Matthew: Welcome to the Restock Podcast by No Code Supply Co. where we highlight the people, the things they build, useful tools, visual inspiration, and conversations to refill ourselves and ourselves. I'm Matthew. Corey Moen: and I'm Corey, what's up y'all? Matthew: good to see you. What? Corey Moen: We're made it! Matthew: Well, Corey Moen: How you been? Matthew: pretty good, pretty good. been building quite a bit of stuff. Yeah, I Corey Moen: Ooh, stuff you can share? Matthew: well, I mean, I'm always building stuff I can't share, but yeah, stuff I can't share. last week I started building a Mac OS app, a native app Corey Moen: Nice. Matthew: for myself. Corey Moen: Love it. Matthew: And you can kind of think of it as a harness for my local obsidian vault, which I've turned into folders are agents. Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: and then it's using Claude Code underneath the hood and it does a lot of fancy stuff so far. like it Corey Moen: Sick. Matthew: it keeps track of everything I'm doing on machine, sessions that I have going with with with my agents, you know, so Corey Moen: Yeah, Matthew: So it keeps track Corey Moen: you- Matthew: of where because I feel like I'm just bouncing around everywhere. It's like I needed this visual place where I could Corey Moen: Yes. Matthew: kind of manage everything and and make sure because I've been missing things. It's like I would start a thread or a session over here in this app and bounce over this app and and then like a week or two later, I'm like, yeah, I started that thought and I never continued, right? So it's a macOS app, but it is a visual 3js world with. Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: locations and little people who are walking around who are the agents. And I can see the in the agents Corey Moen: okay, okay, okay, yes, I've seen other people in this. Matthew: interact with each other. I can I can go chat with each of them. the town, if you will, kind of grows as new visitors or new kind of efforts or tasks come in. things like that. It it it gives me like a brief at the beginning of the day. And the governor, the govna who is in charge of my town, comes in. He's like, Hey, do you want me to have these people do these things? I'm like, Yeah, sure. Go have them do those. you know, I have Corey Moen: goodness. What? Matthew: it I mean it hooks into like it's trying to use everything that's native. So the files are local, you know, it's using Corey Moen: Mm. Matthew: my, you know, built in cloud subscription. So You know, I don't have to plug anything else in. It's just using all that under the hood. It's pulling calendars directly from macOS. It has notifications, widgets, a menu bar, like Corey Moen: Love it. Matthew: keyboard shortcuts. So I can quickly save things. It's reading my Slack and my emails and and giving me a digest so I don't have to go to those apps as often, which can cause stress and distraction. Corey Moen: Yeah, yeah. And then can you interact with it through your, said it's like, Claude coded behind the scenes. So can you interact with it just through Claude code? So you could do it like on your phone in the Claude app, I wonder. Matthew: I well the files are all local. So I Corey Moen: Okay, okay, but still yeah Matthew: haven't got to that point. I do want to be able to capture things on the go. Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: you know, like links, articles, videos, what whatnot. Corey Moen: Mm-hmm. Matthew: not so much want to do work on that on the go. but Corey Moen: Hey! Matthew: but yeah. Corey Moen: I think this is, that's super cool. I've seen other people posting this similar idea, but I haven't heard this context of what you said is that it's backed by your Obsidian Vault, right? it's, which if I remember right, you use Obsidian for a while, right? Like years? wow, holy smokes. Amazing, Matthew: Since like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty. I was I was one of the original catalyst supporters. Yeah. Corey Moen: my goodness. So it's, I mean, you probably have an immense amount of data in it just. Matthew: I've started over so many times. Yeah. Corey Moen: really, really, really? Matthew: so I have multiple archives and vaults and yeah. yeah. Corey Moen: And do like in your latest iteration, what is the main things you put in it outside of what you just said, where it's like keeping track of the work you do. Do you like save things there? Do you put like notes and thoughts and like anything like that, like that's going through your head? Matthew: Mm-hmm. actually yesterday I finally got it hooked up to to Zoom, Loom, and Whisper. So as soon Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: as I get off a call, it is going and is grabbing transcripts and summaries. It's connecting people. It's creating Corey Moen: thick. Matthew: things that I need to follow up on so that I don't forget. Corey Moen: Mmm. Mmm. Matthew: and it's all of these things that I have to do, it's also using the system that I've Been noodling on for a long time called the relative priority framework. I Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: was working on this long before AI, but it's basically like if you think of you have kind of North Star alignments, things that ladder up into that, Corey Moen: Mm-hmm. Matthew: it will prioritize and say this is what you should be focusing on. So if you get a task that comes in and it's like not connected to anything like you're currently working on or have said that is a priority to you, it's not going to surface that. It's using Corey Moen: interesting. Matthew: that behind the scenes. It's I I've always had like people notes. So keeping track, you know, whether it's, you know, authors and bloggers and creators or people I'm meeting with or people I work with, you know, it's keeping track of all that kind of stuff. Corey Moen: Mm. Mm. Matthew: so I have like the innkeeper who does research on everybody who appears in my vault and it searches for connections between people and things, keeps Corey Moen: that's sick. Matthew: notes on them. Corey Moen: Interesting. Matthew: it's curates a newspaper, a daily newspaper for me every day, which is looking over my RSS feeds and Corey Moen: nice. Matthew: blue sky. So far I can't haven't been able to get like LinkedIn or anything else piped in as far as feeds. Corey Moen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Matthew: But it's it's grouping all those things into topics and adding commentary, pulling images and quotes from the different things to create like this newspaper collage for me to read. yeah, a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff. Corey Moen: So fun. I mean, is this something you can like share your screen and we can see what the village looks like? Or no? That's cool. Matthew: no, I d I don't have it up and yeah, I'm using like a a free gaming kit for the graphics right now. It's three JS. I Corey Moen: sweet. Matthew: forgot to mention like it's tapped into my location and time. Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: So the world actually if I opened it right now, it would be raining because in the world because it's raining outside. It it knows Corey Moen: So sick. Matthew: like time of day, so it reflects like the sunlight and moonlight and Corey Moen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Matthew: in world lighting and even wind and has Corey Moen: Mmm Matthew: random animals and birds and things that fly across the sky. Has milestones like things Corey Moen: It's so interesting. Matthew: I can after I achievements, like after I do something so many times, it's like ta-da, you did something. And I told told Club when it was building all Corey Moen: that's so fun. Matthew: this, I was like, don't tell me what the milestones are. It's like just every Corey Moen: Yeah. Matthew: time you build a new feature, just silently create little milestones and things for me to find. So it's making work fun. Corey Moen: Yeah, so fun. think like, yeah, and even when I asked about like the mobile comments and some of that is like, I'm just more more curious, especially as I, like I said, know, hearing what you're describing and then like even things that, you know, products have been announced recently, like Muse from Meta or like, Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: there's more and more of these like, you know, approachable, multi-agent you know, little tools, not little tools, but tools that are especially approachable, think is the key thing that more and more people can maybe see using and like have this general same similar concept of like, you have a village of agents Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: that can just do things for you help help organize your thoughts and your life. I love what you said about find connections, because it's like Even that is so powerful and often underrated on the classic saying of like, not what you know, it's who you know. And sometimes finding those connections through people leads to whole new things you would never have expected in life. It doesn't even have to be work. And so I think that's super fascinating. And especially the like on the go thing is something I've been like playing with more and more, mostly out of necessity to be clear is like anything I do personal project wise anymore, almost. It doesn't have to be, but I really in the evenings and the weekends, I really don't want to be on my laptop if I don't have to. I spend so much time looking at a screen that yes, a phone is another screen, but at least it's something I can just occasionally do and then go back to being with my family or whatever. so like I've been any side things I've been working on, I've been trying to just do mostly just from like cloud code mobile app or whatever. But Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: again, it wouldn't have to be that. You could do it from any other, you know, either custom built tool that you're working with agents or whatever. The point is that like, you can be feeding it ideas and it can go out and explore things, do things, whatever. And sometimes even just help be that bouncing board or backboard of ideas of like, what's actually worth spending time on, what isn't. Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: And like, there's just a part of me, maybe I'm becoming too pill or something of like... Will a few years from now, this be more of the norm of work that we can just kind of go about our days and do most things by making those decisions that you still need to be in the loop on from your phone? You know what I mean? And then check in on your laptop every once in a while. I don't know. Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: It's super interesting to me. lastly too, I was talking to somebody else recently that they didn't build the visual world like you're describing, but they were... they have been for months working in this general similar way of like, have a custom built like Wiki. It's just again, bunch of markdown files or something like that on their local machine. And Matthew: Yep. Corey Moen: the main point being that they're just trying to have this like fully controllable gap of memory across any of the agentic work they're doing and all of that. And I'm like, yeah, super fascinating. don't know. Yeah, and it's just really cool too, because it's one of those reminders too, that we're still early days in a lot of this, because people are building their own custom approach to this. It's not fully normalized yet, even though again, there's products coming out that feel like they're trying to, but I don't know that it's there. I don't know. Yeah, it's fascinating. Matthew: Yeah, and to be kind of open, the reason I needed to build this was I was getting overwhelmed. You know, I have Corey Moen: Yes. Matthew: certain, I don't know, conditions or things about about me and my brain, my personality, that Corey Moen: Mm. Mm. Matthew: I was overwhelmed. I was distracted, and it was like I needed help. Just I just needed help. And so it was like I very Corey Moen: Yes. Yes. Matthew: much just built this to assist me so that my day was better. It was like, you know, things were happening automatically for me or things were being surfaced to me. And I didn't have to try and hold it all in my head. It's like I can offload things to this, to this world that I created, to this kind of personal operating system within an app. and it can handle things. And so like it knows like which courses I'm taking, you know, for Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: for education. And it matches that with like these are the work streams that I have going on and these are the things that are coming in through my different feeds and whatever. And so it's able to actually say, Hey, you know, you should look at this or try this because of how all these things connect, right? And how they're aligned or not. That that because Corey Moen: Mmm. Mmm. Matthew: we have limited time, right? Corey Moen: Totally. Matthew: So it helps to that way to prioritize, you know, here's what, you know, and it keeps track of my energy level. So after something is done, it's like, you know, how are you feeling? You know, Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: and I can say what my energy level is. And based on that, it knows like, okay, well then based on that, you know, if you have low energy, you're probably not be gonna be good at learning something right now. So let's Corey Moen: Mmm. Mmm. Matthew: let's not do that. or I Corey Moen: Super interesting. Matthew: can keep I go to it and I keep track of like I said, okay, you know, I'm A meal break or a drink break or a mental break, you know, and it keeps track Corey Moen: Mm. Matthew: of that. And then I come back and it's like, okay, how are you feeling? You know, what are you up for? it's so it has like these timers for what I'm working on. So I can kind of keep track of where I've spent my time. Corey Moen: Mm. Matthew: it automatically recognizes if I have sessions going in codecs or Claude and says, Hey, are you working on this? It recognizes which folder the session's working in, and that's mapped to an effort that I have been Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: tracking, you know. So it's doing all this kind of stuff. so yeah, it's been pretty fun Corey Moen: Hmm interesting Matthew: kind of building building this out in the past week and it's really starting I feel like it's starting to pay dividends. Yeah. Corey Moen: you can feel the relief or you can feel the ways that it will genuinely be helpful and not like another thing to manage or whatever. Right? Nice. Super Matthew: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Corey Moen: cool. Super cool. I think Matthew: Well Corey Moen: what's interesting too is like on that note, if you've been just early days or, know, obviously you are somebody that's been building things on the web for a long time, experimenting with tools and, you know, doing this stuff out of just intuition and initiative. I think we were talking about right before the episode started too though that there's like still so many products out there and constantly more and more every day that you know package up these things that help save people time or are things that you need to do and oftentimes like it's easy to see them now for us that are using some of the know, cloud codes or whatever, all the latest agentic tools like, well, I'll just build that. Like, why do I need this separate thing or whatever? But, you know, I think it's just a sign of the times that yeah, but there's the reason these products are around and so growing is because there's still a whole other mass of the world that doesn't know what all these latest leading edge things are and techniques and approaches and, and packaging matters. You know what I mean? Like pat, like somebody coming across it or hearing word of mouth from a friend on how to use a tool or, you gave me this deliverable, whatever it was, a deck or something. How'd you make this look so good or how'd you do it so fast? Those Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: things still matter, at least at this moment in time. And I think it's been interesting to see some of the recent examples of things that make me wonder about it in general. So we could look at some examples if we have to share. Yeah. Matthew: Yeah. I and before we kind of go on, I do want to mention there's something called paperclip, which I I'd already started building this and Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: then I looked at, and it's it's it's a harness for your harness, if that makes sense. It's a harness for your harnesses. and so it but it's set up to where it's like a business, and you Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: have a CEO who's like your top tier agent who works. under you and you're the board and then the CEO hires other agents which can be paper clip. Yeah, go ahead and pull it up. Corey Moen: What? You said it's called Paperclip? Is it like paperclip.app or something? wait, Paperclip AI? Matthew: Yes. Corey Moen: Yeah, woo. Matthew: so and I was watching a video about this. I'm like, like that's kind of what I'm doing. But mine's not so boring where it's like a business. This is very Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: dry, but you know, and it's very like linear looking as well. and it's just a bunch Corey Moen: Hmm. Yeah. yeah. Matthew: of tasks and stuff and you're just approving documents and tasks that they're doing. But basically they Corey Moen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah, linear or even like Matthew: they all these employees work together to get things done and they only bother you when they absolutely have to. Corey Moen: Right, right, right. Which Matthew: so Corey Moen: is like, that general thing is, again, I think so clever, but at the same time, like, you really gotta trust what they're doing, you know what I mean? If whatever it is that all of them are doing, to your point of they will bother you when they need it, like, if they are doing something important, boy almighty, you know, you better hope they're doing it right, right? Like, yeah. Matthew: Yeah, and e you I mean, you set up each agent, you know, in Hermes or no Hermes, not Hermes. That's is it spelled the same? No. But or Corey Moen: Mm-hmm. What is the whole? Matthew: you can use Claude or whatever for so you can use whatever agents you already have and just bring them in and this gather. Corey Moen: Well, what came to mind is like, to your point of Matthew: Gathertown? Corey Moen: something more playful, that's not this. This feels like work. You know what I mean? Matthew: Yes, exactly. Corey Moen: And I wonder about this world where when the agents do or are getting really good, do we want it to feel like this? Or like what came to mind is like, I'm surprised like, Matthew: I don't know. Corey Moen: Gather isn't doing something on top of this, right? Like they already have this like beautiful little world. Yeah, right, Matthew: Exactly. Yeah, mine is more like gather, you know, but Corey Moen: right. Matthew: yeah. Corey Moen: So it's like, and if a product like Gather already has so much of this like infra and tooling built up on top of these little virtual worlds and collaboration, like. Matthew: You'd think it would be easy for them to pivot into, yeah, this like agentic harness. But Corey Moen: Right, yeah, like just now you can build your own little thing in it. I don't know, gather if anybody, you're listening, product idea. Matthew: Yeah, but yeah. They would have to still like keep the angle of it being like collaborative where people Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: I mean, 'cause that's their thing is where people come together, you know, to connect. So they Corey Moen: Right, right. And I think. Matthew: wouldn't want to lose that soul, but if they can layer on like you have your agents in the office or in the town with you. Yeah. Corey Moen: Exactly, exactly. And I think that's where the through line that some of these other tools miss is like, this is great, but can I also have me and a few other humans all working in the same workspace alongside the agents together to help triage decisions and all that? I don't know. Matthew: Yeah. Corey Moen: I think this is also just another good example of the point of the packaging or whatever. This just presents things in a way that really helps it resonate. Matthew: Yeah, 'cause people understand how an org chart works, right? And how how roles Corey Moen: Totally, and yeah. Matthew: and responsibilities ladder up and you know, and it's like these Corey Moen: Yeah! Matthew: agents, you're able to give them strict guardrails like here's what you can and can't do, here's your responsibilities, you know. Corey Moen: Totally. And there's something even to say about the UI of the fact that you have a product in general and you're not just running this kind of thing from, I don't know, Slack or whatever it is. And it has a level of familiarity that also Matthew: Control surface, yeah. Corey Moen: makes it so like, I can wrap my head around this. This sounds exciting. So you go from questioning to like interest. So yeah, I don't know. Some of the other examples that came to mind with like packaging stuff, this, I'm still a little confused by. Pen.dev used to be pencil.dev, I believe, and recently updated, right? Pencil.dev, doesn't it redirect? Yeah. They recently updated pen.dev, and there's a part of me that's like, this, I'm like. Matthew: Which I object, Your Honor. Why are pens better than pencils? As somebody who likes to doodle and sketch and like low fidelity, but I I also do that in Sharpies, like fine point sharpies and stuff too. So Corey Moen: Right, right. And, or even to your point, like if we're going on the metaphor route, like the thing I've always loved about the web at large, especially when I came from like early education and all that was in graphic design and even print stuff, I hated the permanence of print. I hated that like I put something out or we did a huge press run for a client and half of it goes wrong and well, I guess we're just, you know, SOL. Whereas, yeah, yeah. Matthew: How my gosh. All all the proofreading and printing, redlining and Corey Moen: Where's the web is. Matthew: doing doing the gosh, the what do you call it when you had to do the color print, the CMYK versions and like print was a whole thing. People don't understand. Corey Moen: yeah, yeah. It's just so tedious and the web is beautifully impermanent. know what I mean? it is, Matthew: Yeah. Corey Moen: ship it and wow, cool, you can roll back or ship a fix or whatever. Like that is the beauty of it. So I don't know, I would be super curious to know the reason for the rename other than just like attention. maybe it's an unfair take, but I think some of the reason that... people package products a certain way or rebrand a product is to try to re-spark attention. But that's fair game. We're all trying to make a business or a product or something. And this site is beautiful, to be clear. Yeah, so I don't know. This was fascinating to me. Another thing that I maybe, maybe like the UI, I. Matthew: I mean, did anything change with the product? See, major rebranding and product evolution. Shift and positioning from a design mode inside cursor to an AI-driven agentic canvas. Corey Moen: okay. Interesting. thought I, maybe I, I had never tried pencil before. Matthew: so okay. So starting from an existing design, existing web content rather than from scratch. Corey Moen: Hmm. Okay. Interesting. I mean, I will say even just this UI, beautiful. I love the little floating panels vibe. Matthew: Mm, Corey Moen: Super, super nice. So yeah, I don't know. Great packaging. Also again, just, think there's something to be noted about the rename and the strategy there, because I'm sure there is a strategy. The other thing I was going to show them packaging wise is, you know, this went super viral across tech space and all that. And it's been fun. I've been playing with it here and there. I've been working on a new approach that I think I had talked about in past episodes of different ways to think about data modeling and CMSs and brand corpus, And where I was experimenting with this was it making quick decisions on when I'm generating a new page on my site just based on content alone, can you in real time help me? make decisions on which layout to choose for each section based on variance, ensuring there's variance across a page, but then also ensuring there's consistency across the site. And so like, I don't know, there's this really interesting thing, but all this to say, I think the packaging of this, this site is beautiful. I think I saw Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: it's built in Framer. And I saw somebody the other day did an interview of like the creative director or somebody from the team that helped bring this together. and I mean just, yeah, super, super nice. Matthew: Have you seen the Easter eggs? I mean, I showed it in that YouTube short for for Yeah. Yeah. Well, I didn't cover what the product was, but yeah. And did Corey Moen: that's right, that's right. Yes, we already covered this. Yes, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Matthew: you know that there's there was already an open source model like this, which I mean, Corey Moen: I did see that. Matthew: Layla. So yeah, I don't know if you want Corey Moen: Yep. Matthew: to pull up Layla. I actually haven't visited their their site before. Model. Yeah. Corey Moen: Layla, Jeff, competitor. free local turn in. Leah, Leah? Matthew: Leia. Yeah, did I say Layla? Leia. Corey Moen: Here we go. Matthew: Yeah. so let's compare the packaging. Corey Moen: Is it just, yeah. Matthew: No packaging. It's a GitHub page. Corey Moen: No packaging, which is, it's so funny because this exact thing, you know, like on our own site, on No Code Supply Co. in the past with like, especially, you know, like code or any of this, like you scroll far enough back and you, have some, know, there's stuff like this where I'm like, I don't know Matthew: It's Corey Moen: what else to show other than GitHub, but I do want to save whatever this thing is. And like, this is such a good example, great call out of like, you know, this by no shame of the creators. It's just like, it's hard to get excited about this. Matthew: And it might be a metter model one than Jev is, right? I mean, there's some people who are saying it is. but. Corey Moen: Right, right, right. But just seeing it presented this way, it's harder to see the vision, it's harder to get excited, Matthew: Yeah. Corey Moen: it's harder for the word to get out about it versus something like this that is out there. I love that this was also very of the times with this video. And did you see at the very end the disclaimer? It's so spicy and pointed. yeah. Matthew: It's it yeah. Yeah, that was fun. But it's it's an AI video or AI augmented at least because his shirt is changing each time and they don't look like real shirts. Corey Moen: Yep, yep, yep. I saw that. I saw that. yeah, you think this is generated maybe? It does look a little... Matthew: E every time there's a new shot of him, it's a different shirt. Corey Moen: Yeah, anti-language language model. my gosh, I don't think I actually looked at these closely last time. But again, though, type safe. love. Matthew: Death before strings. Corey Moen: So good. Matthew: I mean it it's funny like but is it is it hubris out? Corey Moen: Yo, so this is just such a shining example of, I mean, look what we're doing right now. We're talking about it, right? Like this is the point of packaging and getting the word out. Yes, yes. Matthew: Yeah. The marketing is on point for for them. Corey Moen: And so many fun little details, like I can move the video modal around. And like you said, there's other Easter eggs on the site. I don't know, super interesting. Couple other examples this one. I mean not necessarily the most polished packaging. I think the idea of this product is very interesting this like reverse CMS or way to Yes for sure positioning is super interesting Matthew: More like the positioning than the packaging, maybe? Hmm. Corey Moen: But I think again it goes to say that at least there's a site at least there's something presenting presented right like to start going even if there's broken images and things Is this just maybe a version that I rendered Matthew: Yeah, I don't think it was like that when I saw it. Corey Moen: yeah, interesting. And then a couple others I was gonna show, this is shout out Derek that was on a previous episode with us. This is a product he's been tinkering on recently and we were chatting the other day about it and like, it's just wild what it's gotten to, to this sense of packaging that not just him focusing on building the actual app, which like you can see in some of these visuals and like this is the real thing. or they are mock representations of the actual app that's fully functional, but so much of this was all... Matthew: I like I like those annotations on top of the screenshots. That reminds me of like original Corey Moen: yeah. Matthew: Webflow when you loaded it and it had those kind of things on the style panel, so you knew like how to use things. Corey Moen: Heck yeah. Heck yeah. And like all the ways the brand comes through here, and again, a lot of this is prompted as he was showing me, and then all the way up to like, I'm sure if anybody's been on social media since Opus 5.5 came out, everybody's posted all these video things they're making with it. And like a lot of the latest Frontier models can do videos pretty well, but like Matthew: Prompt to video, yeah. Corey Moen: this was pretty impressive. And I think he told me this is like the third, second or third pass at it. Matthew: And just to Corey Moen: And again, it's... Matthew: be clear for people who may not understand, like what this is doing is the models are basically creating HTML for each frame and then snapshotting that, right? Corey Moen: Yeah. then I think using, yeah, but doing all the motion and everything in code, I think is Matthew: Yes. Corey Moen: for sure the approach. But what's interesting about that is then like all the primitives of the button styles and the UI and the patterns Matthew: Mm-mm. Corey Moen: and like all the patterns in this brand are all code generated. Like he didn't create those as files. So the main point is like, if code is that central place that you're building the product, you're generating marketing assets, website, et cetera, videos. If all of it is done in code, then that is the shared primitive. And I just think it's wild to me that we're in this state where he could stand up so much of this so relatively quickly and at a very high degree of polish compared to other things that I've seen out there. Yeah, pretty, wild. Yeah. Matthew: But then how do you get kind of market reach or Corey Moen: distribution. Matthew: distribution? Yeah, how do you actually connect with the audience? I mean, because like it's so easy Corey Moen: Totally. Matthew: to create first the the product and Corey Moen: Yep. Matthew: now kind of the packaging assets, as you call them. Now how do you Corey Moen: Totally, Matthew: actually get those in front of the eyeballs or or the agents who, you know, you know, how Corey Moen: this, this. Matthew: do you how do you actually get that reach out there? Corey Moen: Yeah, I think that is a whole other trick without a doubt. But I Matthew: Get customers now. It's it's a big yeah. Corey Moen: think there's something to be said that this is still one of those foundations. One way or another, you're going to need that distribution channel or multiple, but you're going to still ideally need something to fall back on visually that is some semblance of a brand versus just a GitHub repo. to get some traction out there in the world. So again, Matthew: Yeah. Corey Moen: this is still work in progress. Hopefully it's okay. I'm sharing it, Derek, as you're gonna see on a worker's Matthew: Sneak peek at Corey Moen: domain, but it's linked on his portfolio site. Yes, Kawhi. Matthew: Kawadi, Kawadi? Kawadi. Corey Moen: I forget the name. It does have some meaning. then, you know, also I think he said Claude is coming up with the clever association here of these tiers of catch, sort, agree. tools and ideas that form from the name closely, at least. And then the other, yeah, for sure. The other couple of Matthew: Swapping a C for a K, but yeah. Interesting. Corey Moen: examples are not new, of course, but like we were just generally before the episode talking about like it's wild, like Canva, I'm sure is probably growing more than ever, you know, and has all these AI toolings, but it's such a familiar tool and well packaged and well known tool among schools and even levels of professional. institutions that like they have that distribution on lock already and they have the brand and they can keep growing it. People don't necessarily have to work directly with the models if they're already, if this is so much more approachable for them. This has the solutions they need. We were talking about gamma too is kind of feels kind of like a Canva competitor. It's this very, very approachable way to build all these different marketing assets, right? And so, and it's very beautiful brand and well packaged. So it's like, I don't know. It's just, It's fascinating to kind of look back from this lens of like, the models are getting great. We can do all this awesome stuff. But packaging still matters, at least at this moment in time, right? Like to your point, yes, maybe agents are taking over more of the internet and more of the traffic and more of you know, growth channels for companies. But I think there's still always going to be this human connection factor of, I don't know. being associated to a brand and drawn to a brand and the way they think and present themselves that, I don't know, well, I think it really matters. Like the last thing I'd say in all this, was, you know, the YouTube channel Diary of a CEO, I feel like it's fairly big these days, but yeah, this person is, I'm drawing a blank on his name, interviews a lot of well-known people. He had an episode recently with Rick Rubin. And I've candidly never, what's that? Yes, yes, yes. Matthew: Stephen Bartlett? Stephen Bartlett? Okay, yeah. Corey Moen: Incredible interviewer, just so good at asking questions and is really good to listen to and all that. if you remember Rick Rubin, there was this meme that went viral, I don't know, maybe a year ago or something about vibe coding. And it's one of his interviews Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: where it's a CNN or some reporter is asking him, so what? like, do you know how to use the musical tools and all this? And Rick Rubin is, you know, producer. He's worked with like an incredible spectrum of artists for so Matthew: Across genres, yeah. Corey Moen: many years. And the meme, he's like, I have no technical ability. I'm basically just hired from my taste and my point of view. And long story short, go to the Diary of a CEO channel and see the recent interview with Rick Rubin, because it honestly kind of just cracked my brain open about his perspective on creativity. and all of this in the realm of just like your outlook. And in that, where I'm getting back to with packaging is the interviewer, Steven, made this comment on like, found the song on Spotify, loved it, and then a few weeks later found out it was all AI generated. And it just changed his perspective pretty quickly on it that he didn't really like it anymore. And Rick was like, you know, interesting, like why is that? And you know, they got into this point of human connection and there is something that we have as a draw to other people and the struggle of life or whatever it is, however you want to paint Matthew: Sure. Corey Moen: that, that is part of the passion that we have for brands and products. I think it feels like this day and age, even that is even more present than ever before. You know what I mean? Because like we want the handmade thing. We want the original thing. Like, and so I think that really comes back to that aspect of packaging, People don't want to just use a robot off the shelf a lot of times. And I think there's something to be said about how we present those tools and ideas in a way that feels warm and human. Matthew: Yeah, something I heard recently along those lines was your brand is how your customers current connect with your business. And Corey Moen: Mmm. Matthew: your culture is how your employees connect to the business. And Corey Moen: Oooooh yes! Matthew: your brand is also a direct reflection of your culture. You know, there's like a Corey Moen: I was, yeah. Matthew: there's a there's a connection there. There's a line. Corey Moen: yes, there is. I mean, my goodness, we both even coming from like the Webflow no code community and that like, is such a great representation of that. You know what I mean? Like just being fans of it and then having that internal culture tied and all that. Like, yeah, I couldn't agree more with that take. And it's just so vital to maintain or just have an opinion on as a brand and a company. And yeah, super, super interesting. Matthew: And and I I would even put like we talked about like the line from code being the source of truth for assets, Corey Moen: Yes. Matthew: including p potentially video now, Corey Moen: Yeah. Matthew: you know, through through through the like the packaging and through the customer. And it's like you can draw a straight line from your employees to the code, to the packaging Corey Moen: Mm-hmm. Totally. Matthew: and brand, to your customers. Like it's all it's all connected and it matters, you know. So just Corey Moen: It does. It does. Matthew: Just throwing slop on the wall and seeing what sticks, you know, it's it's not it's not gonna last. It's not gonna be a real y you might Corey Moen: For sure, for sure, for sure, like- Matthew: you might get a pile of sales, you know, just based on volume, but Corey Moen: Right. Matthew: you're not gonna have retention. You're not gonna have brand equity with customers, you know. Corey Moen: Totally, totally. The other thing that roughly comes to mind is a tactic here is, and also in the realm of Derek, because I think he's done this on some of his product sites, is the handwritten note vibe on your marketing page or your about page. This is what we believe. Yeah. Matthew: Yeah. we talked about that one of the early episodes about kind of those hand sketched like details or imperfections that Corey Moen: Totally. Matthew: you can add that feel more human. Yeah. Corey Moen: Yes, yes. And just like putting a name associated to stuff, you know, Matthew: Mm-hmm. Corey Moen: like that there is somebody behind whatever the thing is and it's not just all auto-generated. And yeah, I don't know. It's even just what we do here, I think is super fun when we talk about some of the things that are also curated in the site, that we are really looking at these and considering these. not just like, they're not all just like auto-populated from some scrape or something like that. Like, Matthew: Yeah. Corey Moen: yeah, maybe we're looking at sources commonly, but like, we're still hand picking the things that are like seem genuine, seem legit. Like we don't want to steer somebody wrong that happens across No Good Supply Co and you know, finds a tool or whatever. I don't know. There's just, yeah. Matthew: Right, we're not sharing things just to ride a popularity wave and get extra clicks and views, you know. It's because we actually see something we like in it or connect. Corey Moen: Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Totally, totally. Which, just popped my brain, but maybe worth a mention because it's in the website world is also from this week is America.gov. And talk about the irony of packaging. The site looks so good, it actually did the inverse for me. Maybe this is saying something about my own, I don't know. concerns or uncertainty of the country we live in and our government, but like it looks so good. And I'm like, how is this a government website? Like this is wild. But here's the thing that I threw all of that. I'm like, yeah, shout out to the team that worked on this and the fact that I... there is a place like this that we can at least as citizens or whatever go to find where, which of the, I think they said, and I saw a clip of the keynote that there was like 27,000 websites or something that are government owned. there we Matthew: Twenty nine thousand websites in one is what it says. Corey Moen: go, there we go. That was the quote. yeah, it's on the site, LOL. So it's like that. Matthew: Yeah. Corey Moen: I have a place I can go to ask singularly to get at least a general direction on where to go is like, Amazing, I'm grateful for it. Because anytime I have had to interact with these things, it is always like so intimidating and clunky UX and just feels so outdated that I'm like, it's wild to me that this is somehow seen as like secure or whatever, or is it just out of neglect? I don't know, that's a whole rabbit hole. But either way, it was very interesting to see such a high prominence, at least in the US this week, on a website. And we talk a lot about websites. and apps and tools on this podcast. And so I'm like, man, this is one of those websites that's gonna be pretty infamous, I think, but who knows, time will tell. Matthew: Yeah, we'll see how it I mean, I don't know. Right now, like until they get to like what they said is coming 2027 where it actually takes action on your behalf across agencies and keeps Corey Moen: Yep. Totally. Yep. Matthew: like your data in sync and all that kind of stuff. Corey Moen: Yep. Matthew: I mean, privacy concerns, I guess, are gonna bount. Corey Moen: Yeah. Matthew: But it's right now I'm like, well, right now it's kind of it just feels like any other AI chat bot that has access to the web, right? It's just maybe more Corey Moen: Fair, fair, fair, fair. Matthew: restricted because it can only search the government sites. Corey Moen: Yep. Yep. Or I mean, would you say there's something to be said about you would hopefully inherently trust that the results it's giving you are going to be hopefully more certainly accurate because it is their own controlled data set that it's, you know, reading or whatever versus like, you know, model. If you just ask, chatting with tea or whatever, sometimes I feel like you ask it about stuff like this and it's like, it might give you outdated information. And if you're Matthew: Because those sources themselves, those 29,000 sources are outdated. So I feel like that is the problem here. It's not Corey Moen: Right, fair. Ooh, good point. Matthew: that, you know, it's that these individual agencies don't have the tooling or the know-how to keep their stuff updated on a daily basis. Corey Moen: Yep. Yep. Matthew: So I mean, that's like the root of the issue I think that needs to be solved from a data perspective, Corey Moen: Mmm. Mmm. Matthew: so that you can actually have this nice polished experience on top of it. Cause I don't know who Who's gonna be responsible when this website, the A the AI chat and assistants on the website, tells somebody the wrong thing, you know? Is somebody Corey Moen: yeah. Matthew: actually is there a support center that's gonna help you fix things that went went sideways? You know, or is it just LOL, Corey Moen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great point. I wonder. Matthew: you know? Figure it out. Corey Moen: I wonder what they're doing to audit the model or what is actually behind this. I wonder if it's actually an LLM that is powering those results or is that a simulated experience and it is something that is more certain to be accurate. I think even not to go back to Jev, but we were talking about Jev earlier, that was part of their marketing pitch is like no hallucinations, even though I've seen other things come out that are like, it's right 78 % of the time or something like that. So it's still not 100%. Matthew: It's deterministic, but it's also probabilistic. You know, it's making the best educated deterministic choice. Corey Moen: Right, right, right. So I wonder if they're doing something like that with however this is actually providing answers to increase the certainty of accuracy, right? Like, yeah, I don't know. Matthew: It's it's interesting. I mean, when I saw the video, I'm like, yeah, I mean, this is what governments should do for their citizens, right? It should be this easy. And you Corey Moen: 100%. 100%. Matthew: know, there there are some countries that do have it all together. So I would hope we would be opening to learning from others and yeah, Corey Moen: Yeah. Matthew: actually putting citizens first and making our lives easier. good to chat and we will see you next time. Corey Moen: Sounds good. Later.