1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,270 Here's something I noticed about myself. 2 00:00:02,270 --> 00:00:03,689 I never ask for an image. 3 00:00:03,689 --> 00:00:06,413 I say — show me a mockup of the checkout screen. 4 00:00:06,413 --> 00:00:08,569 Draw me the flow we just talked about. 5 00:00:08,569 --> 00:00:11,236 Imagine the person who'd actually pay for this. 6 00:00:11,236 --> 00:00:12,882 Three requests for a picture. 7 00:00:12,882 --> 00:00:15,322 Not one of them has the word picture in it. 8 00:00:15,322 --> 00:00:17,422 And I wanted Claude to just get that. 9 00:00:18,422 --> 00:00:20,828 Someone had already built it, by the way. 10 00:00:20,828 --> 00:00:21,532 Good plugin. 11 00:00:21,532 --> 00:00:22,237 Worked fine. 12 00:00:22,237 --> 00:00:23,880 But picture the config file. 13 00:00:23,880 --> 00:00:24,408 One line. 14 00:00:24,408 --> 00:00:25,289 One model name. 15 00:00:25,289 --> 00:00:27,460 You set it once, when you install it. 16 00:00:27,460 --> 00:00:29,279 So think about what that means. 17 00:00:29,279 --> 00:00:32,038 I want the expensive model for the final thing. 18 00:00:32,038 --> 00:00:36,909 And I want the cheap one for the twenty rough drafts I'll throw away getting there. 19 00:00:36,909 --> 00:00:37,789 I can have one. 20 00:00:37,789 --> 00:00:38,317 Not both. 21 00:00:38,317 --> 00:00:44,010 The one decision that needed making every single time — was the one thing nailed down at install. 22 00:00:45,010 --> 00:00:45,991 So, one knob. 23 00:00:45,991 --> 00:00:47,198 Small, mid, pro. 24 00:00:47,198 --> 00:00:49,385 The agent picks, per request. 25 00:00:49,385 --> 00:00:52,403 And the gap between those is ridiculous. 26 00:00:52,403 --> 00:00:54,968 Cheap tier, half a cent a picture. 27 00:00:54,968 --> 00:00:56,628 Top tier — twenty-one. 28 00:00:56,628 --> 00:00:57,985 Thirty-five times. 29 00:00:57,985 --> 00:00:59,193 Put it this way. 30 00:00:59,193 --> 00:01:01,456 Those twenty throwaway drafts? 31 00:01:01,456 --> 00:01:04,850 Four dollars twenty-two at the wrong setting. 32 00:01:04,850 --> 00:01:07,114 Twelve cents at the right one. 33 00:01:08,114 --> 00:01:10,247 Now here's the bit I didn't see coming. 34 00:01:10,247 --> 00:01:10,794 It worked. 35 00:01:10,794 --> 00:01:13,202 And because it worked, I used it constantly. 36 00:01:13,202 --> 00:01:17,196 You know that feeling when something stops being annoying, so you just... 37 00:01:17,196 --> 00:01:17,798 do it more? 38 00:01:17,798 --> 00:01:22,667 That's lovely, right up until a loop runs away overnight and you find out in the morning. 39 00:01:22,667 --> 00:01:26,497 Which is why there's a spending cap, checked before the call goes out. 40 00:01:26,497 --> 00:01:27,974 Not after the money's gone. 41 00:01:28,974 --> 00:01:31,975 But this is the one that actually changed the design. 42 00:01:31,975 --> 00:01:34,126 Imagine you've got a picture you love. 43 00:01:34,126 --> 00:01:35,089 A character, say. 44 00:01:35,089 --> 00:01:38,825 And a week later you want her again — same face, just a bit older. 45 00:01:38,825 --> 00:01:40,807 Except you never wrote that prompt. 46 00:01:40,807 --> 00:01:41,430 Claude did. 47 00:01:41,430 --> 00:01:43,638 And it's gone, somewhere in a chat log. 48 00:01:43,638 --> 00:01:46,072 Do you know what I actually ended up doing? 49 00:01:46,072 --> 00:01:50,771 I handed the picture back to Claude and asked it to guess what the prompt had been. 50 00:01:50,771 --> 00:01:51,337 Forensics. 51 00:01:51,337 --> 00:01:52,356 On my own artwork. 52 00:01:52,356 --> 00:01:57,169 So now every image drops a little hidden file beside it with the whole recipe inside. 53 00:01:57,169 --> 00:02:00,679 Same one, warmer — that's a command now, not an investigation. 54 00:02:01,679 --> 00:02:05,055 If you build anything on top of an agent, take this bit. 55 00:02:05,055 --> 00:02:08,010 Do not teach every skill about models and prices. 56 00:02:08,010 --> 00:02:13,256 Have one engine that knows all of it, and let everything else just ask, in plain words. 57 00:02:13,256 --> 00:02:14,823 Something needs a picture? 58 00:02:14,823 --> 00:02:18,562 It says — high quality, transparent background, tall and thin. 59 00:02:18,562 --> 00:02:24,290 And the engine works out which model does transparency, what tier that is, and what it'll cost. 60 00:02:24,290 --> 00:02:25,858 Before it spends anything. 61 00:02:25,858 --> 00:02:27,606 The skill says what it wants. 62 00:02:27,606 --> 00:02:29,536 The engine says what that costs. 63 00:02:30,536 --> 00:02:32,316 It wasn't all clever, mind. 64 00:02:32,316 --> 00:02:35,150 One Tuesday in April I lost the entire day. 65 00:02:35,150 --> 00:02:36,139 Eight releases. 66 00:02:36,139 --> 00:02:37,787 Six different approaches. 67 00:02:37,787 --> 00:02:41,149 Trying to get a config value through to the server. 68 00:02:41,149 --> 00:02:45,434 Every attempt failed identically — the server just never started. 69 00:02:45,434 --> 00:02:46,028 No error. 70 00:02:46,028 --> 00:02:46,819 No log line. 71 00:02:46,819 --> 00:02:47,808 Nothing at all. 72 00:02:47,808 --> 00:02:50,511 Ninth release, I gave up and reverted it. 73 00:02:51,511 --> 00:02:53,136 And here's how it ended up. 74 00:02:53,136 --> 00:02:57,772 I set out to build an image generator, and I accidentally built a dependency. 75 00:02:57,772 --> 00:03:00,902 Four skills on my machine can't work without it now. 76 00:03:00,902 --> 00:03:03,371 The one that makes App Store screenshots. 77 00:03:03,371 --> 00:03:04,575 The one that writes. 78 00:03:04,575 --> 00:03:06,080 The one that films demos. 79 00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:09,391 None of them know a single thing about models or money. 80 00:03:09,391 --> 00:03:10,234 They just ask. 81 00:03:10,234 --> 00:03:11,137 Including this. 82 00:03:11,137 --> 00:03:17,398 The voice you're listening to right now is mine, cloned, running on my own machine, and it cost nothing. 83 00:03:17,398 --> 00:03:20,047 And I didn't write the prompt for any of it.