Happy new year folks,
Feels so good to be back. Welcome to all the new people who have joined the best AI newsletter in the world for solopreneurs, creators, and builders.
I took 2-3 weeks off over the holidays and ended up a wild bush man. Went hiking through New Zealand with mum which was just delightful. I’d like to see an AI agent try that - sucker.
📌 TL;DR
Claude Cowork → Claude Code with a clean wrapper. Give it a goal, get a result. I built a 21-page business plan from one prompt, organised thousands of files while I worked on other things, plus more.
LTX-2 → First open-source video + audio model you can run locally. If you're making video at scale and want to skip cloud costs, this is the first local option that actually works.
Builder's notes → How i’ve been delegating all my non-coding work to Claude Code. A cool Claude skill that helps you name your project/ business and find a domain name. Plus my AI browser hack to find promo codes at any checkout.
The internets going nuts over Claude Cowork
Anthropic released Claude Cowork a few days ago, and it’s basically just Claude Code with a nice wrapper on it.
Claude code has to be one of the worst product names of all time. Most people never tried Claude Code because the name alone made it feel like it wasn't for them.
But Claude Code was never just for coding - it's one of the most powerful AI agents on the market, and people were using it for marketing, research, business planning, and everything in between.
The Claude Code interface is just scary for non-coders.
We are used to chat models (you ask a question and get an answer). Claude Cowork is an agent (you give it it an goal, and you get a result)
Chat = question → answer
Agent = goal → result
Every chat is now a task (focused on doing-a-thing), and Cowork focusses on a few core elements:
Connectors / MCPs - external services Cowork has access to (think notion, gmail, etc)
Filesystem - runs locally so will create/read things in Finder/ File explorer
TODOs/Steps - discrete trackable steps cowork will take to execute your tasks
Artifacts files generated in the process of doing your task
Context - files / sources / connectors used when doing your task
Skills - preloaded with a few key skills, esp. file type creation ones like DOCX, PPT, etc. Claude generally has access to these, so not new.
When should I use regular chat vs cowork?
If you have a question, you ask the chat
If you have any task, you use Claude cowork
If it runs into an obstacle, it won't just stop on default; it'll try and find a way around. If there's more steps to go on with it, and just skip the step it's stuck at and keep going, rather than the chat model which is just; question-answer, question-answer.
Spend 10 minutes every morning giving it 1 or 2 tasks. Come back later in the day and see the results.
What I've been using it for this week:
I built a 21-page business plan (market research, competitor research, financial modelling, launch plan, naming ideas, domain availability checks, plus way more) from one prompt. Output was extremely solid.
I asked it to clean up my downloads folder and desktop. It organised everything (thousands of files) while I worked on other things.
I had 30 .mts video files in a folder. Told Cowork to convert them all to .mp4. Done.
I used it to research AI news for this newsletter. It crawled Reddit for viral AI posts, scraped 25 Twitter accounts (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), then used the Perplexity MCP to go deeper on the biggest stories and compile a full research brief. From one prompt. When I tried the same thing in regular Claude chat, it timed out before finishing.
Cowork is available exclusively through the Claude desktop app on mac, and only for people on the Max plan (the $100 tier) - for now.
It is a research preview so its a bit clunky and has loads of little bugs, and things break a lot, but the concept it clear, and I give it a few weeks before its completely polished.
I recorded a 19 minute ‘Claude Cowork 101’ video you can check out here.
LTX-2: first open-source video + audio model you can run locally
Lightricks just open-sourced LTX-2, the first model that generates video and audio together, locally, on consumer GPUs with 12GB VRAM. Quality-wise it can't touch OpenAI’s Sora 2 or Google’s VEO 3 yet, but if you make video content at scale and want to avoid cloud costs or API rate limits, this is the first production-ready local option that actually works.
that’s all for news this week… not a whole lot has happened in the last few weeks and i’m not going to report on unimportant things to fill the newsletter.
💡 Builder’s notes
I found this cool Claude skill that brainstorms business names and does all the domain research for you. Checks if .com, .ai, .io, .app, and .dev are available.
Normally you'd brainstorm 10 good names, then manually research on GoDaddy to see if they're available. You start with great ideas and end up not being able to use any of them because the domains are taken.
This suggests names and does the research to make sure they're available. Saves so much time.
I've been using Claude Code a lot recently.
I originally started getting it to build me n8n workflows, and it did a great job. But then I quickly started using it for everything.
If you want to start using it for yourself, it's pretty much the system behind Co-work now. But you will also see a toggle in the top left of your Claude account on desktop to switch to code mode, and you have a much nicer chat style interface than what has been available in the past for Claude Code
Pretty much any task I have now (converting files, research, etc) my default thought is, "Could Claude Code do this?" Most of the time, it can.
Earlier today I gave Claude Code my 19min youtube video and asked it write me a description + timestamps, and it nailed it.
You can run a bunch of sessions simultaneously too. 10 different sessions doing 10 different tasks, which you can't do in the chat.
One cool example: I gave it a link to Paul Graham's website and asked it to find all his essays and create a folder on my computer with each essay as a PDF. It found 250 essays, put each one into a PDF, and added them all to a folder. Just like that.
I'm not really a fan of AI browsers. Most use cases are just gimmicky hype that don't impact your day-to-day.
But one use case I use them for, and the only reason I haven't deleted them all, is getting them to find and test promo codes at checkout. Works on about 50% of my purchases. It will research all the promo codes and test them until one works while I have it running in the background. pretty neat.
🧰 Tools to try
Shots.so → create beautiful mockups.
Grainient → A library of gradient backgrounds. Useful for your apps/ website UI or branding.
CallMe → Claude Code plugin that rings your phone when it finishes a task, gets stuck, or needs input. Handy if you want to step away without babysitting the terminal.
Just Cancel → Upload a few months of bank statements, get a list of every subscription you're paying for with cancel links. $5 one-time. Good for finding the stuff you forgot you signed up for.
i’m not affiliated with any :)
🥣 Brain food
I wrote my manifesto on the future of AI → I finally put pen to paper on what I actually believe about all this. Where AI is headed, what it means for us, and why I think this moment matters. If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, this will resonate.
Joe Rogan × Jesse Itzler → What a listen. Some insane perspectives on life, happiness, and valuing your time better. One of those episodes that sticks with you.
Brian Tracy on becoming unstoppable → If you're in a rut, get up early one morning, go for a walk or hit the gym, and listen to this. You'll feel like you can run through walls.
Spending time in nature, away from tech and social media especially, paired with some good reads and listens (listed above), gave me an amazing level of mental clarity.
Feeling so pumped for this year, and I have loads of cool plans for building out the best AI education platform for you lot. I’m going to become a Miami course seller final boss (just kidding hehe). But stay tuned 👀
with love,
