like evals and stuff but we can talk about that later learnings md is that your file yeah it's codex itself has memory but i asked it to save another text file called learnings.md to save memory from our past conversations so it kind of learns about me this is kind of self-improving stuff that we talked about with something they've released yesterday because they released something when it now remembers all of your conversations, like has this expanded memory.

17:18Peter Yang:Do people still need Learnings MD? Well, I don't actually know how their system-wide memory works. So maybe you don't need it, but it's also useful for me to read Learnings MD and see what kind of conversations I've had with it in the past. For a Learnings MD file, do you ask it, how do you prompt so that every conversation contributes to that file? Yeah, so you also have to think about managing the context window because you don't want it to be like super long. Yeah. So I have some instructions saying like, hey, like after every conversation, you should ask me, like you should recognize kind of like patterns and like learnings that you have and ask me if I want to save in learnings.md.

17:55So ask me.

17:56Peter Yang:And there are more strategic learnings, right? Because this is your personal advisor. So after every single conversation? It should use its best judgment, whether it wants to ask me or not. And then I also ask it like if you're going to save it there, just like have a few lines, just like have one or two sentences. Like don't write like huge paragraphs. So that's the way, it's so interesting with these, like how, what AI actually remembers about you. Because sometimes you think maybe it remembers everything and you hope that it does, but in reality it doesn't or remembers stuff that you don't really care about.

18:28Peter Yang:So these learnings and these, so you basically prompted it saying, where does this prompt go? Does it go? It's just in the skill file, like the main skill file of like, hey, before you answer any questions I have, like just quickly skim through learnings.md and uh once we finish conversation or like in the middle of a conversation we see something ask me if this should be added to this learnings md file and the skill runs across everything that you do because skill is triggered based on like uh your description your skill description in the top which is like so here i say like use whenever the user is stuck on decision or working through a hard problem or asking for a gut check but sometimes it doesn't trigger sometimes after like actually do like slash give me a slash personal advisor yeah and then ask the question how do you come up with all the like for me when i'm building this yeah there is so much brain work going into this like when i trigger the skill all the nuances do you use codex for that as well yeah i i never write any of these files man manually but you still know it's even no writing it's just thinking about all the nuances yes i can think about a lot of things for you but then there are so many different things that you want to remember like when to trigger this skill yeah what types of information you want to go there oh maybe and then you wake up in the middle of the night oh i forgot to add this that's what i was trying to say yeah i have a skill to build skills right and anthropic actually has a skill to build skills yeah personally i'm like very worried about just like it becoming slobify like it just like starts adding stuff i i don't even read it and it becomes like super slop like it's like super yeah because you also want to make sure you're in control of whatever is in the skill and if ai just built a huge skill for you yeah exactly then you don't have time to read so so my so my i have like a skill editor skill is very basic it just like looks for like duplicate instructions or like slop content and tries to remove it like okay like i i tell you try to keep my all my skills to like one page max so i can actually read through it and see if it makes sense or not let's take a deeper look at what's what's next uh yeah so so yeah so like update the plan and and and then and then and then like so for for this personal advisor thing i have my you know what why don't I just ask it to, can you read my plan Google Doc and share its overall structure without sharing confidential info?

20:42So basically, like, and this is just the way I do it. Like, I have my actual plan or like, you know, my business plan or whatever in a Google Doc. And like, I find it's very useful to, as creator, to like have some principles to help you make decisions. So basically, it's like a one pager with my goal, my principles, like background, my business, positioning and some other stuff like energy and other stuff, right? Like I don't know what your goal, but my goal is just to like make X amount of money and just like actually be in control of my time and who I want to meet with. And then my principles are like, like I have a problem where I tend to take on too much stuff.

21:17So I asked you to like, just keep the main thing, the main, main thing. Like that's one of my principles, like which is like, you know, people invite you to conferences and like, you know, do all kinds of like, try to write a book or do all kinds of stuff and you have to say no because you want to you should focus on making a newsletter and a podcast great yeah

21:32Peter Yang:and it's so hard to stay focused yeah but because I have that principle so when it gives me advice it has that principle in mind so it can kind of check me and then the business stuff is more just like you know like all the financial information and I think one important section is like what gives me energy and what takes energy away and just like a couple of bullet points but like you know what gives me energy is like you know vibe coding with codex what takes energy away is like i don't know like doing too many zoom calls or something yeah so so like so i i think i think it's very important like you don't have to be a creator to make this document right for any kind of career you have just make this document uh and putting a google doc somewhere and then set up a skill to reference this document when it gives you advice and i think that like it's literally one of my most useful skills it's like not super complicated but like it helps me make a lot of decisions for better for worse most people use claude like a search engine they type in a question they get an answer most times they're not really satisfied with it and they close the tab i did the same thing for months and i was looking at people who were saying ai is changing their life and i'm like then i spent one afternoon setting it up properly uploaded a few files about how i think and how i work and it completely changed i wrote the whole process up step by step you get it when you subscribe to my newsletter future proof it's free the link is in the description yeah well this is very powerful because then you can use it for anything that you do so it adheres to your principles yeah do you have a team uh i have like a video editor and a few contractors but no i don't have a full-time team do you have you ever tried building like a ai chief of staff uh yeah i have one uh uh this thing right now i'm using this thing called Hermes.

23:14Peter Yang:Can you talk about this? It's like OpenClaw, but it's a little bit more reliable. And there's a team that built it. But you can also just set up in Codex too. I'm using Hermes right now because I like having it in my messaging apps, like in Telegram and wherever I want to use it. How do you use it? Talk to me about that. Because I'm trying to build something. You are? I'm trying to build an AI chief of staff where, first of all, my strategic decision-making happens on Zoom calls and in Telegram where I give feedback to my team and I say yes or no. So I want AI to learn my strategic decision-making style.

23:54And then I just talked to,

23:56Peter Yang:you know who I interviewed, the founder of Kalshi. And she has a team of developers, but they build this thing where it goes across all the Slack chats they have every Sunday and tells her where the team is stuck, what was promised to be delivered, what hasn't been delivered. So somebody who just watches the whole operation and keeps everyone accountable i see is that where you're trying to build with ermes so you just have to think about where the inputs what are the what are you trying to do and what are the outputs right so the inputs for like any kind of business is probably like a like slack yeah and if you use granola to record immediate meetings there's transcripts there just set up all that just ask like codex or ermes or whatever just set up all the integrations be like hey can you hook up to my granola can you hook up to my slack so for anyone who's at level two let's say and wants to get to level five, what are the steps that should be taking?

24:42Peter Yang:I think this is the step number one, really build something like a strategic mindset behind all of your AIs and projects and agents. What are the next steps? So step number one is, as I said, like to just actually use codecs or clock code. Just start using that instead of like the regular stuff. Even projects like you... Yeah, I switched away from projects because like I set up all my projects here instead because like with a project, if I want to edit a newsletter post, it spits out an output and i have to copy and paste the output to into google doc or like manually update stuff yeah but this stuff can just update google doc for me so it saves a step right makes sense so now someone has to use the right apps and step two is to um just ask the right questions like bring down your workflows and ask the right questions because i feel like a lot of people don't realize what this stuff is capable of doing you know like this stuff is basically capable of doing, in my opinion, any kind of knowledge work that you have, as long as you're patient with it and give it the right context.

25:40So just ask the right questions, and then set up the workflows like we just talked about, and then build the skills and integrations, and then you're off to the races.

25:48Peter Yang:What do you think your life is going to look like in a year? A year? I've always worked in big companies where there's always been a lot of cross-functional alignment, right? You got to align different teams and different orgs. I really actually do really miss my engineering team and people like that I enjoy working with at work but I feel like these days like uh this is like the era of solopreneurs and I feel like you can get so much done with agents stuff that you don't want to do um that you can it really frees up your time to do stuff that gives you more energy you know and even the stuff that's like strategic or gives me energy I I feel like now I have this partner that knows me yeah and can like just like kind of be my pair programmer or like partner to kind of figure stuff out.

26:28Peter Yang:Do you think you're going to be working less or more in a year? Well, I think I'm pretty type A, so I don't know if I'm going to completely check out. But I hope I'll be doing more work that I enjoy. And I feel like if you and I retire, we'll be bored of our mind. We'll probably go play golf or something, but it'll be very boring. Of course, yeah. I think we're going to keep working. Yeah, we'll keep working, but we want to do work that we actually enjoy, not like the monitors, copy and paste, or like, you know, that kind of work. Do you have any fear around AI? I feel like I fear that I'm getting dumber and lazier like if I'm on a flight and there's no like internet connection like that I just don't feel like working anymore because I don't have this partner you know that's evolution if you take our grandparents even my grandparents like they would never understand my lifestyle because they were constantly working yeah it's either at home like my mom raised me while working while cooking while cleaning and I'm like oh I can't clean I have I need a cleaner you know I just bought a robot vacuum cleaner I don't know how I lived without it we're becoming laser and laser that's true yeah but I think it's it's actually then we have more time for kids and meaningful time with our loved ones I I do worry about our kids cuz like I at least you and I grew up without AI so we have like 20 years of like doing the basic stuff like basic critical thinking skills and like you know learn how to math and stuff but i feel like our kids these days they can they can start using codex right right now they talk to the you know computer yeah so like uh you kind of have to make sure they actually still learn their fundamentals what's your solution to that what are you trying to do with your kids that's different from how you were raised i have kind of like a radical thing i i feel like they need to um and maybe this is my bias but i feel like they need to just like maybe start a business or something and learn the real things because i i feel like reflecting on my journey yeah my education I didn't learn a ton from the classroom I learned by like failing and like making mistakes yeah so I feel like they need to have the right mentality to do that kind of stuff and like learn how to fail and just go out there and like try to do something do you ever have fear for your career yeah yeah I am talking to a lot of creators these days and I see them at events and a lot of people think that creator economy is getting oversaturated because everyone is suddenly a creator because it's so much easier to create content yeah do Do you think that might be a problem?

28:48I do think it's a problem because I see a lot of creators just making a slop. They get AI to generate like 10 posts per hour and the slop goes viral and it's kind of like this is heartening. Do you see that? But I feel like that's why it's so important to find your principles and values. Because I never want to be someone who just makes tons of slop even if it goes viral and makes me a lot of money. But I do think maybe people will get tired of a slop and people will be like, hey, I I actually want human craft and human touch on this stuff.

29:16Peter Yang:Let's finish with an action plan for someone who's trying to stay ahead in this AI era. For the next week, what should they be doing? Okay, I think to stay ahead, get the$20 chat GPT plan, download Codex, and just start saving time and building workflows and building skills to save time and asking Codex to do it. Because I feel like that's more productive for you because you will immediately recognize that you can start saving time versus what a lot of people do, which is like they go on Twitter and try to like read all the news and like try to, you know, take some courses or something. Like switch from consumption mode to actual build mode.

29:56Yeah.

29:56Peter Yang:What if they come back and say, oh, I tried, but it didn't work. I don't know what you're talking about. It's so bad. It's so much easier to just do everything by yourself. By yourself. Well, it does take longer. So it's interesting because like with AI, you have to set up the system first before you can see the fruits of the output. and it does take time to save the system but it probably only takes like one day to do it, right? And you have to have some patience because even now with all this stuff I built, it still cannot one-shot exactly what I want. So there's always kind of a back and forth and as long as you're patient and you give it like feedback and tell it to save it in its skills and memory, it will get better over time, you know?

Read the full transcript

30:31And unlike like an employee, it's never going to leave you. It's going to be there.

30:35Peter Yang:It's never going to leave you and it's only getting exponentially better every single month. Peter, thank you so much. It was a very, very productive conversation. Thanks, Marina. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us. We've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's OmniShade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia. Engineered for whatever.

31:15Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com. thank you for coming

From the publisher

Peter Yang spent 10+ years building products at Roblox, Reddit, Amazon (Twitch), and Meta. Then he walked away from a high-paying job at Roblox to go all-in as a solo builder. His newsletter Behind the Craft has 140K+ readers, and his podcast has deep conversations with 30+ AI leaders from Anthropic, Google, Cursor, and Replit.


In this episode he breaks down how: how to move from using AI like a search engine to building systems that run your work, how to build a personal AI that knows your strategy, and the one thing to do this week to get ahead.


We cover:

  • The 5 layers of AI adoption, from "I ask ChatGPT questions" to "AI runs my whole operation," and how to find which layer you're actually on
  • Why you should stop using ChatGPT and Claude chat and switch to Codex or Claude Code, even if you've never written a line of code
  • The one-day reset: cancel every meeting, brain-dump your real workflows out loud, and let AI turn them into skills that save hours every week
  • TRICK: the personal advisor skill — a one-page Google Doc with your goal, your principles, and what gives vs. drains your energy, so your AI checks your decisions before you make them
  • How he uses learnings.md so his AI remembers the right things about him and gets smarter every conversation
  • The "last 10%" rule that keeps AI content from becoming slop, and why human taste is the whole job now
  • How he builds a working personal app (a fitness tracker, a scam-email blocker for his parents) in a couple of hours
  • His honest fears: getting dumber on a flight with no wifi, and what he's doing differently to raise kids who still learn the fundamentals
  • The exact action plan for your next 7 days to go from consumer to builder

Links: Subscribe to my free newsletter where I go deeper on AI tools, career strategies, and building with AI: ⁠https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=PeterYang⁠

🔗 Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/⁠

𝕏 : ⁠https://x.com/siliconvalleymm⁠

💼 LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko⁠

📌 My Companies & Products: ⁠https://Marinamogilko.co

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