;TLDR upcoming events in case you’re skimming: Simon Severino is hosting JETPACK: Build your AI Sales System on Monday, and Alex Sherwood and I are hosting a free Intro to Agentic AI for Solopreneurs workshop on Thursday. Register here »
Last weekend I “YOLO’d”1 into letting Claude Code take over my computer for a thorn-in-my-side task that had been bothering me since I migrated to Substack in September 2024: fixing over 350 long, ugly URL strings for the imported Pivot podcast episodes. As a bonus, I also wanted to enable transcripts on each one, which involves editing the post → opening the audio settings → generating a new transcript → waiting for it to load → toggling it on → and hitting save.
I gasped with glee watching Code test this process, debugging itself after the first run, successfully completing the task after twelve minutes of trial and error. By the time I let it loose on all 350, it had the process down to sub-three minutes each.2
Because Mac Minis are back-ordered by over a month here in NYC (OG internet denizen Robert Scoble’s recent Xweet didn’t help), I had to find something else to do while Claude cooked on fixing all those Substack posts.3
I figured I’d go out onto the terrace with Ryder on one of the first truly warm days of Spring, where I thought I smelled the neighbors barbecuing, until I looked down and saw they were burning down piles of dry leaves on their grill.
Meanwhile, with Ryder happily at my feet, I continued replying via voice mode on another Cowork thread using Dispatch in the mobile app, for this insane 100-item taste questionnaire prompt by Ruben Hassid.
Suddenly, a bright orange flash caught my eye.
A gust of wind scattered the embers from their burning leaves. From two fences over, the flames climbed, suddenly jumping fifteen feet high into the yard next door.
Five other small fires licked around the perimeter of the originating neighbors’ backyard. As the flames spread, it became clear that these (pardon me, IDIOTIC) neighbors didn’t even own a garden hose. They ran into the kitchen to fill a single BUCKET. 🤦🏻♀️
My heart hammered as I sprang up and ran into the stairwell to call my husband: “MICHAEL! Get up here, it’s an emergency, there’s a fire!!”
Then I called 911, voice shaking so much I could barely articulate our street address.
While watching the now-billowing flames crawl across our neighbors’ fence toward ours, Michael called out at the top of his lungs as if he were Leonidas in 300 commanding an army: “NEIGHBORS, GET YOUR HOSES!!!”
“NEIGHBORS!!! GET OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW!!! WE NEED YOUR HOSES!!!”
I could have cried with relief and pride that he didn’t waste a second, even as the neighbors who started the fire were flailing and frozen in fear. One sad-but-silver-lining side effect of Michael growing up in war in Beirut is that he learned how to thrive in chaos and crisis; it stills his mind and sharpens his instincts.
He boomed the call across the backyards of our buildings several more times until one by one, neighbors on all sides emerged, each of us stretching our spray as far as we could. We continued barking orders from our third-floor top-down view, acting as side-by-side crisis conductors in this impromptu symphony.
“You! Red shirt across the way! Stand on your table! Point left! Farther!”
“You! Skeleton sweatshirt! Get your upstairs neighbor RIGHT NOW! He needs to point his hose through the fence behind the shed!
“You!” (to the fire starters) “One of you get out front to bring the firefighters in, NOW!”
As the sirens’ wails grew blessedly closer, together we held the flames at bay. By the time the fire crew arrived, the tallest were reduced back to glowing embers. With so many dry leaves and branches from winter, multiple brownstones could have easily caught fire, including ours. Thankfully, FDNY quickly extinguished what remained.
After I confirmed with my own two eyes that the fire was fully out, adrenaline still surging through my body, I ran down to the windowsill at the front of our house. I hoisted the window up, leaned my torso out, and yelled down to thank the two fire truck crews as they reeled in their hoses and closed off the hydrant.
Bless you, thank you! We are so grateful for you!
Yes, it’s a bit hyperbolic, but if Claude hadn’t taken over my computer—allowing me to continue working from Dispatch while relaxing from the terrace—I wouldn’t have seen the neighbor’s yard catch fire just five minutes later.
Ultimately, though, let’s give credit where it’s really due: it is only by God’s grace that I was guided to sit outside at exactly the right time. Who knows what would have happened otherwise.
❤️
Free: 🤖 Intro to AI Automation—Claude Desktop + Notion Agents for Solopreneurs on April 23 from 10 a.m. ET to 11:30 a.m. ET. Notion Pro Alex Sherwood and I will walk you through how we are using agentic AI tools, with easy first next steps to get you set up—so that you can stop peeking over the fence and start putting these systems into practice in your own business. ❌ NOTE: This session will not be recorded, so please join us live!
Paid: 🐿️ Create Your Idea Collection System ($97)—on April 30 and May 1. If you have big creative ideas bubbling, but your notes are scattered across various apps, browser tabs, voice memos, notebooks, and forgotten fragments you thought you’d remember but don’t—this is the workshop for you! You’ll get templates for a Notion idea capture and content calendar system. From there, Custom Agents can help summarize what you’re saving, and even with bulk capture (ie “Save these 20 quotes and fill in as much metadata as you can”).
Paid: 🚀 If you’re more advanced, and/or ready to completely geek out with automating your sales systems, don’t miss Simon Severino’s upcoming JETPACK workshop: Your AI Sales System in Two Hours Ready to Go on Monday, April 20 from 11am ET to 1pm ET. As the registration page says, “You’re not here to learn about AI sales systems. You’re here to build one. Jetpack is a 2-hour live workshop where you walk in with a laptop and walk out with a complete AI sales system — running, not planned.”
If you don’t want to wait for these workshops, scroll down to the “First Steps” section of last week’s newsletter for more on where I’d suggest starting, including some of my favorite context prompts.
And of course, get your copy of Free Time if you don’t already have it! It will teach you (and your agents) how to operate at the intersection of revenue, ease, and joy :)
Let us know in the comments! I love learning and sharing ideas with each other :)
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😜 “YOLO’ing” in this context is what the kids (and Claude) are calling it when you button-mash accepting all permissions that Claude Desktop asks for without even reading or understanding them (also known as --dangerously-skip-permissions). Will AI take over my computer, email my contacts embarrassing photos, and delete all my files? MAYBE! #YOLOoOooOoo! The bliss—and pure dopamine—of watching it take over draining, drudgerous tasks feels worth the risks . . . for some of us. 😬🤷🏻♀️
Saw a guy walking wearing this Serendipity Signage sweatshirt right after the fire debacle:
FWIW, I haven’t been this excited about new technology since I got my first Apple IIc computer, and later, signed onto AOL for the first time with that glorious discordant scratchy-modem sound.
🦾 That’s one of the best aspects of agentic AI; it’s recursive, meaning it improves itself with every repeated loop. You can also ask it to do this directly, with a prompt like this:
After each run, log what worked and what didn’t in your instructions file. Apply those efficiency gains to future runs automatically.
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