In short
How to use OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra for practical productivity and money-making, not just demos—covering prompts, workflows, and “computer use,” plus building a hardware agent prototype with Blender.
Guests
Ross Mike (host’s friend; explains Astra use cases and prompts; shares multiple business/automation ideas). Host Greg Brockman is referenced/retweets Ross’s tweet, but he isn’t a guest in the transcript.
Key claims
Astra is OpenAI’s most expensive model but subsidized via Codex; it’s efficient and strong at performance updates, security audits, and controlling your computer. Landing pages are “sad use of intelligence”; instead, prototype and build real products.
Notable examples
performance speedup from ~800ms to 20–30ms; security audit preventing “you would’ve been cooked”; negotiating phone/internet bills; one-person weekly operator dashboard; browser QA on real phones; competitor monthly spy reports; hardware: Raspberry Pi “HomePod-like” speaker plan, Blender setup, budget ~$350–450 CAD (links), and Astra writing/merging code via PR.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOExploring GPT-6 Astra's Capabilities
0:43 to 1:52
Discussion on the potential uses of GPT-6 Astra for productivity and business.
“This isn't your your average GP6 Astro review, is it?”
Performance Updates and Security Audits
1:52 to 2:48
Advice on how to run performance updates and security audits using Astra.
“So a couple of things about the model, first and foremost, this is OpenAI's most expensive model.”
Leveraging Astra for Business Ideas
2:48 to 4:20
Insights on using Astra prompts to streamline business processes and save money.
“I was telling Greg this, I have some sort of payments startup, if you will, in the background for a specific niche.”
Creating and Prototyping Software Solutions
4:20 to 7:00
Methods to prototype software and convert service businesses into AI products.
“So if it's good enough for Greg Brockman, it's good enough for all of us.”
Using Astra for Competitive Analysis
7:00 to 8:00
Strategies for using Astra to analyze competitors and improve business insights.
“So young or old, this is an interesting one.”
Innovative Hardware Startup Ideas
8:00 to 10:00
Discussion on the concept of integrating AI into physical hardware products.
“I'm like, should I just get an agent to do this?”
Building a HomePod-like Speaker with Astra
10:00 to 14:00
A personal story of using Astra to design and prototype a hardware project.
“sit inside their product and their emails and send me a monthly report on every new feature, price change, and the thing they do better than ours.”
From Idea to Prototype with Astra
14:00 to 16:22
Learn how to utilize Astra for hardware projects from concept to execution.
“It showed exactly how I would have each thing laid up, right?”
Thinking Outside the Box with Technology
16:22 to 18:14
Explore the potential of using various hardware like PS4 for innovative projects.
“This, in my opinion, is the true power of Astra, where we have models like Fable, like, okay, not Fable, but we have like 5.6 Soul and all these different smaller models that are good at a lot of things.”
The Shift to Physical Projects
18:14 to 20:50
Discuss the emerging trend of creating niche physical products with AI assistance.
“I am thinking way above what my normal means would have been if I didn't have access to this intelligence.”
Show all 11 chapters
The Value of Astra in Modern Development
20:50 to 22:20
Understand the financial benefits of using Astra and its impact on development costs.
“okay, what are some small little products that seem niche, but solve a real pain point that I can go and create in a short amount of time and then create meta ads to drive traffic to those products.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00GPT-6 Astra is here and I got good news for you. By the end of this episode, you're going to understand what are the different startup ideas? What are the different use cases? How do you use it to be more productive? How do you use it to save money, to make money? Everything all in here. I'm going to show you how you can use it with hardware to create hardware businesses. And this is an episode not just focused around cool 3D demos. This is for people who want to make money to be more productive with AI and how you can use it specifically with Astra. What are the different prompts? How to think about it?
0:32I brought on my friend Ross Mike, who's just amazing at clearly explaining all this sorts of stuff. So enjoy the episode. Like, comment, subscribe for more of this in your feed. And I can't wait to see you at the end.
0:52Ross Mike on the pod. This isn't your your average GP6 Astro review, is it? No, we don't have no games.
1:00Ras Mic:We don't have any trade demos. We don't have, there's some weird ones, right? Some weird 3D ones. Although those things are cool, they're not really useful to myself, you and Greg. So we're actually going to talk about some useful, cool stuff. And particularly, we're going to get you guys to dream big with hardware. Yeah, exactly. So by the end of this episode, what I hope you take away is getting your creative juices flowing around really some ideas around how you can build a business using GPT-6 Astra and actually how you can have a more productive code base, have better products. So by the end of this, you're not going to get some glitzy, cool video game thing, but you're actually going to have, okay, here's what I can actually create today.
1:51Ras Mic:Yep, that's what we're going to do. And we'll just get started. So a couple of things about the model, first and foremost, this is OpenAI's most expensive model. It's on par with Fable in terms of pricing. But if you have a codec subscription, very subsidized. And not only that, it's also very efficient, meaning it doesn't take as many steps to complete a task. So even though, yes, the price is high, you're still getting a good bang for intelligence. If you have an existing app or web app, mobile app, something that you've worked on software, I highly encourage you do two things. Tell the agent, tell your codex agent, I want to run a performance update.
2:27Ras Mic:My pages aren't as fast as they need to be. My API calls aren't as fast as they need to be. Please review my entire app and suggest a performance update. I did that for one of my apps and speeds went from 800 milliseconds to literally 20 to 30 milliseconds, right? That's an insane increase in speed. Highly suggest you do that. Number two, something we couldn't do with Fable is a security audit. I was telling Greg this, I have some sort of payments startup, if you will, in the background for a specific niche. And I had a couple of people using it. I ran the security audit and Astra was basically like my boy, you would have been cooked.
3:05Ras Mic:if I didn't read all this. So run a security audit if you have an app that people are actually using. In terms of UI, I mean, I could just show some examples. This is one that it designed really nice. The reason it was nice was because I gave it a reference image. And the reference image, if I have it, is the old Microsoft XP network icon. I really like the OT network icon. For anyone - Very swaggy. For anyone over 30, you remember this. I gave it that. I'm like, use this as a reference image. And yeah, it looks pretty nice. Without a reference image, it kind of does too much. Right. So do what you will with that.
3:45Ras Mic:Number four, computer use. The agent codex Astra, insane with using your computer, insane with doing tasks for you in the background, using your local machine. Highly encourage you to do that. But what Greg wanted me to talk about. Wait, before you get into this, I want to share some things of my own that I think you should use Astra for. So let me share my screen real quick. Please. So I tweeted this. Greg Brockman retweeted it, and he said it was good. So if it's good enough for Greg Brockman, it's good enough for all of us. so um i just wrote here's some nine nine cool you know astro prompts we're trying one is the bill renegotiator go through my internet phone software bills jump into each provider's chat support and negotiate them down or cancel what i'm not using oh no brainer for a lot of stuff i'll tell you that right now and you're in canada right so you can you know you're paying a lot probably for your phone and internet and stuff like that.
4:54I'm obsessed with how do you turn agencies into software right now. So here, pick one service business in a niche. You can pick the niche and reverse engineer the exact workflow they sell to clients. Break it into steps, tools you use, inputs, outputs, human judgment points in places where the work gets slow or expensive. Then design the simplest AI product that could replace the first version of that service and charge$500 to$5 ,000 a month. Now, is it going to be perfect? No, but it's going to, you know, get your creative juices flowing around what the software could look like.
5:28Ras Mic:And I want to add to that. I think one thing that I do a lot that a lot of people should do is I prototype the heck out of everything, Greg. Like, let's say, like, I'm building an app and I'm using, like, Daytona, like their sandbox provider. I will literally, before I jump into Daytona, I'll spend 15 minutes trying to build a clone. It's not that I'm going to use the clone, but I'm going to allow building the clone to just get me to think. Because I think one thing that I've realized is intelligence has gone up, but the bravery for people to try new things hasn't gone up. I said this the other in a video.
6:03Ras Mic:The saddest thing that people can do with a model like GPT-6 Astra is generate landing pages. Literally. It's just like you can use GPT-4 or whatever. We're past that. Really think bigger. So I like that idea. Number two is fire. Number three, I almost called it the Gary Vaynerchuk prompt, but I refrained. Watch Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist in my city for cameras, furniture, bikes, what have you. Listed way under market and text me the second ones mispriced with the link. This is like a really good idea for people who just want to make a few hundred dollars a day or something. Yeah. And, you know, are looking, you know, maybe they can't get a job.
6:43A lot of our young people can't get jobs right now.
6:47Ras Mic:I'm going to screenshot that and put it in my church group check because it's true. Jobs for the young kids is really, really hard right now. Yeah, it's really, really hard. So that's a good one. And also for a lot of people, it's fun to do this sort of thing. So young or old, this is an interesting one. Number four, if you are a founder, this is a no-brainer. Look at my docs. Basically, it's creating the one-person company dashboard. look at my docs, notes, Stripe exports, analytics, customer calls, and project lists, and build a weekly operator dashboard. I want to know what is making money, what's wasting time, what customers are asking for, what I should stop doing, and the three highest leverage actions for the next week.
7:29Be blunt and show your work. Prove. You should set that up for your project.
7:34Ras Mic:I was literally just going to say that. Okay, we got a few more and then we'll get to your hardware thing using Blender, which I think is just fascinating. I want you to show me that. Number five, audit my company for agent opportunities. Look at how this business works and find the tasks we should give to agents before hiring another person. This is just how, by the way, side note, this is how I'm thinking before I hire anyone, I'm like, should I just get an agent to do this? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but that's been the default of how I've been thinking as I'm building my company. For each task, estimate the current human time, the cost of mistakes, the tools involved, the difficulty of automating it, and the first safe version we could deploy.
8:21Prioritize things that save money or create revenue within 30 days. And then we have, we're almost done, I'll do them all. Be my browser operator. So you can actually use Astra to do this, right? use the browser to complete this workflow you give it the workflow as you go click through the actual sites collect the data fill the forms where appropriate and keep notes on what broke or slowed down when you're done give me the output the repeatable sop and the automation plan so this
8:49Ras Mic:can become an agent and it will do this well like i like i'm so bullish on computer use like i i really like a lot of and a lot of people might think it's like insane or it doesn't work or breaks, like you'll be surprised how good like Astra is. If anyone's in Canada, then you know how terrible the CRA website is, like how atrocious that monstrosity is. If the government's watching, I'm just joking. But I literally got Astra with Codex to comb through tons of pages to find me the exact thing I want that I couldn't find on Google search, right? So it really is that good. 100 % number seven you can literally build a QA team so every night open my app on a real phone go through sign up checkout and the main flows and screenshot anything that's broken or confusing so keyword confusing too like when I say QA I don't necessarily mean there's like of course it could be like a bug but it can also be like a UX bug like people are just confused what happens here it's too much information the bugs are in the wrong place Exactly.
9:58Competitor spy. Sign up to my top three competitors, sit inside their product and their emails and send me a monthly report on every new feature, price change, and the thing they do better than ours.
10:07Ras Mic:That is a good one. That is a good one. Yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting is there's two types of founders. Either the founders who are obsessed with the competition and are spending too much time looking at competition. and then the founder who ignores it completely and doesn't know what they're doing at all. And I think what's good about this is it's sort of like the happy medium. So it's just monthly. Every month I want to know what I need to know and that's it. No, that makes sense. It's competition for a reason, right? There's sort of this element of looking around and stuff. But obviously innovation always wins.
10:48and this one yes it is make a video the last one is make a video game but it's you it's making a video game with the purpose of getting you email signups and phone numbers and data and and helping you sell whatever you're selling so it's build a browser game around this mechanic you give it give it a mechanic don't just make a cute demo add progression tension scoring failure polish and And one reason someone would send it to a friend, that's extremely key because you're creating, you want to create something that's a viral game. I saw a lot of games that are like really cool, but people wouldn't actually send them to their friends.
11:25Then add lead capture like email and SMS. And it needs to tie into my core product, which sells XYZ. Yeah.
11:34Ras Mic:Yeah. That's actually pretty good. Like a really like something cute and fun that I'd want to share. Because to your point, right? Like people are making these first person shooters, which is great. It shows the model capability, but I have Call of Duty at home. Exactly. All right. I showed you mine. You show me yours. Yes. So please don't make fun of me, people watching. But I've had this idea of a hardware startup for a while. Obviously, we've seen the rise of personal agents. I have one in the works that I plan on launching soon that I think is a different take and pretty cool. but the one aspect that the reason why I wanted a personal agent and like this is again like a dream of mine since a child like the whole Jarvis thing is I wanted there to be physical hardware right and it's such a miss for companies like you know Amazon and like Apple like they have like these beautiful products but like their agent or the AI sucks in particular I'm talking about the HomePod if anyone has the HomePod Siri is terrible but this is the best looking speaker in my opinion.
12:35Ras Mic:And I just got to thinking, like, what if I could put my agent on like a HomePod? So first, my thought process is buy the HomePod and jailbreak it. I did a little bit of research, not possible to do. I'm like, what if I built it, right? So I literally told the agent, and I'll zoom in so we can see the convo. I asked, I told the agent, I have Blender installed. Can you use it? It's, I know that it can use it. I just wanted it to set up a connection. It did that. and I asked it to create a HomePod-like speaker and it did. And I asked him, I want to build an AI home speaker. I want to load my agent Ruth from, and I gave it my repo.
13:12Ras Mic:How would I DIY? And then it basically said that I would need a Raspberry Pi speaker. I could load in my agent and it was possible. Now this got me excited because I didn't think this was possible. I didn't think that I had the capability to do it. And it basically created me a diagram and it said, it even went as far as to say, this is what I would need to buy to have a first physical prototype. Now I got excited, right? And it even gave me a budget. It's like 350 to 450 before tax. I live in Canada. So this is like 700 bucks, 600 bucks. I was like, cool, give me amazon.ca links, right? And it got me the links and it was 561 before tax.
13:52Ras Mic:I was like, I just bought, I just automatically bought, but then I panicked. I'm like, what'd I do? I don't know nothing about hardware. So I asked the agent, Greg, can you use Blender to show me the setup of this project? And will you believe it? It showed exactly how I would have each thing laid up, right? This is the Raspberry Pi. This is me plugging it in. This is some sort of speak. This is the speaker. This is some sort of connector. I don't even know what this is, but this helps. And I think this is the voice recognizer, but it basically laid out on Blender how I would have this set up.
14:29Ras Mic:Now I've got to the point where I'm like, oh, I can build this. And then it was telling me once we've proven the proof of concept, then this is what we would need to build out the HomePod version. And then even in a separate thread, I have emails there, so I don't want to share. But in a separate thread, it was even telling me Chinese suppliers to reach out to, to build the HomePod shell. So I went from idea to setup. I bought all the products, right? I told her I bought all the products. And then I was like, okay, like I bought this stuff, but I have my agent repo. What code would I need to add or what changes would I need to make to set this up?
15:09Ras Mic:Guess what it did, Greg? It wrote the code and it made a PR. I literally had code. It made a PR where like once I have the thing set up, I can easily load my agent. Mind you, this is a couple of minutes conversation, but I dared to think a little more bigger out of my box. So it gave me the PR. It explained to me the code. And then I asked it for the links again because I didn't purchase at that time. I asked for the PR. I can click and I can show you. I merged the PR. It made a PR. So I know like once I have my once I have all the hardware stuff ready, I'm going to build it and I'm going to have it set up.
15:49Ras Mic:And I even asked it just to be should I get one of each, by the way? And it said yes. So we went from idea, from exploration, Greg, to setup, to initial prototype. Cost you 500 bucks. It gave me, it showed me exactly how it set everything up, right? And if I have further questions, I'll continue to work with the agent. It also wrote the code that I'm going to load into the Raspberry Pi to make my speaker agent work. This was half an hour work. This, in my opinion, is the true power of Astra, where we have models like Fable, like, okay, not Fable, but we have like 5.6 Soul and all these different smaller models that are good at a lot of things.
16:35Ras Mic:What makes Astra amazing is for these insane hardware projects, this next level software. So again, if you're using Astra to build a landing page, it's a sad use of intelligence. But I kind of wanted to use this moment to encourage you all, if you've had that hardware idea, if you've had that next level software idea, if you want another, I don't know if I have the tab here. I have a PS4 lying around. And I was wondering, can I boot Linux on a PS4 and run agents on it? And I literally said, I have PS4 based on what you know about me. I don't plan on gaming with it. What can I do? That was the first thing I asked.
17:14Ras Mic:And it's like, you could turn it to a media server, this, this, that. But then it said, turn it into a Linux learning project. I was like, oh, I didn't know you could do that. So I said, low key nuking it and running Linux would be cool. And then it says, yeah, a PS4 you can SSH into and use as a Linux lab would be a fun project. And then people have been talking about Omarchi, which is a type of Linux distro. And I was like, could I run it on PS4? Yes. I could run Linux on my dust collecting PS4. I would have never imagined, thought or even tried to do this. But with this model, I'm starting to think way outside the box.
17:56Ras Mic:And mind you, you might think, oh, you're a developer. So this is easier. This is networking OS stuff. I'm more of a web dev, mobile dev type of developer. This is like a little above like my pay grade. But like the last couple of months, I'm doing stuff like this. I have a home lab. I bought a couple of DGX. I am thinking way above what my normal means would have been if I didn't have access to this intelligence. And there's no reason you shouldn't. I'll stop yapping, Greg, so you can say some things as well. I remember when, 2024, when Lovable and Bolt and Replit at V0 came out, all of a sudden anyone could be a vibe coder.
18:40And we started seeing all these vibe coding projects, websites, landing pages, apps. And the effects of that are still playing out to this day. It feels like we're having a similar shift right now, but for physical projects. project. So what you showed me with your hardware product, you know, that would have required you become a full-time 3D designer or engineer.
19:07Ras Mic:I would have never known how to do any of this. And to be honest, I wouldn't have tried because it's intimidating. And like, I think, you know, most humans, like I myself, like, I like knowing the stuff that I'm doing. And if I don't know, like, about hardware, for example, it would feel intimidating for me to even try. now like i have a like a friend for 200 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month 20 bucks a month that can actually walk me through all of this and it's super possible i even have a desk coming up that's going to be like right here and it's going to be my hardware station and i'm going to just start building random stuff and let's say nothing turns to a product the enjoyment of learning and developing and maybe it leads to job opportunity a business whatever it is you owe it to yourself to do this stuff yeah i mean make a a printable object a cad file a blender blender model a circuit board like something um because i think that uh there's just there's opportunity in terms of like niche products that you you know you might be like oh i don't know how big of a market there is for this sort of thing but it doesn't need to be huge And if it doesn't cost a lot to create, there's a business here.
20:20So I think I actually personally believe that there's going to be thousands of$1 million a year plus businesses that get created and this whole shift that OpenAI has spearheaded with Astra around vibe manufacturing. Will the other models catch up? Absolutely. But I think that it's fair to say that Astra was the first model that ushered in this era. And I think this is just really, like for me, where my brain is going is like, okay, what are some small little products that seem niche, but solve a real pain point that I can go and create in a short amount of time and then create meta ads to drive traffic to those products.
21:06That's what's going through my mind.
21:08Ras Mic:Yeah, and when I build my whole pod, I'm going to hit up Greg to teach me all that stuff. So make sure you're subscribed because that's all the stuff he teaches here too. I appreciate you, Mickey. Thanks for coming on. Astra is awesome. And I'm curious to see how the other models take note of it. Sure. Anthropic is sweat for sure. For the first time I would like, if I, if someone asked me pick a subscription, I would cancel and drop my Anthropic subscription. I would cancel Claude. Astra is that good. So please take advantage of the subsidies before they eventually start charging us the real price of these things.
21:47Yeah, because the value, I mean, think about it, like the value is obviously more than what we're paying now.
21:52Ras Mic:Yep, yep. Like I asked my Astra agent to calculate how much of, how much I've been using, like the subscription price, but also like in terms of API price, how much like I've been using in terms of model cost. And in the last week, I've spent over$24 ,000. Mind you, I just have a couple of$200 subscriptions, right? So there's an insane level of subsidization that's happening. Take advantage of it now. Dream big, act big, and build big. Appreciate you. I'll include links where you can follow Ross Mike, as he's known on the internet, YouTube X, and all those places. Go and subscribe. Go and check him out.
22:35Thanks again for coming on. I think this is probably your, what is it? Sixth, seventh, eighth time coming on?
22:40Ras Mic:I'm a regular on this pod. And as always, I appreciate you, Greg. It really means a lot for you bringing me on. And thank you, everybody, for always watching and showing love as well. See you later. Have a good one.
From the publisher
I talk with Ras Mic about GPT-6 Astra. We skip the game demos and the 3D toys, and we focus on use cases to earn money or improve products. I share 9 Astra prompts that I posted publicly, and Greg Brockman reposted. Ras then shows his hardware project: he moved from a speaker idea to a parts list, a Blender layout, and merged code in about 30 minutes. The takeaway is simple: use this model for the ideas that felt too large for you last year.
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:53 – Astra Overview
04:14 – 9 Astra Prompts
11:48 – Jarvis Speaker Idea
16:21 – Think Bigger with Astra
18:29 – Vibe Coding to Vibe Manufacturing
21:16 – Closing Thoughts
Key Points
Astra costs more per task, and it uses fewer steps, so the value per dollar stays high.
A performance audit moved one of Ras’s apps from 800 ms to 20–30 ms.
A security audit on his live payments app found real risks in production.
Ras went from a speaker idea to a $561 parts order and a merged pull request in about 30 minutes.
Ras’s point: intelligence keeps climbing, and bravery stays flat. Ask for bigger things.
The shift that vibe coding brought to software now reaches physical products.
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