Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:18:35 · Lenny Rachitsky, Zevi Arnovitz
[00:18:35] S0: Amazing. [00:18:35] S1: On weekends. Yeah. So you get basically deep explanations into why each question was wrong or each question was right. And at the moment, StudyMate only has multiple choice questions. And I was doing some competitor research over the last weekend and I saw competitors who had true or false questions and also fill in the blank questions, which I loved. So I think that'd be really cool if we could build that live. How's that sound? [00:19:00] S0: I love it. Crossing your fingers, this all work. I just want to highlight the stuff you shared right before this in cursor. So this is a huge deal, what you describe here. This is essentially what you've figured out is a way as a person that has no idea how to write any code, how to build a product in Cursor as a product manager using this series of /commands that you've concocted that you're going to be sharing with listeners. They can download all these and just use them directly. They don't have to figure out all these prompts that you've figured out. [00:19:31] S1: Yeah, 100%. Basically what happened was I formulated the backbone of this with the CTO, and it was basically within the system prompt of the CTO project that I had within GPT. So it said, step one, we do this. Step two, we do this. And now I'll keep building. And if I see something that happens over and over again, I'll just create a /command and then it will be automated within the workflow.
00:19:31 · Zevi Arnovitz, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:19:31] S1: Yeah, 100%. Basically what happened was I formulated the backbone of this with the CTO, and it was basically within the system prompt of the CTO project that I had within GPT. So it said, step one, we do this. Step two, we do this. And now I'll keep building. And if I see something that happens over and over again, I'll just create a /command and then it will be automated within the workflow. [00:19:54] S0: Amazing. So just to summarize the /command. So one is create an issue in Linear, which I love. Linear is awesome. Shout out Linear. [00:20:02] S1: That's also from the product pass. [00:20:04] S0: From the product pass. Oh my God, what a value? Okay. So step one is create the issue in linear. So it's a command. So this prompt /command you've created, just create issue. Then it's explore, which is explore the idea, help me ideate on what this could be. And this is Claude helping you think through the feature and product. And then it's actually create the plan. And so it's like the AI helping you build the plan to build the product. Then it's actually execute, which is just build the thing. And then there's this review, peer review step, which is awesome that you'll share. And then there's document, update documentation based on the new feature that we're adding. Sweet.
00:20:44 · Zevi Arnovitz
[00:20:44] S1: Yeah. Cool. So let's go ahead and start building. So I'm going to use Wispr Flow to dictate and basically this starts with /create issue. So this basically sends that prompt. And I love this because I usually do this during when I'm building something else. So basically it tells Claude that I'm mid building something and I don't have a lot of time to waste time on this. So just ask some brief questions so that you have enough to capture within linear. So I want to add fill in the blank questions to StudyMate. I want this to be 30% of tests to be generated as fill in the blank questions. I want there to be six potential answers for two blank spots, and of course there's only going to be two correct answers. So one correct answer and two incorrect answers for each spot and I want the interface to be drag and drop. So that's just basically a quick think of how I want this to work. So it's going to ask me a few questions. Quizzes are 100% multiple choice, question structure, single sentence passage to blanks and priority. So one and two are correct, and this is not high priority. It's a nice to have feature. So now basically what Claude is going to do is it's going to use MCP, which is basically a technology that was created by Anthropic, which gives AI the ability to use tools. So this is connected to my linear. So what it's going to do now is it's going to use everything we've said and create an issue within Linear.
00:22:30 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:22:30] S0: And by the way, as this is loading, I just love the way, the way you described this, especially doing voice mode, it's like exactly how you would talk to an engineer describing a feature, "Here's what I want." And then they ask you questions, here's the clarification.
00:22:43 · Zevi Arnovitz, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:22:43] S1: Yeah. So at first when I was doing this with the CTO, I would do it with ChatGPT voice mode, and that was crazy. That literally felt like ideating with a person. It would push back, ask questions, and maybe one day the coding tools will get there too, but that was exactly ... It really felt like sitting with my CTO. Great. So created STU88. So if we open up Linear now, we should be able to see ... Let's see where STU88. There it is. Fill in the blank questions with drag and drop interface. So it has a TLDR, it has the current state. It did a little bit of research on the code base, I think, expected outcomes, some context. So yeah, so this is basically ready for me to pick up when I'm interested in building. So now let's say a few days go by, I finished the current project I'm working on, I can pick it up. So when I pick it up, I do /exploration phase, which is what we said. And then instead of pressing enter, I'll press tab and I'll show you this. So basically, exploration phase, what it does is it will take an argument. This is basically a placeholder within the prompt, which allows me to enter something that is extra context for the AI. So I can say here, Linear STU88, which is referencing the ticket. And now what it's going to do is it's going to go, it's going to fetch the Linear ticket. [00:24:12] S0: And what's the idea? What's the goal of the exploration phase? This ideate on the idea. Is that the- [00:24:12] S1: Exactly. [00:24:12] S0: Okay.
00:24:12 · Lenny Rachitsky, Zevi Arnovitz
[00:24:12] S0: Okay. [00:24:18] S1: So it's both for the CTO to deeply understand the problem that we're trying to solve and also understand the current state of the code base, what files need to be affected, and how is the best way to implement this technically. And usually what happens is right now, Claude is just basically reading a bunch of files, understanding the basic structure of the code, and then it's going to come back with a bunch of clarifying questions that will decide how we end up implementing this. [00:24:44] S0: So it feels like it's talking to your engineering manager. [00:24:48] S1: Exactly, exactly. 100% this is how I think about it. [00:24:51] S0: And you said that you're a CTO, so you used to use ChatGPT prompt to have a CTO in there. Now the CTO's living inside here in Cursor? [00:25:00] S1: Yeah, because of the way the tools have developed and they've become so good at both exploration and code execution. So now it's just a habit that I call it a CTO, but it's basically all in one. The same agent will both do the exploration and write the plan and end up executing the code. [00:25:19] S0: Got it. So it's basically it's Claude Code. Is there a prompt you gave it to act like that? To act like the right kind of CTO?