As I’ve been building apps alone, finding useful ways to integrate AI into my workflow has drastically sped up my workflow.
I’ve found the most value from it in architecting my project and writing small segments of code, but I’ve also been experimenting with AI on the marketing side.
For programming, I’ve found the Claude models to be the best at both writing code and helping me design the systems that I’m building.
For a while, I would go to the Claude web app any time I had a technical question, and then to Google for any additional info.
Recently, I’ve started using the ‘ask’ mode more in Cursor (the AI-integrated VSCode fork I use for frontend dev) for most of these questions.
The other mode is ‘agent’, which will write code and (optionally) run commands on your system.
Agent can be useful at times but often for larger requests the code it generates is verbose and often doesn’t accomplish what I had in mind.
Ask mode never applies changes automatically, it only recommends code that you can then carefully review.
The value of an integrated AI like Cursor is that you can mention specific files in your codebase and explain how they tie together.
This helps me quickly make decisions about how I want to structure database tables, design the data structures and set up the API to work.
If you’re just getting started with coding I’d be highly skeptical about the hype around AI, and may even recommend against using it.
I’ve found AI the most valuable when I deeply understand how my codebase is set up, and can ask very specific questions given that context.
The times where I’ve let AI generate a large amount of code I almost always revert or regret it.
Any time someone claims to have built some complicated app only using AI I feel like I should be better with the tools, but there’s a balance.
Fixing bugs that AI inevitably introduces is 10x harder if you don’t understand how the thousands of lines connect with each other.
This is why relying less on full on agents but tab completions and isolated changes has been more beneficial for me.
I am working alongside the AI, asking it questions when I get stuck and having it write the code I already know how to write, just a bit quicker.
I made a full video detailing how I use Cursor for coding, so check that out if you’re interested.
The marketing approach I’m using with Creator Kiwi is fairly simple:
For building in public, the extent to my AI usage is limited but mostly to refine my ideas.
Taking a list of validated video ideas (based on other channels performing well) and giving it to Claude, while explaining what my unique spin and context is can be helpful to get inspiration.
I never let AI write my content - that’s how you end up with slop that no one wants to consume.
Every newsletter I write or video I publish is all my own words that I wrote by hand. That’s the only way I’ve found to keep my unique voice (and I vaguely enjoy it)
I don’t think having AI write hundreds of articles that you throw out every day is a winning strategy.
For writing SEO posts, my approach is using Perplexity to do some broad research on potential topics I could write about, and taking down all of the ideas into Notion.
I think that writing valuable posts that genuinely help the reader is the best long term strategy.
I haven’t published any yet (besides announcement posts), but I want to get into a weekly cadence of writing an article that would help a business owner or creator on YouTube to help them with their content strategy.
This is a channel I think you have to have a long term view on.
AI can be helpful here for general outlines and idea generation, but expecting it to write posts that resonate with other people (not robots) is foolish.
I’ve yet to use AI much for outreach. I myself can tell when cold emails/dms are automated slop.
I’m more interested in finding creators who genuinely align with the values of Creator Kiwi and building a good relationship with them.
I hope to share more on the journey there in a future letter.
I hope this is valuable if you’re working on your own app. Feel free to let me know if you think otherwise.
Have a great week.
Cole
P.S. If you found this letter helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend :)
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