The Good Stuff

The conversation explores why regional SMEs face a different AI adoption gap than metro businesses. Why AI enables his advisors to get out of the office and sit at kitchen tables having real conversations. The paradox: more AI means hiring more humans, because human judgment and attention don't scale with processing power. The conversation goes deep on corporate extraction vs SME capitalism, t...

Yo joins from Sovereign Engineering to talk about how AI has transformed freedom tech development since SEC-04, when Paul demoed a wallet vibed into existence in 30 minutes and blew everyone's minds. The conversation covers the euphoria wearing off, the slot machine addiction problem, why LLMs are "extremely confident, extremely good at English usage, but extremely dumb," and the com...

# The Good Stuff, Episode 61: Loop Engineering Boris (Claude Code creator) and Steinberger both tweeted this week: "I don't prompt anymore, I just build loops that prompt for me." Pete's response: they've discovered being a team leader. Loop engineering is organizational design with new hype marketing terms—triggers, processes, business rules, the stuff we've been doing f...

Pete and Andy are joined again by Deadman Oz / AM to talk through the latest AI trends, starting with the argument over whether progress is really coming from better models or better harnesses. They cover Claude Code workflows, agent orchestration, context management, reasoning models, open source local models, inference economics, and the business strategies of OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and the...

Pete and Andy unpack the recent surge in anti-AI sentiment and argue that the anger is often aimed at the wrong target. They trace the backlash through graduate job anxiety, elite AI messaging, economic stagnation, and broader distrust in institutions, then pivot into a more grounded discussion about what AI can and cannot realistically replace. Along the way they talk about cost curves, productiv...

Pete and Andy are joined by Shawn Yeager to talk about what AI does to professional services firms once the billable hour starts collapsing. The core argument is that firms in law, accounting, marketing, and similar sectors will need to move away from selling time and toward selling trust, judgment, systems, and outcomes. As AI compresses document work and routine delivery, the real value shifts t...

Pete and Andy are joined by Mark from Maple to talk about privacy in AI, why everyday users may finally be starting to care, and what it takes to build private AI products that can still compete on user experience. The conversation ranges from end-to-end encrypted AI and open source model stacks through to agent security, business control, workflow automation, and why most of today's agent hyp...

Pete and Andy dig into "unruggable productivity" and what it means to build software that respects the customer instead of trapping them inside a vendor's AI stack. They connect recent 37signals ideas to their own work on Wingman and Flight Deck, arguing for agent-friendly software, clearer work surfaces, and business systems designed around control, portability, and real workflows....

Pete and Andy ask whether AI really saves time. Their answer is mostly no, at least not in the simple sense. AI speeds up production, iteration, and experimentation, but the time saved often gets reinvested into doing more, improving quality, or expanding the scope of the work. The result is often more leverage, not less time spent. ## Chapters and Themes - `00:00-03:07` The opening question: has...

Pete's been deep in Flight Deck flows, watching agents take creative shortcuts to hit goals, impressive until you check the plumbing. The observability lesson: you need to work at all levels, not just the executive summary view. Agents are like humans, give them vague goals and they'll hit them surprisingly well, but that's not sustainable or efficient. The solution isn't more dict...

Jarrad Grigg returns for a proper van experience. The episode kicks off with Mythos skepticism—marketing spin dressed as existential threat, same playbook as GPT-2. The real concern isn't frontier models being "too powerful," it's the tiering of intelligence to highest bidders and the creeping nerf of consumer-tier models. Jarrad's been going deep on local models (Gemma 4, qu...

Happy birthday to The Good Stuff one year in. Pete and Andy dig into what happens when organisations stop being sized for humans. Jack Dorsey's Block restructuring provides the jumping-off point: if hierarchies exist because humans can only manage so much information flow, what happens when that constraint disappears? The haul pack analogy returns - those mining trucks are that size because of...

Pete and Andy break down why throwing agents at problems is the mid-curve play, expensive, unpredictable, and destined to be undercut by anyone who takes the extra step to encode their business into software. Also - why every business needs a Wingman Bob, the trifecta of skills that actually matter now, and the uncomfortable truth that agents belong in cubicles. **Key Moments:** - [01:39] Three th...

The big episode 50! Justin Moon from HRF joins Pete and Andy to talk about "AI psychosis". The crew dig into HRF's work equipping activists with encrypted tools, why code production isn't the bottleneck anymore, how civil society becomes the crucial third pillar and whether we're returning to a frontier society where willpower beats credentials. **Key Moments:** - [02:07] &qu...

# The Good Stuff, Episode 49: Why You Should Let Your Kids Cheat With AI*Hosts:* Pete and AndyA friend's question about preparing kids for the AI future kicks off a discussion on credentialing, portfolio careers, and why homework automation might actually be the skill worth developing. Pete and Andy argue that software engineering was never about coding—it was about solving problems and encoding a...

# The Good Stuff, Episode 48: OpenClaw, Memory, and the Hate Model*Hosts:* Pete and Andy, with returning guest Deadman (Anthony)Deadman's back to debrief on his OpenClaw adventures—voice cloning Bandit from Bluey, building a Bali trip chatbot that immediately leaked the dossier when Tim asked nicely, and discovering just how fickle markdown-based memory really is. The crew digs into agent autonomy...

# The Good Stuff, Episode 47: Will AI Take Your Job?*Hosts:* Pete and Andy (beach setup with new flag, plane, and aggressive campfire lighting)Block just axed 4,000 people—40% of the company—citing AI, and the stock jumped 16%. Pete and Andy dig into what this signals: air cover for cutting fat, or the start of something bigger? They run the publishing analogy (monks to podcasts, cost went to zero...

# The Good Stuff, Episode 46: Open Claw, Privacy and Agents*Hosts:* Pete and Andy (undisclosed location due to summer storm)Pete's built Console, a personal interface for Wingman that solves the agent control problem: encrypt everything, then deliberately decrypt only what you want them to see. They explore why markdown files won't scale for agent memory, how the "North Korean hacker" is a better...

The Good Stuff, Episode 45: Building AI ChampionsHosts: Pete and Andy with jazz van soundtrackPete and Andy explore why you can't outsource AI capability to consultants. Why strategy lives downstream of experimentation and watching 25 senior managers go from "what do I say to this thing?" to building full Nostr apps in an hour. Plus: why AI agents are vampires you've invited into your house!**Key...

The Good Stuff, Episode 44: Is This the Death of Software? Pete and Andy revisit the death of SaaS thesis from episode one. and is it really playing out?**Key Moments:**- [00:40] Andy's hot take: everyone's having opinions on the death of software- [01:05] Callback to episode one: "Where does the value flow?" — they called this two years ago- [02:08] Client realization: "People could just build th...

Summary In this episode, Pete and Andy discuss the successful launch of Optikon, their Miro-like infinite canvas tool, and the surprising attention it received from Miro's leadership team on LinkedIn. The conversation explores the philosophy behind building a custom tool stack using Nostr primitives, enabling seamless integration without API key management headaches. Pete dives deep into Super...

In this episode, Anthony "DeadmanOz" returns as The Good Stuff's first ever repeat guest to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-assisted development and the critical importance of data sovereignty. The conversation explores how technical barriers are collapsing, making creative vision the primary requirement for building software. Pete unveils several new projects including...

With Pete Winn and Andy David - In this week's episode, Pete's reconsidering everything after realizing Gigi might be right about relays. They explore the flow state problem of agent work, why Optikon and Night Watchman will change everything, and deliver the definitive analogy for why one-shotting code doesn't work. Plus: game interfaces for agent management, spatial audio insights, a...

Episode 40: Building Digital Lemonade Stands with AIHosts: Pete and Andy (celebrating the big 4.0 at the beach)Episode 40! Pete launches his first digital lemonade stand with Ambulando—a habit tracker you pay for by the hour (4 sats). They explore what it means to build permissionless micro-businesses in cyberspace, why you should just build something (anything), and how their methodologies keep e...

The Good Stuff, with Pete and Andy - Episode 39: The Big Stuff Hosts: Pete and Andy Pete accidentally calls it "The Big Stuff" and decides to run with it. They dive into Dumpling Town—a game Pete built with his daughter in 90 minutes that now has an economy, side quests, and soy sauce rivers. Treating agents like humans, building family chat apps to avoid WhatsApp, the new Hal orchestrat...