The “Right Tool” Trap Is Killing Your Progress

So you were given the question of like where to start, right? Yeah. I see this all the time. By the way, this is not new today. Back in the day when I was showcasing a dumb thing I was building in web flow, people would ask where should I start? And I see this so much like should I start with J? That that was the question at the time. Should I start with Python or JavaScript? Pal just start. And today is like should I use chat GPT or clot code? Should I I' I've heard you know this does this and Miniax and you know should I go free? Should I go paid? Lovable Web Flow is it still good? I I genuinely I I don't think like people would lose anything if they would start with any of them but actually start and and learn. When I say start like start learning like you experiment, you learn and be conscious about it. That's the point. That's the the the the conversation we had at the very start. be conscious, be curious about learning and just go on and just repeat it. It It blows me away how many people procrastinate by like over ridiculous silly little things. I was talking to someone who wants to get into content creation the other night and I was saying to her like I mean she's started like it's good that she started but she's she's taking me through all of her shots that she had and like experimentation and this and that and it's like this is so cool but learn learn it by doing it like get it out there rather than waste loads of time doing test shots or whatever. Get a video out there watch it back at the end of it. be observant about and be like, "Oh, I quite like that." You know, and and and learn by doing. You You're so right. You're not going to waste any time by they all contain a lot of the fundamental aspects to building stuff. I've got a video on my channel um which I uh what do I It's the Verdant. It's a sponsored video. It's a Verdant for the Verdant IDE, but I take you through all of the different aspects to it. But it doesn't matter whether it's Verdant, VS Code, Cursor, whatever. Um, it's just about what pieces of that technology. And you don't need to know it all right from the beginning. You'll pick that up as you go along. The point is is they all are. We're all amalgamating with the with what's working right now. And uh you're going to have you're just everyone's just going to have their own preferences. And I love I love claw code. I really like Claude as a model. I like core code as a CLI just because it's it gives me focus. Um I don't gain much at all from codeex, you know. Uh I love that it's a bit cheaper though, so I can do a bunch of things uh with codeex and and beyond what what Claude can do, but and it seems to be doing fine for me um on my current project, but I wouldn't say my current project is particularly uh difficult. But saying all of that, you know, you've got the CLI which is in the terminal. you might prefer that you've got the app here which has been praised a lot for the organization and clarity of of using it. It is a bit nicer to look at. Um yeah, you know, codeex is a lot better now, but you'll be looking at code. It really like it stems from what your background is and your comfortability and what you want to achieve. If you just don't feel comfortable doing any of this, then yeah, you might push mush more towards like lovable or any of the vibe code apps that do take care of a lot of the database setup because with with codeex you are responsible for the database. You are responsible for the authentication. You're responsible for knowing how all of these pieces get put together. Whereas the harnesses like lovable, they probably have some sort of system prompt or some sort of um boilerplate code. Like all replet projects look the same. So I'm sure all projects start with a boilerplate folder structure and tool and uh technologies already installed that then the agent is put to work on which is why probably gets a good result. So you're definitely you're definitely required to know a bit about technology and how it all fits together if you're going to go down the codeex route. Let's call let's call web flow beginner but then we are talking about building apps which is a complete different ball game but web flow for building apps because everything is taken care of. You don't need to care about the code. Um replet lovable is like medium. Um and then codeex is like expert you know. Yeah. Yeah. Super expert. Old school super expert would be literally writing it in VS Code, but there's there's there's much there's a lot of benefit to learning code, but in terms of creating something, you know, with AI, you're not using AI. My today's workflow that might change tomorrow is going to chat PRD. I haven't used it too much, but the two instances I've used um has been really good. So I'm going to continue using chat PRD. You could do this also with chat GPT. Chat PRD just has maybe the system prompt. Maybe it is just a system prompt. But uh at the end of the day I go the idea goes to chat prd there I get a complete prompt. Then I paste that where into codeex app because the UI is nice and because it seems like I have unlimited tokens. I don't know how but it is. So today it might change tomorrow. Um I'm not in love with the model like GPT 5.4. I have it on extra high all the time. But yeah, it's it's okay. It's okay. Uh then if I have to you know go like for invi uh for yeah for like editing API or like adding my API and just random edits. I I still use um cursor but that's my usage for it and I will cancel my subscription because I I don't need it. Uh and then I have obviously uh the warp terminal to here I fire up uh mostly just clot code for bunch of like refinements or sometimes I have multiple agents doing different things or one does research and the other one does implementation but I I have these like essentially like four things or mainly like these two doing the heavy heavy lifting. I'm um yeah, Codeex app just because of the extra usage clawed code. Um I do use co-work. I'm starting to push more towards co-work for you know uh stuff doing stuff on my computer but you know um and then and then warp. Yeah. Just to Yeah. I introduced Claude co-work u to my assistant and she's in love with it. She uses more Claude um tokens than me just through Claude co-work. So any task that I give her uh I give it to her like through a long voice message and she throws it at Claude and either creates like a mini app you know one of those like kind of like artifacts with to-dos or um if it needs to we push that into our notion. So we are using less and less of notion directly but more as a database. You you throw things at it at it and then you ask claude to also return results from it. So you instead of like going to notion and looking at it, that has been one of my biggest issues with notion because the more the the the cleaner you get with your structure, the more difficult it gets to navigate because then you have things separated properly with filters in place and things like that. It gets difficult to go back to and use it. It becomes something where you store everything in it and it's you know people have been saying your second brain it's no to notion like building your second brain it it has become very difficult to retrieve content from it. Uh and with cloud it's it's just like you know or in general with MCPS or API however you do it it's just so easy add these tasks or what are the tasks about this and a bunch of these have context there so it can also write that email it can do that research and cloud uh co-work so yeah and there's a lot of chatter at the moment about obsidian and all that is is just a is just a a a local database made up of markdown files and and the issue is is uh that's great if you're completely on your own and you're just building this second brain or some some organization and skill. That's great if you're on your own, but it's the moment you need to share that with a team or you need to, you know, share access or or have a common uh source of truth, that's where Obsidian falls down. I do want to do a video on Obsidian because I think people are getting hyped up about it. I mean for you know if you are there's plenty of people just working completely on your own but I think anyone who has to work in a a team are quickly dismissing the idea of of obsidian. Um yeah but yeah it's kind of it's well well equipped for LLMs just because uh for well yeah for LLMs just because everything is create it's a markdown um note thing you know it's all made up of markdown files. So anyway, this is part of a larger conversation on my show, Command AI, which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter. Command AI.