How I Run My 1.5M+ Follower Content Business With Codex | Riley Brown
频道: Peter Yang
视频: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N34zz1-RSGw
原文语言: en
统计: 共 27 轮 · Riley 14 · Peter 2
[0:00]
I will just scrape a hundred thumbnails that performed really well and I'll put my face on it. I took this and then I converted it into one for me, and here are my thumbnails. Turn this [music] into a skill. The more skills you use, the more you'll realize that you can mix and match. That's where everyone's brain goes at first, is to like batch and create more. What I want is better, because I think the moat is quality over a long period of time versus batching. Batching will make it soulless over time. Hey everyone, my guest today is the one and only Riley Brown. Riley makes AI education content for over 1.5 million followers. So super excited to get him to show us how he uses Codex and other AI tools to run his entire creative business and more. So welcome, sir. Thanks for having me. This is this is going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, you know, I feel like you're pretty much on all the platforms, YouTube, X, Instagram, and so on so forth, like can you talk about your business at a high level and how do you use AI tools at a high level to kind of like create all this content? Yeah, so at the center of everything that I do personally, uh, I like to educate people on AI, and I've been doing this for the past three years. That's how I've gained almost, uh, I'm almost at like 1.7 million followers across all the different platforms. And obviously, like, we've, uh, released a couple products, um, including Vibecode and now Chorus. Um, and then we're also doing, uh, a lot of like consulting, uh, helping companies implement agents in their business. And it's just been so fun over the past three months talking to people, seeing how, um, people are using AI agents in their business. And you know me, I'm a content creator, that's like my profession, and I use it for almost every part of, uh, of my content business, except for, like, video editing. I hire a lot of video editors, and video editing isn't there
我会直接抓一百张数据特别好的 thumbnail，然后把我自己的脸 P 上去。我把这张拿过来，改成属于我自己的版本，这就是我的 thumbnail 了。把这个[音乐]做成一个 skill。skill 用得越多，你越会发现它们是可以自由组合、随意搭配的。所有人一开始的第一反应都是——批量、多产。但我要的是更好，因为我觉得护城河是长期的质量，而不是批量。批量做久了，东西就没魂了。大家好，今天的嘉宾是独一无二的 Riley Brown。Riley 做 AI 教育内容，粉丝超过 150 万。所以特别期待请他来演示一下，他是怎么用 Codex 和其他 AI 工具把整个创作事业跑起来的，还有更多干货。欢迎你，老哥。谢谢邀请，这次肯定会很好玩。是啊，我感觉你基本上各个平台都在做，YouTube、X、Instagram 等等。能不能先从大方向讲讲你的业务，以及你整体上是怎么用 AI 工具做出这么多内容的？好。我个人做的所有事情，核心都是教大家 AI，这件事我已经做了三年。我就是靠这个涨起来的，现在所有平台加起来快 170 万粉。当然我们也发布了几款产品，包括 Vibecode，还有现在的 Chorus。另外我们也在做不少咨询，帮企业把 agent 落地到业务里。过去三个月跟各种人聊下来特别有意思，能看到大家是怎么在自己业务里用 AI agent 的。你也知道，我本职就是内容创作者，我内容生意的几乎每个环节都在用 AI，只有视频剪辑除外。剪辑我雇了不少剪辑师，AI 剪辑现在还不行
[1:53]
yet. But like for all of the ideation, planning, coming up with good hooks, um, YouTube thumbnails, um, doing all of my research, it's all grounded in YouTube. So I have like a YouTube researcher skill that my agent will use whenever I ask it to do research. Um, and so like I have a list of a ton of skills that just make creating content at scale a lot easier using agents. Got it. So so YouTube's kind of like the hub of your content, and then like all the other platforms you kind of make clips and share social posts and so on and so forth. Um, I make dedicated content on Instagram and TikTok. That's actually how I got my start. I just prefer longer form content, and I think Twitter is a great place to post long form content as well. My long form content does as well on Twitter as it does on YouTube. Um, and so yeah, I like making content native to all the different platforms. Uh, clipping is actually one thing I'm just now getting into, especially with AI, but we can talk about that a little bit later. Okay. So so can you actually show us how you do this end to end? Uh, you don't have to make the content, but like I would love to see the skills and workflows that you have. Absolutely. And I guess what I'll start with here is kind of how I think about Codex in general, and platforms like Codex. So right here we have Codex open. Normally when you come to Codex, it looks like this, right? It looks like ChatGPT. Um, but when you go to ChatGPT, everything that you upload to it, if you were to upload an image, many people have done that, uploaded images or PDFs, etc, all of that's stored in the cloud. When you use Codex, all of it's stored locally. And so Codex, just like Claude Code, can fully control your computer, and in fact it has a computer use skill built into the platform. It can actually control your computer for you, which is really cool. And one really useful thing that I do for my videos, if you watch my videos, you'll see at the beginning
。但除此之外，选题、策划、想好 hook、做 YouTube thumbnail、做各种调研，全都是围着 YouTube 转的。我有一个 YouTube researcher skill，只要我让 agent 去做调研，它就会调这个 skill。所以我攒了一长串 skill，用 agent 规模化做内容就轻松太多了。明白了。所以 YouTube 算是你内容的中枢，其他平台你就是切片、发社交帖之类的？我在 Instagram 和 TikTok 上是做专门的原生内容的，其实我最早就是从那儿起家的。只是我个人更喜欢长内容，而且我觉得 Twitter 也是发长内容的好地方。我的长内容在 Twitter 上的表现跟在 YouTube 上一样好。所以我喜欢针对每个平台做原生内容。切片这块其实是我最近才开始搞的，尤其是配合 AI，不过这个我们待会儿再聊。好。那你能不能完整演示一遍你是怎么做的？不用真做出一条内容，但我很想看看你的 skill 和工作流。当然可以。我想先从我怎么理解 Codex、以及 Codex 这类平台讲起。这边是打开的 Codex。正常打开 Codex，界面就长这样，对吧？跟 ChatGPT 挺像。但你用 ChatGPT 的时候，你上传的所有东西——很多人都传过图片、PDF 之类的——那些全都存在云端。而用 Codex，所有东西都存在本地。而且 Codex 跟 Claude Code 一样，可以完全控制你的电脑，事实上它平台里就内置了一个 computer use 的 skill，能真的替你操作电脑，这点很酷。还有一件对我做视频特别有用的事——如果你看过我的视频，你会发现开头
[3:50]
there has like really high quality animations. And the way I do all of my planning for this is I use this Remotion plugin. And so this Remotion plugin, I actually have it open right here. This was one of my best performing videos on Codex. This was the opening frame. It was me saying, like, "Today we're talking about Codex and all of the different things that it can do." This graphic right here, um, can you see it? Yeah, yeah. So this graphic right here is a graphic that I just generated, and you can very easily export this graphic, and then I just placed it on top of my video when editing it. And all you need to do to do this, you can, this isn't my skill, this is a built-in plugin into Codex. And whenever I want to use it, I can just type in @remotion. Um, I also have a Remotion best practices skill, which, uh, it has like my creator brand kind of infused into it. So whatever it generates will be in my own like style, if that makes sense. But yeah, colors, the colors and stuff. And so that's basically how I use it for creating these little graphics. So to make this graphic, you just, hey @remotion, make the flowchart Codex logo, and then do you have to provide the assets, or it just goes off and finds the stuff? So this is another thing that, um, I've set up. So I have a skill, I actually, I think it's called, um, image pull um, internet image puller. There it is. So this internet image puller is one where it'll go off, it'll actually use something called the SerpAPI. Um, and so it uses Google Images within the SerpAPI, and it will actually find the relevant logos related to whatever video it is. So if I say, "Hey, I need some B-roll for this," it'll automatically look at my transcript of the video that it's creating B-roll for, and it will find the logos and it will just pull them. And you can use multiple skills for a prompt. So I would probably say something like,
有质量很高的动画。这些东西的规划我全都是用这个 Remotion plugin 做的。这个 Remotion plugin 我这边正好开着。这是我关于 Codex 表现最好的视频之一，这就是开场那一帧。当时我说的是「今天我们来聊 Codex，以及它能干的各种事」。这张图，你能看到吗？能能能。这张图就是我直接生成出来的，导出非常方便，然后我剪辑的时候把它叠在视频画面上就行。要做这个你只需要——这个不是我自己写的 skill，是 Codex 内置的 plugin。我想用的时候，直接打 @remotion 就行。我另外还有一个 Remotion best practices 的 skill，里面融进了我作为创作者的品牌调性。所以它生成出来的东西都会带着我自己的风格，你懂我意思吧。对，颜色之类的。基本上我就是这么用它来做这些小图的。所以做这张图，你就直接说「嘿 @remotion，做个 Codex logo 的流程图」，然后素材是要你自己提供，还是它自己去找？这就是我另外配好的一套东西。我有一个 skill，我想想它叫……image pull，嗯，internet image puller。在这儿。这个 internet image puller 会自己跑出去找，它底层用的是 SerpAPI。它通过 SerpAPI 调 Google Images，去找出跟这条视频相关的 logo。所以如果我说「我这儿需要点 B-roll」，它会自动去看它正在配 B-roll 的那条视频的转写稿，然后把相关 logo 找出来、直接拉下来。而且一个 prompt 里可以同时用好几个 skill。所以我大概会这么说——
[5:56]
uh, please pull the relevant logos and then make a graphic for this, and then I would just use the Remotion skill, um, which I call Remotion best practices, and it will just generate it and pull the relevant logos. Um, but you can manually just drop them in as well. Okay, so you're basically chaining multiple skills together, right? Is that kind of, yes, I guess you could say that. This episode is brought to you by Google AI Studio, the easiest and fastest way to build and share your idea with real users. For example, I use AI Studio to create three different landing pages for this bakery using images generated by Google's built-in Nano Banana model. One highlights fresh bread, another highlights awesome cakes, and the last highlights the bakery story. I can publish the website easily and get a custom URL. In this case, Corgi Confections dot AI Studio, to share all three variations with potential customers for feedback in one tap. When I was a product manager, Google AI Studio was my go-to tool for building prototypes like this. And it really is an easy and free way to share ideas with your team, customers, and everyone else. Check it out at aistudio.google.com. Now back to our episode.
「请把相关的 logo 拉下来，然后给这段做一张图」，接着我就用 Remotion 那个 skill，也就是我叫它 Remotion best practices 的那个，它就会直接生成，并且把相关 logo 拉进来。当然你也可以手动把素材丢进去。好，所以你基本上是把多个 skill 串起来用，对吧？对，可以这么说。本期节目由 Google AI Studio 赞助，这是把你的想法做出来、拿给真实用户看的最快最简单的方式。比如我就用 AI Studio 给这家面包店做了三个不同的落地页，图都是 Google 内置的 Nano Banana 模型生成的。一版主推新鲜面包，一版主推好吃的蛋糕，还有一版讲面包店的品牌故事。我可以一键发布网站，还能拿到一个自定义网址，这里就是 corgiconfections.aistudio，一下就能把三个版本都发给潜在客户收反馈。我还在做产品经理的时候，Google AI Studio 就是我做这类原型的首选工具。它确实是个又简单又免费的方式，能把想法分享给团队、客户和其他任何人。去 aistudio.google.com 看看吧。我们回到正片。
[7:14]
Let's go to the beginning, actually, like, we actually still brainstorm ideas for the video that you can make next. Do you do like a competitive analysis, or like some sort of, what are people talking about, skill? Yeah, so one thing that I like to do, so my favorite skill is this YouTube researcher skill, if you want to set this up. Um, and I also, like, have a link to a lot of the skills that I've created on my website, if you guys want to check that out. It's free, I don't charge for that. Um, great. But it uses this thing called Supadata, which is one of my favorite APIs. It allows you to pull the full transcript from your videos, from any YouTube video, like in one second. So I can scrape an entire channel if I wanted to. I could just say, like, "YouTube researcher, create a Peter Yang bot," um, and or skill, and it can scrape all of your videos and it can act like you or something like that. Um, and so this is my YouTube researcher skill. And oftentimes when I use it, for me, when I create content, the intro is the most important part, and then the rest of the video is kind of free flowing. I'm naturally good at kind of explaining how to do things once the video, once I'm into the video, but the intro is really important. So another prompt that I have is called a hook outline. So hook outline will create a very specific type of document for me. And so I'm going to say, like, um, please, uh, look at the latest Alex Hormozi video and write a hook outline for it. And, like, whenever I find a good YouTube video, you can condense it down to a hook outline. What is the intro, and then, what, and then just outline the rest of the video. And what it'll do is it'll allow you to, like, you can take that exact format and apply it to a different video. And so that's what I do a lot, is I'll create a hook outline based on someone else's really well-performing video, and then I'll tell AI to
咱们其实回到最开头吧——下一条视频做什么，选题是怎么想出来的？你会做竞品分析，还是有什么「大家最近在聊什么」这类的 skill？有的，我最喜欢的就是这个 YouTube researcher skill，你要是想自己搭一个的话。另外我也把我做的很多 skill 都挂在我网站上了，有兴趣可以去看，免费的，我不收费。很好。它用的是 Supadata，这是我最喜欢的 API 之一。它能让你在一秒钟之内把任意 YouTube 视频的完整转写稿拉下来。所以我想的话可以直接爬一整个频道。我可以直接说「YouTube researcher，做一个 Peter Yang bot」，或者做成一个 skill，它就能把你所有视频爬下来，然后模仿你说话之类的。这就是我的 YouTube researcher skill。我用它的时候——对我来说，做内容时开头是最重要的部分，剩下的基本就是自由发挥。只要进了正题，我天生就挺会把事情讲清楚的，但开头真的很关键。所以我还有一个 prompt 叫 hook outline。hook outline 会给我生成一种格式非常特定的文档。比如我现在就说：请看一下 Alex Hormozi 最新那条视频，给它写一份 hook outline。只要我看到一条好的 YouTube 视频，就可以把它浓缩成一份 hook outline——开头讲了什么，然后把视频剩下的部分列成提纲。这么做的好处是，你可以把那个一模一样的结构套到另一条视频上。我经常这么干：拿别人一条数据特别好的视频做出 hook outline，然后让 AI
[9:04]
take all of my ideas for a new video and convert it into that structure, if that makes sense. Oh, that's interesting, yeah, I'm following it, yeah. So I've been using yt-dlp, but you're saying that this other thing can just pull the transcript in one second? Yeah, I mean it's just like a quick API call, like yt-dlp, if I'm not mistaken, it'll download the full video and then pull the transcript, that is super data-intensive. And, yeah, Supadata will just, you know, you can say spin up sub-agents, that's one thing you can do with Codex, and they have a really cool UI. You can just ask it to use sub-agents, and it'll split off into like six agents, and it will scrape it all in like 30 seconds. You can scrape an entire channel in like 30 seconds. [laughter] Got it. Not, I'm not promoting that you do this, but it is really good for research. So yeah, I mean it is a fact that the first 30 seconds, if it's boring, people will check out, right? So basically you don't do a full voiceover guide when you make a video, you just have the intro scripted out and then you have like an outline for the rest, is that right? Yes, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think with AI the fully scripted videos are going to go down in value. I think what will go up in value over time with AI is you have to hook the viewer, you have to play the game to some degree, but you also just want to get good at talking about the thing that you're super passionate about. And so that's what I like to do, I like to show the human side, and then having guests on is like a really good way to do it, like your podcast, you have a structured intro and then you just talk to someone for the rest of the time, and that's, I think, why people are here. And so you can see here, this is a very specific, um, format. Um, yeah, and one thing that's really annoying about Codex, and one of the reasons why I've been moving off of it, is because the GPT models won't pull the transcript. You can see here
把我为新视频攒的所有想法，套进那个结构里，你明白我意思吧。哦这个有意思，嗯，我跟上了。我一直用的是 yt-dlp，你的意思是这个工具能一秒钟就把转写稿拉出来？对，它就是一次很快的 API 调用。yt-dlp 我没记错的话是要先把整条视频下载下来再提转写稿，那个太吃数据了。而 Supadata 就直接给你了。另外你还可以让它开 sub-agent，这是 Codex 能干的一件事，而且他们的 UI 做得很酷。你直接让它用 sub-agent，它就会拆成大概六个 agent，30 秒左右全爬完。一整个频道 30 秒就爬完了。[笑声] 明白。我不是在鼓励大家这么干啊，但这确实对做调研非常好用。是啊，事实就是前 30 秒如果无聊，观众就跑了，对吧。所以基本上你做视频不会写完整口播稿，只把开头写成逐字稿，剩下列个提纲，是这样吗？对，就是这样。我觉得在 AI 时代，完全照稿念的视频会越来越不值钱。我觉得随着 AI 发展会越来越值钱的是——你必须钩住观众，这个游戏你多少得玩，但同时你也得练到能把自己真正热爱的那件事讲好。这就是我想做的，我喜欢展现出「人」的那一面，而请嘉宾就是个特别好的方式，就像你的播客，你有一个结构化的开场，然后剩下时间就是跟人聊天，我觉得这就是大家来听的原因。所以你可以看到，这是一个非常特定的格式。还有一点我觉得 Codex 特别烦人，也是我逐渐不用它的原因之一，就是 GPT 模型不肯把转写稿拉出来。你可以看到
[11:06]
that it summarized his intro, and the reason it did that is because of copyright infringement. Um, it didn't want to, because it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't. But Claude's models will do it without thinking. So that's why I've been using Claude for this use case. Yeah, interesting, um, that's funny that Claude is actually more open than GPT, it's the other way around. So, it's task dependent. Um, the open models don't care either, like GLM 5.2 will do it any time. So let's talk about hooks a little bit. I actually watched a couple other Codex videos, and I actually like how they're more educational. Even the hook is like, here's what I'm going to cover in this video, as opposed to, you know, Codex is like the most freaking amazing, like super hype stuff. So is that like a choice, or, yeah, I kind of feel like you have more substance. Yeah, I mean, I try, when I make videos I try to make it about the topic rather than any specific tool, right. I always like to make it clear that even if someone uses Claude Code, they're going to get value out of the video. And so the best video that I did on Codex, which got 300,000 views, which I think is the one you're referring to, um, that was like the nine ways to use Codex.
它把人家的开头做成了一段总结，之所以这样是因为版权问题。它不愿意，因为它不……对，它就是不肯。但 Claude 的模型二话不说就给你干了。所以这个场景我一直在用 Claude。有意思，好玩的是 Claude 反而比 GPT 更开放，一般人印象里是反过来的。所以这还是看任务而定。开源模型也完全不在乎，比如 GLM 5.2 什么时候都照做。那咱们聊聊 hook 吧。我还看了另外几条讲 Codex 的视频，我挺喜欢你这种更偏教学向的做法。连 hook 都是「这条视频我要讲哪些东西」，而不是那种「Codex 简直牛翻了」的纯炒作。这是你有意为之，还是说——对，我觉得你的内容更有干货。是的，我做视频的时候尽量让内容是关于这个主题本身，而不是某个具体工具，对吧。我总想说清楚一点：就算你用的是 Claude Code，看这条视频你照样有收获。我做过的关于 Codex 最好的一条视频拿了 30 万播放，我猜你说的就是那条，那条叫「Codex 的九种用法」。
[12:20]
But I made it clear in the beginning, by the way, you can do all of this in Claude Desktop as well, most of the things you can do in Claude Cowork as well. And I like to focus on the specific outcomes that they'll get from the video, um, which I think is really useful to establish in an intro. So okay, so if you have some tips for, you know, for like newbie YouTubers like me, talk about the outcomes first and then get into the content, right, is that kind of, yeah, talk about the outcome. In fact, I would, I don't know, did we film the intro already, or do you do a separate intro? Are you going to film a separate intro? I usually cut a separate intro from the best parts of our conversation. Yeah, okay, that's what I do. Yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense. And then do you do like another little intro where you say, like, today you're going to learn this, this, and this, or do you just kind of go straight into the video? When I was introducing you, like, that was kind of my intro, like, talk about how you're going to use it to run your creator business and so on. Yeah, I mean, for me, if I were you, I would be doing testing. Like obviously you want to get really good guests that are really knowledgeable on certain things, and that's something that you can, and probably already are, trying to improve, but I would just test different intro types until you find the winning format. You will find that, um, you know, there's actually a really good acronym, it's called BRENS, which is big, relatable, easy, let me see, zoom in here, easy, uh, new, and safe. The more of these you can include in your intro, the better, right. Big, like, there's a brand new model that just came out, it's the best in the world, make it big. Um, relatable is you find some theme, so, like you say, like there's this new model, it's absolutely insane, it just came out and it's going to affect everyone,
但我在开头就讲明白了：顺便说一句，这些在 Claude Desktop 里也全都能做，大部分东西在 Claude Cowork 里也能做。而且我喜欢聚焦在观众看完这条视频能拿到什么具体结果上，我觉得在开头把这个交代清楚特别有用。好，那如果给我这种 YouTube 新手一点建议的话，就是先讲结果、再进入正文，对吧？对，先讲结果。说起来我不知道——我们刚才已经拍过开场了吗，还是你会单独录一段开场？你会单独录吗？我一般是从我们的对话里挑最好的片段，剪一个单独的开场。嗯好，我也是这么干的。对对，那就说得通了。那你会不会再录一小段开场，说「今天你会学到这个、这个和这个」，还是直接进正片？我刚才介绍你的那段，差不多就算我的开场了，就是讲你怎么用它来跑你的创作者事业之类的。嗯，我要是你的话，我会去做测试。当然你肯定想请到真正懂行的好嘉宾，这件事你可以改进，而且你大概已经在做了，但我会不断测试不同的开场类型，直到找到那个能赢的格式。你会发现——其实有个特别好的缩写词叫 BRENS：big（大）、relatable（有共鸣）、easy（简单）、我看一下，放大点看，easy、new（新）、safe（安全）。你的开场里能包含的要素越多越好，对吧。big 就比如说——有个全新的模型刚发布，是全世界最强的，把事情说大。relatable 就是你要找到一个大家都有共鸣的点，比如你说，有个新模型出来了，简直离谱，刚刚发布，而且会影响到每一个人，
[14:10] Riley
or it's going to go into every business, right, that's relatable. Uh, easy is, like, by the way, I have a six step method that you can follow that will guarantee that you will be successful, right, like when you introduce some sort of methodology, here are these nine tips that you can follow that will guarantee, easy. Uh, new, obviously people like things that are new, so like this brand new model is also big and new. And then safe is the one that's really important. Um, safe, is, good, is important, this is only really important for videos like over 30 minutes, it's like you want to make sure the user feels safe watching, that they're not going to waste their time watching the video. And the way that you do that is you say, like, "By the way, this guy's an expert, he's going to talk about these things, and I promise you by the end of the video you will get value out of it." And you want to make sure that they feel like their time is, yes, got it. And how do you think about, so do you start with the hook, or how do you think about the title and the thumbnail? Right, because some, I don't think about any of that, I think about that after. So, like, I think about the thing that I want to talk about in the video, which is like Codex tips, right. This is something that I would want, like I don't do a lot of research on what I should talk about, I feel it in my heart, like my gut tells me what I should talk about, and for 90% of the video it's just me, like I'll outline it, but it's just me getting into the weeds and talking about how I actually use this tool on a day-to-day basis. But then the last 10% is like, okay, how do we get people to watch it, and that's where the science goes in. And so, um, I start with a list of everything that I'm going to talk about in the video, and I just outline that, and then I film the whole video, and then oftentimes I'll film the hook after. Um, like a completely separate video,
或者说它会渗透进每一个行业——对，这就是「有共鸣」。「简单」呢，比如说：顺便讲一下，我有一套六步法，你照着做就一定能成，对吧？就是那种抛出某种方法论的说法——这里有九条建议，照着做就一定能怎样，这就是「简单」。「新」就不用说了，人天生喜欢新东西，所以「全新模型」这种既是大事又是新事。然后「安全」这一条特别重要。「安全」这一条很关键，不过它主要是对 30 分钟以上的长视频重要——你得让观众看得安心，觉得自己不会白白浪费时间。做法就是你告诉他们：「顺便说一句，这位是这方面的专家，他会讲这么几件事，我保证你看完这期一定有收获。」你要让他们觉得自己的时间花得值。 是，明白了。那你是怎么考虑的——你是先从 hook 开始，还是先想标题和 thumbnail？ 因为有些人……我根本不先想这些，都是事后再想。我先想的是这期视频我想讲什么，比如 Codex 的使用技巧。这是我自己就想看的东西。我不会花很多精力去研究「我该讲什么」，我靠心里的感觉，直觉告诉我该讲什么。视频里 90% 的内容就是我自己在讲——我会列个提纲，但基本上就是我埋头钻进细节，讲我每天到底是怎么用这个工具的。剩下那 10% 才是：好，怎么让人来看？这时候「科学」才上场。所以我的流程是：先列一份这期要讲的所有内容，列成提纲，然后把整期录完，而 hook 往往是最后才补录的——就像录一段完全独立的视频，
[16:00] Riley
because sometimes I'll go off on a tangent in one of my videos, like some of my best videos I end up on like a 30-minute tangent, [laughter], but I want to make sure that my intro talks about that thing that I do. So that's why I just do my intros at the end, and I use AI to analyze everything I talk about, and then that informs my transcript, and then I'll have the YouTube researcher say, like, "Here's the transcript for my video, I need a good intro, scrape YouTube until you find a good format, and then copy it and make it about what I'm talking about," if that makes sense. Oh, that's super interesting, dude, 'cause like I know a bunch of other YouTubers who make the thumbnail first, and if the thumbnail is not good, then they would not even make the video. But I guess, um, yeah, well, I mean, maybe, you know, like for me the most sustainable strategy for content is just to keep doing things that I like. And if I let packaging and how many views it'll get dictate what content I make, then it just becomes a soulless game to me. Like I would much rather make what I want and then package it after the fact, than to just be, you know, only about viral ideas. Then I would end up, you know, it's like, why not, then I'll end up making dance videos on TikTok, which is something I don't [laughter] want to do, you know. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to think about what gives you energy, right, and follow your own curiosity. If you can make content following your own curiosity, that's the best, you know? 100%.
因为我有时候在视频里会跑题跑得很远，我最好的几期视频最后都扯了半小时的题（笑），但我要保证片头讲的就是我实际讲了的那件事。所以我才把片头放到最后做。我会用 AI 分析我在视频里讲的所有内容，用它来指导片头的稿子，然后让 YouTube 研究员去干活：「这是我这期视频的转写稿，我需要一个好片头，去 YouTube 上扒，扒到一个好的开头格式为止，然后照着套，把内容换成我讲的东西。」不知道这样说清楚没有。 哦，这太有意思了，兄弟。因为我认识一堆 YouTuber 是先做 thumbnail 的，thumbnail 不行，这期视频他们干脆就不做了。 嗯，我是觉得……也许吧。对我来说，做内容最可持续的策略就是一直做我喜欢的东西。如果我让「包装」和「能拿多少播放量」来决定我做什么内容，那这事对我来说就变成一场没有灵魂的游戏了。我宁愿先做我想做的、事后再包装，也不想满脑子只有爆款点子。不然我最后会……你想想，为什么不呢？那我最后就该去 TikTok 上拍跳舞视频了，那是我完全不想干的事（笑）。 对对，所以你得想清楚什么能给你能量，跟着自己的好奇心走。如果你能顺着自己的好奇心做内容，那是最好的，对吧？ 完全同意。
[17:24] Riley
Yeah, yeah, and then, um, to kind of continue talking about Codex, you know, like I have a lot of skills in here, um, one thing that's really fun to do is I use Excalidraw in my videos a lot. A lot of people watch my videos, like, I diagram things out a lot of the time. So there's a skill called Excalidraw diagrams that you can use, and you can literally just tell Codex, "Hey, I need an Excalidraw diagram skill," or "make an Excalidraw diagram," and it'll just make it, and then the link, you can just paste it into Excalidraw. Um, it'll actually open it in the browser, and it makes really good diagrams of different ideas. That's one that's really useful. I also have a YouTube thumbnail skill. This one will get me into trouble a little bit, because literally my YouTube ideation strategy, when I have to come up with a YouTube thumbnail, is I will just scrape a hundred thumbnails that performed really well and put my face on it, and then I'll ask AI to just, like, replace those, with my face, and then I'll have AI edit the color. Um, which, some people would get mad at me for that, but that's been a really useful skill. Um, and yeah, I just have a ton of things that I've ended up using over and over again.
对，那接着聊 Codex。我这里装了很多 skill。有一个特别好玩的是，我视频里经常用 Excalidraw。很多人爱看我的视频，就是因为我很喜欢把东西画成图。所以有个叫 Excalidraw diagrams 的 skill，你可以直接跟 Codex 说：「嘿，我需要一个 Excalidraw 画图的 skill」，或者「给我画一张 Excalidraw 图」，它就直接做出来，然后给你一个链接，你粘到 Excalidraw 里就行。它其实会直接在浏览器里打开，而且各种概念的图画得相当好。这个 skill 非常实用。我还有一个 YouTube thumbnail 的 skill。这个说出来可能会让我挨点骂，因为我做 YouTube thumbnail 的构思策略就是：扒一百张数据特别好的 thumbnail，把我的脸放上去，然后让 AI 把原来的人脸换成我的脸，再让 AI 调一下配色。有些人会为这个骂我，但这个 skill 真的特别好用。反正就是这样，我攒了一堆反复在用的东西。
[18:41] Riley
Um, also there's a Typefully skill. So if I get an idea for content, um, this can control my Typefully, which is connected to my Twitter. So it can, like, really quickly draft up my tweet ideas. Like if I'm working on something, or come across something, I'll be like, "Hey, draft a tweet on this." And then every Monday I check my Typefully and fire off those tweets. Oh, interesting. And so what I'm trying to get at is, like, all of these skills did not come from me sitting down and thinking, "Okay, what skills do I need to create?" I just use AI to do stuff, and then everything that's useful that I do over and over again, I just tell Codex, "Turn this into a skill," and then over time I get in the habit of using certain skills, and sometimes I'll stop using skills. But that's kind of the thing, and the reason why I love Codex so much is they have so many built-in plugins, and their in-app browser is really cool. Um, in fact, right before we were filming this video, I was working on a short form script, and the way that I write all my short form scripts is I just start a new Notion page, um, in Codex. And so I have this video database, this is where I keep track of everything, right, this is my long form videos, here are my short form videos that I keep track of. Because it's in-app browser is becoming a full in-app browser, I can use it directly inside Codex.
另外还有一个 Typefully 的 skill。我一有内容点子，它就能操控我的 Typefully——Typefully 是连着我 Twitter 的。所以它能很快把我的推文想法起草出来。比如我正在做什么东西，或者刷到什么有意思的，我就说：「嘿，就这个写条推文。」然后每周一我打开 Typefully，把这些推文一口气发出去。 哦，有意思。 我想说的是，这些 skill 没有一个是我坐下来专门想「好，我该建哪些 skill」想出来的。我就是拿 AI 干活，凡是有用、而且我反复在做的事，我就跟 Codex 说：「把这个做成一个 skill。」时间久了我就养成了用某些 skill 的习惯，当然也有些 skill 我后来就不用了。大概就是这么回事。我这么喜欢 Codex 的原因是，它内置的插件特别多，而且它的应用内浏览器非常酷。其实就在我们录这期之前，我还在写一个短视频脚本。我写所有短视频脚本的方式，就是在 Codex 里新建一个 Notion 页面。我有这么一个视频数据库，所有东西都在这儿记着——这是我的长视频，这些是我记录的短视频。因为它的应用内浏览器正在变成一个完整的浏览器，我可以直接在 Codex 里面用。
[20:06] Riley
And so what I want to show you really quickly, right, I could say, "Hey, I want to make a short form video on the latest, uh, Meta Ray-Bans. Please add a new short form in progress to Notion and give me the link." Right, I'll often do this, I'll usually say more stuff, like more ideas. I'm just trying to illustrate the point that, like, right now the agent is going to go into my Notion, it's going to add it into the database correctly, and then it's going to give me a link, and I'll be able to open that up directly in the app, I won't have to leave Codex, it'll just open directly inside Codex, which is such a fun workflow. Like, I love not having to leave the app, I get lost when I switch from tab to tab. You see here it gave me a Notion link, I can just click open in browser, and look at that, it added this. So it added the notes in here, which is fine, but it did create the Notion database. And I can say, like, um, "Please make the outline in the body, and please make it with a good hook." I would normally use, um, say that this will be a huge opportunity if they take off, for creating apps on these glasses, I don't know. And yeah, you just control the Notion, which is really fun.
我快速给你演示一下。我可以说：「嘿，我想做一期关于最新款 Meta Ray-Ban 眼镜的短视频。请在 Notion 里新增一条状态为『进行中』的短视频，然后把链接给我。」我经常这么干，平时我会说得更细，塞更多想法进去。我只是想说明这件事：现在这个 agent 会进到我的 Notion，把这条正确地加进数据库，然后把链接给我，而我可以直接在应用里打开——不用离开 Codex，它就在 Codex 里面打开，这个工作流太爽了。我特别喜欢不用离开当前应用，标签页一多我就迷路。你看这儿，它给了我一个 Notion 链接，我点「在浏览器中打开」，看，它已经加进去了。它把笔记也写进来了，这没问题，反正它确实往 Notion 数据库里建了条目。然后我还可以说：「请把提纲写进正文里，而且要配一个好的 hook。」我平时还会补一句，比如说：如果这类眼镜真起来了，在上面做 App 会是个巨大的机会，不好说。就这样，你直接就把 Notion 操控起来了，挺好玩的。
[21:45] Riley
And this is how I use Google Docs and Notion, and my calendar as well, like I'll just say, give me a link to the calendar event, and I'll open it in the in-app browser so I can just see it right there. And it can also write all of my emails, which I have it do all the time. Yeah, I have it write my emails too. Yeah, okay, so so basically then, one day you can just wake up and, like, you have a bunch of scripts already, and you can just batch process, you can just record them in batches, right, or something. Yeah, yeah, I think that's where everyone's brain goes at first, is to like batch and create more. What I want is better, I like whenever I create content, I'm always thinking about how to create stuff that's better. And what I want is, like, I want multiple tabs to open up, you know, in the background, of relevant things that might be useful. Like Codex would be like, "Hey, by the way, I opened up this link, you may want to, in this one specific line, you should do this." And so I will actually use it to just get AI to fact-check everything that I'm talking about in this video, or I'll just send it off and say, like, "Hey, can you go and check this creator's videos, he has really good pacing in his videos, can you please figure out a way that we can implement that into this video?" It'll go off for 10 minutes and come back. And that's kind of how I see this, is, like, you can do research so much faster, so it allows you to put more total research into one video. Um, because I think the moat is quality over a long period of time versus batching. Batching will make it soulless over time. So that's kind of how I think about it, and I would encourage others to do so.
我用 Google Docs、Notion 还有我的日历都是这么用的。我会直接说：给我这个日程的链接，然后在应用内浏览器里打开，当场就能看到。它还能帮我写所有邮件，我一直让它写。 对，我也让它写邮件。 好，那这么说，你某天早上一睁眼，一堆脚本已经写好了，你就可以批量处理，批量录制，对吧？ 对，我觉得所有人一开始想到的都是「批量、多产」。但我要的是「更好」。我每次做内容，想的都是怎么把东西做得更好。我想要的是：后台自动帮我打开好几个标签页，都是可能有用的相关内容。比如 Codex 会说：「嘿，顺便说一句，我打开了这个链接，你可能想看看——具体在这一句上，你应该这么处理。」所以我其实会用它给这期视频里我讲的所有内容做事实核查。或者我直接把任务甩出去：「嘿，你去看看这个创作者的视频，他的节奏把控特别好，能不能想个办法把这种节奏用到我这期视频里？」它跑十分钟再回来给我结果。我对这件事的理解就是：你的调研速度快太多了，所以你能往一期视频里投入更多的调研总量。因为我认为护城河是「长期的高质量」，而不是批量生产。批量做久了会把内容做得没有灵魂。这就是我的想法，我也建议别人这么做。
[23:18] Riley
Got it. At this point in your creative journey, like, how many short forms are you publishing every week, one or two that are high quality? Yeah, I mean, I would like to create a video once a day, honestly, like five days a week I would love to create a high quality short form video. Um, yeah, as of late I'm trying to get my long form to like four videos a week first, and I think four long form, five short form is my goal for sure, I think that would be good. And it won't be too hard. I make one or two videos a week and I'm already exhausted, so [laughter], I have to use Codex more. Yeah, I use Codex more. Yeah, I don't know, I like it, it's fun to make content, I don't know. Yeah, dude, I have to ask you, okay, so let me ask a few more questions about the skills that you kind of showed. So the Excalidraw skill, do you use that after you have the script, or before you have the script, like, you make the diagrams? Yeah, I mean, I think I will just blabber, so, 99%, I'm not, I know I'm typing now because this is a podcast, and I don't want to use Wispr Flow, I use Wispr Flow for everything. And so what I will do sometimes, um, I got these AirPods Max because they have a better mic, I'll just turn on Wispr Flow and I'll just walk around for 10 minutes, just speaking all of my ideas, like, "Oh, I'm gonna make a video on Codex, the things that I've been thinking about this week are this, this, and this, and this. I want you to create an Excalidraw diagram of this, this, and this." I have, you know, um, and then I'll literally tell it, I want nine slides, and my Excalidraw diagram skill does it in a very specific style, which has just sections to them.
明白。到你创作生涯的现阶段，你每周发多少条短视频？一两条高质量的？ 说实话，我希望能一天出一条，一周五天，每天都能出一条高质量的短视频。最近我是想先把长视频提到一周四条，我觉得四条长视频加五条短视频肯定是我的目标，那样应该挺好的，而且也不会太难。 我一周做一两条视频就已经累瘫了（笑），看来我得多用用 Codex。 对，多用 Codex。 我也说不好，我就是喜欢，做内容挺好玩的。 哎兄弟，我得问你几个问题，关于你刚才展示的那些 skill。Excalidraw 那个 skill，你是写完脚本之后用，还是写脚本之前就用——先把图画出来？ 嗯，我一般就是一通瞎白话。99% 的情况下我不是……我知道我现在是在打字，因为这是在录播客，我不想用 Wispr Flow，但平时我什么都用 Wispr Flow。我有时候会这么干：我买这副 AirPods Max 就是因为它麦克风更好，我打开 Wispr Flow，然后到处溜达十分钟，把脑子里所有想法都说出来，比如：「哦，我要做一期关于 Codex 的视频，我这周一直在想的几件事是这个、这个、还有这个。我要你把这几件事画成 Excalidraw 图。」然后我会明确告诉它我要九张，而我的 Excalidraw 画图 skill 会按一种非常固定的风格来做，每张图都是分区块的。
[24:53] Riley
And yeah, I'll just blabber for 10 minutes, and then I'll be done, and I'll just run it, and then I'll come back, and it will have like 80% of the diagrams that I'll actually use in my videos, and I'll edit them. I'll take 20, 30 minutes to edit them, but it's like a really good starting point. Um, it just organizes my ideas, and yeah, huge fan of Wispr Flow for that reason. Okay, so so okay, so the slides actually kind of frame the rest of the video, right, because you want to cover like eight slides, and do some demos and stuff. Yes, yes, got it. So then I have to ask you about the thumbnail skill, because I have a lot of trouble using AI to make thumbnails for some reason. So, sure. So what I found is that it's actually really bad at changing your face, or maybe I don't know how to prompt it, if I give it like a picture of me smiling and tell it to change to a frown or like a surprise, it totally distorts my face, dude, so, like, do you mostly apply your face afterwards? So, um, one of my most popular tools that I talk about that I use with Codex is a tool called Paper. Paper is an AI-native Figma, and when I say AI-native I mean that it is an application built for AI first, this, they basically took a lot of the good stuff about Figma and made it really easy to connect to any tool. And so when I'm using my thumbnail skill, I will say, "Hey, I need you to scrape," this is a short form video that I'm releasing in a couple days, uh, where I ask AI to scrape Alex Hormozi and Dan Martell's YouTube thumbnails and place them on the Paper board.
我就这么瞎说十分钟，说完就完事了，把任务跑起来，回来一看，里面 80% 的图我视频里真的能用，剩下我再改一改。改图我会花个二三十分钟，但这已经是一个非常好的起点了。它等于帮我把想法理顺了。所以我是 Wispr Flow 的铁粉，就是因为这个。 好，那这些图其实就把整期视频的框架搭出来了，对吧？因为你要覆盖大概八张图，中间再穿插一些演示。 对，是的。 明白。那我得问问 thumbnail 那个 skill，因为不知道为什么，用 AI 做 thumbnail 我特别费劲。 你说。 我发现它其实很不擅长改人脸，也可能是我不会写 prompt——我给它一张我笑着的照片，让它改成皱眉或者吃惊的表情，它就把我的脸整个扭曲了。所以你主要是事后再把自己的脸贴上去吗？ 嗯，我跟 Codex 配合用的工具里，被我提得最多的一个叫 Paper。Paper 是一个 AI 原生的 Figma。我说 AI 原生，意思是它是一个从一开始就为 AI 而造的应用——他们基本上把 Figma 里好的部分都拿过来了，然后做得特别容易连接到任何工具。所以我用我的 thumbnail skill 的时候，我会说：「嘿，我要你去扒……」这是我过几天要发的一条短视频，我让 AI 去扒 Alex Hormozi 和 Dan Martell 的 YouTube thumbnail，然后把它们放到 Paper 的画板上。
[26:22] Riley
Codex will go off for 10 minutes finding his most popular videos for each one, and then it will place them on this board. Now all I have to do is I can come here, and since I have images of me, right, this is a thumbnail of me, I can duplicate it, and then I will just come here and do a lot of it manually. So, like, I'll grab this one of Alex Hormozi, I'll drag this over here, and then, um, Paper has AI image generation built in. And so, watch this, I can just go like this, select this, uh, "Please replace the guy with a beard with the guy that doesn't have a beard, just replace the guy, except make his shirt white, and make him wearing a chain." And then, you want to wear a chain? Yeah, just because, you know, this podcast is important, it's important that I'm wearing a chain in this thumbnail. Yes, it's quite important. But it looks like it's generating multiple thumbnails. Oh yeah, I just spam-pressed enter, so it's creating uh, seven versions of it. And then I'll just kind of select the right one. And you can see kind of my natural progression, right, you can see that this says "game changer," I took this and then I converted it into one for me, um, and here are my thumbnails.
Codex 会跑上 10 分钟，把每个人最热门的视频挨个找出来，然后全部摆到这块画板上。接下来我要做的就是——我可以到这儿来，因为我有自己的图片，对吧，这是一张我的 thumbnail，我复制一份，然后过来手动做很多调整。比如我把 Alex Hormozi 这张拽过来，拖到这边，然后呢，Paper 内置了 AI 图像生成。所以你看好，我就这么一框，选中这个，然后说：'请把这个有胡子的人换成那个没胡子的人，只换人，但把他的衬衫换成白色，再给他戴条链子。'——你还要戴链子？对，就是因为，你知道，这期播客很重要，所以我在这张 thumbnail 里戴条链子是很有必要的。是，相当重要。不过看起来它在一次生成好几张 thumbnail？对，我狂敲了几下回车，所以它在生成七个版本，然后我再挑出对的那个。你也能看到我一路演进的轨迹，对吧，你看这张写着 'game changer'，我把它拿过来改成了我自己的版本，这些就是我的 thumbnail。
[27:35] Riley
And it's kind of fun to see the progression of the thumbnails that I've created, over the, you know, I created this one right here, which was based on this one. This is Andrei Jikh, he has great thumbnails. And so that's kind of how my thumbnail process, I don't like to think about thumbnails for that long, I despise making thumbnails manually, so this is great for me. Oh dude, this is amazing, so okay, so it basically just replaced it, it kept his hand, it looks like, yeah, it kept his hand, I could have specified to change it. But then at any time, you know, like what I like to do, I'll zoom in on this one, right, you know, this is not bad. I can come in, oops, and come in again and make it small, I like to make it smaller. And then I'll just make more variations, like, "Hey, please smooth out the face without changing what the character looks like." And then also add, like, an outline glow that is kind of whitish orange around him to separate him from the background, and make the green line brighter. And then I'll just kind of iterate on it. Um, and this gives you this kind of starting point. But the useful part about Codex is Codex has full control over Paper. Um, and so it can just add useful thumbnails to it, because again, you know, going back to what you were saying about, uh, what did you call it, chain prompting or something. Um, yeah, it can go off, do a thing, and then it can use a different skill and place it on the board, because it has that access. And yeah, and do you have some sort of, uh, okay, so right now you're just prompting in Paper, right, with Wispr Flow, yeah. Do you have some sort of like a style guide, or, you know, your text is always white or something? You don't need that. Like, so, I actually have a YouTube thumbnail designer too, and he uses AI all the time, and he helps me with this, and I'll actually send him these.
看着自己做过的 thumbnail 这一路的演进还挺有意思的，比如我做的这张，就是照着这张来的。这是 Andrei Jikh，他的 thumbnail 做得特别好。所以我的 thumbnail 流程大概就是这样，我不想在 thumbnail 上花太多脑子，我特别讨厌手动做 thumbnail，所以这套方式对我来说太爽了。哥们儿，这也太厉害了，它基本上就是把人替换掉了，手还保留着，看起来是，对，手留下来了，我本来也可以指定把手一起改掉。然后任何时候，你知道，我喜欢这么干，我把这张放大，对吧，你看，这张不赖。我可以再进来，哎呀，再进来一次，把它缩小，我喜欢弄小一点。然后我就再多生成几个变体，比如'嘿，请把脸磨平滑一点，但别改变人物的长相'，再加一圈外发光轮廓，偏白偏橙的那种，把他跟背景分开，再把那条绿线调亮。然后我就这么一轮轮迭代。这样你就得到了一个起点。但 Codex 真正有用的地方在于，Codex 对 Paper 有完全的控制权。所以它能直接把有用的 thumbnail 加进来，因为，回到你刚才说的那个——你管它叫什么来着，chain prompting 还是什么？对，它可以先跑去干一件事，然后再调用另一个 skill，把结果放到画板上，因为它有这个权限。——那你有没有某种，好，所以你现在就是在 Paper 里直接 prompt，对吧，用 Wispr Flow，对。你有没有某种 style guide，比如你的文字永远是白色之类的？不需要那个。其实我还有一位专门做 YouTube thumbnail 的设计师，他一直在用 AI，他会帮我做这些，我也会把这些发给他。
[29:30] Riley
I could use these and it would do pretty well. I love having someone who is constantly doing the A/B testing and everything. Like, I do a lot of A/B testing because, like, why not, it's worth paying for, because, yeah, like if your video does twice as good, that's a big deal. See, it kind of made the outline here. Um, but in terms of style guide, if I want it to look like something, I'll just use it as a reference. So here I have, somewhere I have all my thumbnails, um, I don't know where I put it, but, like, let's say I wanted it to look like this, I would just copy this thumbnail, bring it up here, and then I would say, and you can very easily copy multiple, so I can literally copy, select this one, and then I can select this one, and I could say, like, "Please make the guy look more like this, and make the text match the one that says Miss Mythos and Fable," and that's how you do style references, you know, and you don't need to do any prompting, you just, um, you know a lot of these image models are called Nano Banana. And so you can just think of prompting, you can prompt in visuals, you can say, "Look, make it look like this, make the text look like this." And so that's, that's why I like the board, it's like I can just be like, "Oh yeah, I want it to look like this." And then I'll just use AI to make it look more like that, if that makes sense.
我拿这些去用，效果也会相当不错。我很喜欢有个人一直在帮我跑 A/B 测试之类的事。我做特别多 A/B 测试，因为，为什么不呢，这钱花得值，因为如果你的视频数据翻一倍，那可是大事。你看，它把这圈轮廓做出来了。至于 style guide，如果我想让它长成某个样子，我就直接拿那个当参考。我这儿有，某个地方存着我所有的 thumbnail，我忘了放哪儿了，不过比如说我想让它长得像这张，我就把这张 thumbnail 复制过来，拖到这边，然后我就说——而且多选特别方便，我可以直接复制，选中这张，再选中这张，然后我就说'请把这个人做得更像这张，文字风格照着写着 Miss Mythos and Fable 的那张来'，风格参考就是这么用的。你完全不需要写什么 prompt，你知道，很多图像模型，比如 Nano Banana，你可以把 prompt 理解成——你可以用视觉来 prompt，你就说'看，做成这个样子，文字做成这样'。所以这就是我喜欢画板的原因，我可以直接说'哦对，我想要长成这样'，然后让 AI 把它往那个方向做，你懂我意思吧。
[30:49]
Dude, this is like super educational for me, okay, I think I'm going to become a Paper customer now too. Yeah, you should 100% do this. Yeah, you should 100% do this, and get all of your top 10 performing thumbnails and toss them on the board, right, you don't need to use Codex, if you had my YouTube thumbnail skill, you could just say Codex, do that, and it would be done. All right, dude, well, you definitely blew my mind with this thumbnail thing, this helps a lot. Yeah, I don't even know what other question to ask you, that's something, so mind-blowing, you know? Yeah, I mean, and then, I think what it all comes down to, if I were to summarize, is just find useful workflows and turn them into skills, and the more skills you use, the more you'll realize that you can mix and match. Like this here is a mix between my YouTube researcher skill, I just had an idea one day, I'm like, "Hey, can you pull all these images?" And then it gave it to me in this list, and then I had to go into my downloads and see it, and I couldn't visualize it. I was like, "Oh wait, you can add it to Paper." And, because I'd been using the Paper skill to create designs, right, this is, Paper's not made for images really, it's made to, like, you can ask it to create full designs, and it'll do that. And then I was like, "Wait, can you add this to Paper?" And then it unlocked this whole new workflow for me. And you'll, the biggest unlocks you'll find when using AI will come from this experimentation process, that's just really fun.
哥们儿，这对我来说太长知识了，好吧，我觉得我也得成为 Paper 的用户了。对，你百分之百该这么干。你就把你数据最好的十张 thumbnail 全扔到画板上，对吧，你甚至不需要用 Codex，如果你有我那个 YouTube thumbnail skill，你直接跟 Codex 说'去干这件事'，它就搞定了。行吧哥们儿，你这套 thumbnail 玩法是真把我震到了，帮助特别大。对，我都不知道还该问你什么了，太颠覆认知了，你知道吗？我是说，如果让我总结的话，归根结底就是：找到有用的工作流，把它变成 skill。你用的 skill 越多，就越会发现它们可以自由混搭组合。就像这个，其实是我那个 YouTube 研究员 skill 跟别的东西的混搭。我有一天突然冒出个想法，'嘿，你能不能把这些图片全都拉下来？'然后它给了我一个列表，我还得跑到下载文件夹里去翻，根本没法直观看到全貌。我当时就想，'等等，你可以把它加到 Paper 里啊。'因为我之前一直在用 Paper skill 做设计稿，对吧，Paper 其实不是为图片做的，它是让你去——你可以让它做完整的设计，它也确实能做。然后我就想'等等，你能不能把这个加进 Paper？'结果就给我解锁了一整套全新的工作流。而你用 AI 时最大的那些解锁，往往都来自这种试来试去的过程，这个过程真的特别好玩。
[32:08]
Do you look at the skill files manually, no, you just look at the output, right? No, I've never looked at a skill file once, like, it's test-based, it's like, ask AI to do a thing, use a skill, if it does properly, great. If it doesn't, you tell the AI, "Hey, you didn't do a good job," and then, uh, "please change the skill so that you don't do that again." Then you want to go to a new chat, so the context is cleared, so you can test it again. Test the agent in a new chat, see if it does it successfully. If it does it successfully, great, right, and once it does it incorrectly, you update the skill, right. That is the way better way to do it than to manually edit the skill. And there's a lot of people saying, like, "Oh, you need to write your skill like this, or else it's not going to perform well." It's like, first of all, that's only true with that model, and it's only true with that model today, right, as soon as there's model updates. So I think you just want to be outcome-based, right, hold your AI to a certain standard, and then you can turn it into a skill and improve it by measuring their outcomes. That's basically how I do it for most creative workflows. Yeah, and I feel like a lot of these skills are just super personalized for you, or for me, that's kind of the power, right? I feel like that's why skills is kind of taking over a lot of the SaaS stuff, because, you know, you can't make a SaaS product as personalized as this. Yes, and actually, I will caveat that with, this is for my creative workflows, right, they're very low risk. You know, if we were doing some mission-critical thing, which we actually do, like when we're dealing with clients, or when it has to do with anything that has to do with payments or sensitive documents, yes, we'll go in and analyze the skills, and there's kind of like a process, we'll get someone else to analyze the skill if it's super high impact. But for my creative
你会手动去看 skill 文件吗？不会，你只看输出结果对吧？不看，我一次都没看过 skill 文件，这完全是基于测试的：让 AI 去做一件事，用某个 skill，做对了，很好。做得不对，你就告诉 AI'嘿，你这次做得不行'，然后'请把 skill 改一下，别再犯这个错'。接着你要开一个新对话，把上下文清空，这样才能重新测。在新对话里测这个 agent，看它能不能做对。做对了，很好，对吧。一旦它做错了，你就更新 skill。这个方式比手动去编辑 skill 好太多了。现在有一堆人说'哦，你的 skill 必须这么写，不然效果不好'。问题是，第一，那只对那个模型成立，而且只对今天的那个模型成立，对吧，模型一更新就变了。所以我觉得你应该以结果为导向，给你的 AI 定一个标准，然后把它变成 skill，靠衡量结果来改进它。我大部分创意类工作流基本都是这么搞的。对，而且我感觉这些 skill 很多都是高度个性化的，为你、或者为我量身定制的，这正是它的威力所在，对吧？我感觉这就是为什么 skill 正在吞掉很多 SaaS 的地盘，因为你做不出一个能个性化到这个程度的 SaaS 产品。没错。不过我得补充一句：这说的是我的创意类工作流，它们风险很低。如果我们在做一些关键任务——我们确实也在做，比如跟客户打交道的时候，或者任何涉及支付、涉及敏感文档的事，那我们会进去仔细分析这些 skill，而且有一套流程，如果影响特别大，我们会再找另一个人来审这个 skill。但对我的创意类
[33:49] Riley
workflows, just realize that there's no risk, just let your AI cook and tell it to do a better job. Um, and then, yeah, the next thing for me is figuring out how to make this for my team. And that's what I think Codex and Claude, or Anthropic and OpenAI, they're trying to figure out, it's like, how do you enable this process with teams? And that's going to be a really interesting situation. And it feels like Anthropic's going after Slack. Um, and so that's kind of the next wave, maybe, I'm not fully sold on Slack as the interface, but there's something really interesting going on there that, um, yeah, I find it to be really interesting. Yeah, I think you're right, I think, like, as good as the Codex app is, it's like a single player experience, right, other than, like, putting PRs up and stuff, it's pretty much a single player experience. It is single player, and it's really hard to create these creative workflows in a multiplayer way, which is something I think about a lot. So yeah. Do you have, like, a bunch of automation setups that kind of do work for you? Like, yes, I have a lot of automation set up. I don't use Codex for my automations, simply because I don't want my computer to have to be on to run those. Um, and so I have Claude agents. Yeah, and so, like, I have a lot of Claude agents.
工作流来说，你要意识到根本没什么风险，就放手让你的 AI 去干，然后告诉它做得更好点。然后呢，我接下来要琢磨的就是怎么把这套东西做给我的团队用。我觉得这也正是 Codex 和 Claude、或者说 Anthropic 和 OpenAI 都在琢磨的事——怎么让这套流程在团队里跑起来？那会是个特别有意思的局面。而且感觉 Anthropic 是冲着 Slack 去的。所以这大概就是下一波吧，我还没完全被 Slack 这个界面说服，但那个方向确实有些很有意思的东西在发生，我觉得挺有意思的。对，我觉得你说得对，我觉得 Codex 这个 app 再好，它本质上还是个单人体验，对吧，除了提 PR 之类的，基本就是单人体验。确实是单人的，而且要用多人协作的方式来搭这些创意工作流真的很难，这也是我经常在想的事。所以是的。——那你有没有搭一堆自动化，帮你干活的那种？有，我搭了很多自动化。我不用 Codex 做自动化，纯粹是因为我不想让我的电脑必须开着才能跑那些任务。所以我用的是 Claude agent。对，我有很多 Claude agent。
[35:06] Riley
In fact, I created a Peter Yang bot right before this episode. I didn't, I was going to show you, but, like, I created it in like five minutes. So, like, I have my chief marketing officer agent that I have in Slack, he sends me, um, this guy, he sends me updates. And then I have another guy named Content Man, who analyzes a bunch of other people's content, and it'll just give me video ideas for short form content. And so I have this little channel called My Agents, and I have three agents in here, [laughter], one of them is Peter Yang bot, which is trained on all your YouTube videos, but I didn't finish it in time to make it good. No problem, no problem. So so these agents are based on your own product, Chorus, or is it based on, like, uh, something else? No, we've been testing it with a bunch of different products. These three agents are, um, created on Chorus, um, but there's a lot of products out there that you can create agents, and I just recommend trying it, because no one's figured this out yet, you know, no one's figured out how to create a team of agents running in Slack that your whole team can use. It's like a really tough problem to solve. The way Anthropic is trying to do it is they're trying to build like a little mini, for lack of a better term, god that knows everything, where, uh, other companies, including us, we think of it like each one will be team members. So you'll tag your marketing agent, and you'll also tag your developer agent, company developer agent, um, and you'll kind of have a relationship with the agent, um, like each person, it'll react differently to each person based on what it knows about the person. There's like a whole bunch of problems that need to get solved. But you can very easily export your Codex skills into, um, these Claude agents, which are really fun. And so yeah, it's just been a lot of experimentation.
事实上，我在这期节目开始前刚做了个 Peter Yang bot。我本来想给你看的，就是，我大概花了五分钟就做出来了。比如说，我有一个 chief marketing officer agent 放在 Slack 里，这哥们儿会给我发各种更新。然后我还有一个叫 Content Man 的，他会分析一大堆别人的内容，直接给我短视频的选题点子。所以我有个小频道叫 My Agents，里面放了三个 agent，[笑]，其中一个就是 Peter Yang bot，用你所有的 YouTube 视频训练出来的，只是我没来得及在节目前把它调好。没事没事。——那这些 agent 是基于你自己的产品 Chorus 做的，还是基于别的什么？不是，我们拿好几个不同的产品都试过。这三个 agent 是在 Chorus 上做的，但外面有很多产品都能创建 agent，我就建议大家都去试试，因为这事儿还没人搞明白，你知道吧，没人搞明白怎么在 Slack 里搭出一支整个团队都能用的 agent 团队。这是个特别难解的问题。Anthropic 的思路是，他们想造一个——实在找不到更好的词——无所不知的小型'上帝'。而其他公司，包括我们，我们的想法是把每个 agent 当成团队成员。所以你会 @ 你的市场 agent，也会 @ 你的开发 agent、公司的开发 agent，然后你会跟这个 agent 建立起某种关系，它会根据它对每个人的了解，对不同的人做出不同的反应。这里面有一大堆问题需要解决。不过你可以很轻松地把你的 Codex skill 导出成这些 Claude agent，那玩起来真的很有意思。所以，是的，就是一路不停地在做实验。
[37:01]
But Claude agents, uh, tell me, if I want to tweak something where I'm signed into some sort of app, Claude agents can't do that, right, or, like, they need your credentials. Yeah, I mean, there's, with browser use, I predict by the end of the year you'll be able to be signed in to all of your apps, and your agent will be able to use a browser, and you won't even be aware of it, like, it'll just be able to use a browser, um, almost perfectly, and it'll be able to be signed in. Um, and I think this is something that the big labs companies want to do as well, like a browser being able to control a browser in the cloud. Um, is much better for automations and cron jobs as well. Like, I don't know if you have any automations set up in Codex, but it is kind of annoying. Um, like I have none set up right now. I have Codex running on my little Mac mini, I have some automations there, that's kind of how I get around it. But, um, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. But then, if it's a separate computer, it doesn't have access to your core files, which might be important. Yeah, like, it's a pain in the ass. Yeah, pain in the ass in so many different ways. Like every agent type has its trade-offs, um, which we're seeing right now, we're trying to, all the companies are trying to figure out the right way to do agents, and, yeah, maybe it'll take another six months to figure out the best way to do it.
不过 Claude agent，你跟我说说，如果我想改点什么，而那件事需要我登录某个 app，Claude agent 是做不到的对吧？或者说，它们需要你的登录凭证。对，我是说，有了 browser use 这类浏览器操作能力，我预计到今年年底，你可以在所有 app 里保持登录状态，你的 agent 就能直接用浏览器，而你甚至都察觉不到，它就是能几乎完美地使用浏览器，而且是登录状态。我觉得这也是几家大实验室公司想做的事，比如让 agent 在云端控制一个浏览器。这对自动化和 cron job 来说也好得多。我不知道你在 Codex 里有没有设过自动化，反正挺烦人的。我现在一个都没设。我在我那台小 Mac mini 上跑着 Codex，在那边设了一些自动化，我大概是这么绕过去的。对，有道理。但如果是另一台电脑，它就访问不到你的核心文件了，而那些可能挺重要的。对，就是特别麻烦。是的，在各种意义上都麻烦。每种 agent 形态都有自己的取舍，我们现在正在经历这个阶段，所有公司都在试图找出做 agent 的正确方式，也许还得再花六个月才能摸清最好的做法。
[38:16] Peter
Cool, all right, dude, well, let me ask you one last question on kind of the overall business, right. So I feel like the content, from one content creator to another, I feel like just growing the audience and getting more sponsorships, that's kind of a surefire path, because there's a lot of AI companies who want distribution and attention. Sure. And then there's also a lot of demand, you know, like you said, there's a lot of demand from companies that want to build agents, train their employees, right, [laughter], but, like, in terms of actually building a product, that's a lot more difficult, just being like a SaaS product. It is a lot more difficult to do. And I do brand sponsorships, and I run mid-roll ads, and it's a great business, I mean, it's an insane business. Um, yeah, and it is, I could very easily just kind of ride off into the sunset and make a very good living making content. Um, I think my content would run dry if I did so, because I learn being in the trenches, you know, like, I enjoy, the only reason I know a ton about Codex is I spend time with developers every day who teach me really cool things, you know, like every day I'm learning three or four things, and we're actually, you know, in the content that I make, I actually want to help people implement agents into their business.
行，好，兄弟，那我就整体的生意模式再问你最后一个问题。作为一个内容创作者跟另一个内容创作者聊——我的感觉是，把受众做大、多拿赞助，这基本上是一条稳赢的路，因为现在有一大堆 AI 公司都想要分发和注意力。当然。另外需求也确实旺，就像你说的，很多公司想做 agent、想培训自己的员工（笑）。但真要做出一个产品来，那就难多了，比如做一个 SaaS 产品。确实难做得多。我自己接品牌赞助、跑中插广告，这生意很不错，说实话好得离谱。我完全可以就这么「功成身退」，靠做内容过得非常滋润。但我觉得如果只做内容，我的内容迟早会枯竭，因为我的东西都是在一线摸爬滚打里学来的。我之所以对 Codex 懂这么多，唯一的原因就是我每天都跟开发者泡在一起，他们会教我很多特别酷的东西，我每天都能学到三四个新玩意儿。而且在我做的内容里，我是真心想帮大家把 agent 真正落地到自己的业务里。
[39:27] Riley
You know, I want to be a very useful creator and a motivating creator, and I don't think I could do that if I was just making content. Um, and so, yeah, I think doing, like, especially consulting stuff, I think it really does help, especially if you build a really talented team. You know, my goal is to only be making content, I can still contribute to the business through top of funnel. Um, but ideally, all I'm doing is making content, and you just have to surround yourself with a really good team, and there's a lot of talented people who would love to partner with you and do all of the work in creating a product, and I think you would learn a lot from it, um, or anyone in your position. Um, there's just a lot of upfront work that goes along. Yeah, I don't want to just, same here, I don't want to only make content or be like some sort of news aggregator, you know, I want to actually learn how to build the stuff, talk about the building process. So, 100%, I mean, yeah, like, you know, Peter Levels on Twitter, yeah, you know, like he could never be a content creator, like, he's only interesting because he talks about the things he's built and the experiences he goes through. And so that's kind of how I think about it, it's like, you know, that's the creator I want to be, is someone actually trying to build and use this technology. And yeah. Yeah, he's one of the few folks who actually have a bunch of successful SaaS companies, because his distribution is so high, [laughter], and a lot of failed companies as well, he's failed like 40 times. Um, he just takes a ton of swings at bat, which is also something that makes him really interesting.
我想做一个真正有用、能给人动力的创作者，而如果我只是做内容，我觉得我做不到这一点。所以我觉得去做点别的、尤其是咨询这类事，是真的有帮助的，特别是当你能搭起一支很有实力的团队的时候。我的目标其实是最后只做内容——我还是能通过漏斗顶端的获客给业务做贡献，但理想状态是我只负责做内容。你要做的就是把自己放到一群足够好的人中间，外面有很多很有才华的人，很愿意跟你合伙，把做产品的那部分活儿全接过去，而你能从中学到非常多，你或者任何处在你这个位置的人都一样。只是前期要投入的活儿确实不少。是啊，我也一样，我不想只做内容，也不想变成某种新闻搬运工。我想真的学会怎么把东西做出来，然后去聊这个「做」的过程。百分之百。就像推特上的 Pieter Levels，他其实永远当不了那种纯粹的内容创作者，他之所以有意思，是因为他讲的都是自己做出来的东西和亲身经历。我也是这么想的——我想成为的创作者，就是那种真的在动手做、在用这项技术的人。对。他是极少数真的做出一堆成功 SaaS 公司的人，因为他自己的分发能力太强了（笑）。当然，失败的项目也一大堆，他大概失败过四十次吧。他就是疯狂地一次次出手尝试，这一点也让他特别有意思。
[40:58] Peter
Cool, all righty, well, I think people know where to find you online, do you want to do a pitch for your new product, Chorus, or should we talk about it next time? I mean, yeah, we're building, you know, Claude Tag just came out, Claude, uh, is a product that allows you to tag Claude in Slack. Um, and then you have all your skills built into Claude. We're building a product that allows you to use any model. Um, you can message it in iMessage, you can message it in Slack, you can add it to group messages, which is what our users like the most. And we're constantly iterating, trying to help businesses. Right now I'm not even really selling the product as much as selling our services, because companies want to work with us, and then we're using Chorus to implement agents for their business, and that's been just like an insane driver for us. Cool, all right, well, you're an inspiration, man, thanks for being so open and sharing your whole process, and I personally learned a ton, so thanks so much. Amazing, yeah, thanks for having me.
好，那行，我觉得大家都知道去哪儿找你了。你要不要顺便宣传一下你的新产品 Chorus，还是我们下次再聊？可以啊。我们在做的东西是这样——你知道 Claude Tag 刚出来，Claude Tag 这个产品让你可以在 Slack 里 @Claude，你所有的 skills 都内置在 Claude 里面。我们做的产品是让你可以用任何模型：你可以在 iMessage 里给它发消息，也可以在 Slack 里发，还能把它拉进群聊——这是我们用户最喜欢的一点。我们一直在快速迭代，想办法帮到企业。现在我其实卖产品卖得没那么多，更多是在卖我们的服务，因为很多公司想跟我们合作，我们就用 Chorus 帮他们把 agent 落地到业务里，这块的增长简直猛得离谱。好，那，你真的挺让人受启发的，兄弟。谢谢你这么开放，把整个流程都分享出来，我个人学到了特别多，太感谢了。太棒了，谢谢你请我来。