What only you know
Istvan said his experience matters more the harder the building is. My answer in the session became the clearest test of the agent I know. It is very good at what everybody does, bad at what only a few do, and really bad at what you have to observe.
- Where
- In the terminal, with Claude Code
- Size
- A quick one
- Short link
- piy.show/s101
A white wall needs no experience
Istvan explained what his studio knows. On a white wall, what you know does not matter. The more complex the building, the more it matters what we know, because there are things you cannot learn only by experience. He still believes in it, he said, and it is getting harder to sell.
That was the moment, about fifty minutes into his session, when the agent was in the terminal for the first time and he was working out what to hand over.
My answer is the test I now give everybody. The agent is very good at what everybody is doing. It is bad at what only a few people do. And it is really bad at what you have to observe.
What is the agent worst at? Prompt it yourself
Here is what my business does. Split it into three lists: what thousands of people also do, what only a few people do, and what only I can observe on the ground.
Translate the observable
If you can translate what you observe into the agent, that is good. If nobody trained it on your thing because there is no business behind it, it stays niche, and nobody is using it for that.
So the observation is yours to bring. Write down what you saw on the site, in your own words, and give it to the agent. An idea that everybody can write is not a big thing. An idea of what only you can observe, put into the agent, is unique, and the agent can make it better.
Notes from the ground beat a clever prompt every time.
How do I give the agent what I observe? Prompt it yourself
Here are my notes from the site visit, in my own words. Turn them into a plan, and ask me about everything you could not have observed yourself.
I can help you build yours
I build things like this with an AI agent, on my own computer. In a private session I help you do the same with your idea. Or bring it to the show, free.
Keep the part only you can do
For Istvan's studio, reading a building nobody else can read is the part to keep. The research, the lists, the writing and the sorting is the part to hand over, and that afternoon it found him three thousand organisations.
The line decides what you give the agent and what you keep. Work that thousands of people have already done is work it has seen. The part of your job nobody else does is the part it will be worst at, and the part that makes you worth paying.
What would this look like for my work? Prompt it yourself
From these lists, tell me which jobs to hand to you this week, and which ones stay with me because they need my eyes on the ground.
Start with your own eyes
Ask what you know that nobody else in your field can know without being there. Write it down. Then give the agent everything else.
What do I do next? Prompt it yourself
What do I know that nobody else in my field can know without being there? Interview me, one question at a time, and write the answers down as the brief.
Do it in the terminal
I do this with Claude Code, the AI agent in the terminal. It works in a folder on your own computer, so it reads your files every time and can look things up for you.
A web chat works too, but there you paste everything in again in every new chat.
-
Get Claude Code
It comes with Claude Pro, US$20 a month, paid to Anthropic. Claude's plans
-
Make a folder for it, and open it
mkdir -p ~/projects/my-notes && cd ~/projects/my-notes
-
Start the agent
claude
-
Ask it
Here is what my business does. Split it into three lists: what thousands of people also do, what only a few people do, and what only I can observe on the ground. Tell me which list you can help with most.
Never opened a terminal? In a private session I put Claude Code on your computer with you, and you start your first idea.
Prompty