Frontier AI Labs with Wil Waldon

Stage Zero
  • 4.6 (32)
  • Technology
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Hi 👋 I'm Wil Waldon. I build products with Claude and I teach others how to do the same. I've been writing code for 15+ years. Fullstack product engineering, MVPs for early-stage founders, a couple of exits. These days most of my workflow runs through Claude. Claude Code, the API, system prompts, MCP servers. I use all of it daily. This channel is where I break down how I actually use Claude to build and ship work. Not hype. Not demos that fall apart outside a screen recording. PROMPTS --- https://www.skool.com/ai-and-automation-3750/about

  1. 6h ago

    Best AI for Work 2026: Claude vs ChatGPT, Tested

    Both models are good enough that the right question is which one does the specific thing you need better. This episode breaks down where each one wins for actual work. The short version. Claude wins on writing quality, instruction-following, long-document analysis, and agentic work. ChatGPT wins on image generation, voice, custom GPTs, and ecosystem breadth. Where Claude pulls ahead. For anything client-facing, Claude produces prose that needs less editing, with fewer clichés, better structure, and more controllable tone, which is the single most-cited reason people prefer it for memos, reports, and articles. It also holds detailed constraints better, so when you give it specific headings, a voice, and things to avoid, it sticks to them more faithfully. On the coding and analysis side, Claude leads the reasoning benchmarks (91.3% on GPQA Diamond) and holds a slim edge on SWE-bench Verified, and its context window is the most-cited reason developers switch, with the API tier going up to 1M tokens for long codebases, contracts, and book-length documents. Where ChatGPT pulls ahead. Image generation is not close. ChatGPT generates images natively and Claude cannot generate them at all, so if visuals are in your workflow, that decides it. ChatGPT also browses the web in real time, while Claude does not do that natively, and it integrates directly with Word, Excel, Teams, and Outlook through Microsoft Copilot, which matters if your business already runs on Microsoft 365. For high-volume API work, the flagship cost gap is large: a small internal RAG tool running 10M input and 2M output tokens a month runs roughly $300 on Claude Opus versus $55 on GPT, and it scales from there. Pricing. If you're choosing between Claude Pro and ChatGPT Plus, pick on capability, not price, because they both cost about $20 a month. The one real gap is ChatGPT's cheaper $8 Go tier and its more generous free tier. The move most professionals actually make. The common 2026 setup is ChatGPT for ideation, images, and quick questions, and Claude for the serious writing, editing, long-document analysis, and agentic file work. At about $20 each, running both is roughly $40 a month, which is trivial against the time it saves if AI is core to your job. Bottom line for a service business or agency. If your work is mostly writing, client documents, and code, Claude is the stronger daily driver. If you're producing marketing visuals, doing web research, or living in Microsoft 365, ChatGPT earns its seat. Most people find a clear preference within a week of running both on real work. Topics: Claude vs ChatGPT 2026, best AI for work, AI for small business, AI writing tool, AI for consultants and agencies, Claude Code, ChatGPT vs Claude pricing, long context AI, AI coding model, business AI workflow. Best AI for work 2026, Claude vs ChatGPT for business, AI tool for agencies and freelancers, AI writing and coding assistant, running Claude and ChatGPT together.

    34 min

  2. Jun 26

    Building a Million Dollar social media app, live. No ads, no algorithm, no rage bait. - Ideation

    I'm building a paid community platform in the open, and this stream is where the work happens.The idea is simple. Social media broke when it started optimizing for clicks and outrage. The feeds got loud, the news got dumped, and connecting with people got buried under engagement bait. This is an attempt at the opposite. A paid space with real identity, reverse-chronological feeds, threaded discussion, and no public like counts or follower numbers to perform for. You pay to be in the room, which keeps the bots out and the conversation accountable.In this stream I'm working through how it gets built. The data model, the access gating, how payments tie to membership, the design, and the decisions behind why certain features exist and others never will. No reshare button. No link unfurling. No ranking algorithm deciding what you see. The plan also covers communities other people can run and get paid for, with the platform taking a small cut, so this grows into something bigger than one room.Everything is built in public. Watch the real decisions, the tradeoffs, and the parts that break.Drop questions in the chat. I'll answer what I can while I work.community platform, paid social network, no ads social media, build in public, indie hacker, Next.js, Supabase, Stripe, paid Reddit, online communities, creator economy

    30 min

  3. Jun 21

    Building a Million Dollar AI App - Day 1: AI Coaching with OpenAI Vision

    Day 1 of building a million dollar AI app. I'm 20 years into software development and I use AI agents and tools like Lovable to ship faster than I ever could by hand. In this video I walk through the AI coaching feature I just implemented in Stable Manager Pro, an app that helps riding instructors give better feedback to students.The feature uses OpenAI Vision to analyze a photo of a rider on a horse and return real coaching feedback: overall balance score, posture analysis, hip engagement, upper body angle, and specific coaching cues. The output reads like what a real instructor would say after watching a student ride. Two years ago you couldn't build this. Today it's one API call.What's covered:How OpenAI Vision analyzes a rider's posture from a single photoThe coaching output: balance, posture, stirrup position, hip engagement, upper body angleWhy this works for equestrian coaching specificallyHow I'm using OpenAI and Claude together to ideate featuresWhat's coming in v1.1: video upload, FFmpeg frame extraction, multi-frame analysisThe app is stablemanagerpro.com. We're in soft launch and onboarding stable owners, students, and instructors now. Web app first, with iOS and Android coming.This is Day 1 of an ongoing series where I show how I build apps using AI tools instead of hand-coding everything. Subscribe to follow the build. New videos drop as features ship.Stable Manager Pro: https://stablemanagerpro.com#AI #BuildInPublic #OpenAI #Lovable #AIagents #SaaS #AIapp #VibeCoding #equestrian #softwaredevelopment #Claude #AIcoaching

    4 min

  4. Jun 15

    Automate the boring parts of your business with Claude

    Today I want to walk through the difference between an AI tool and an AI system, because the gap between those two things is where most of the money is. We're working with Claude and Claude Cowork today, nothing else. By the end of this you'll understand why one-off prompts don't compound no matter how good they are, you'll be able to spot where a system pays for itself within the first month, and you'll know how to map the processes already running in your business onto AI workflows. Before any of that makes sense I should explain what these two tools actually are. Claude is an AI assistant. Same general category as ChatGPT, made by a different company called Anthropic. You can use it free at claude dot ai in your browser, and there's a paid plan at twenty dollars a month that gives you more room to work. Inside Claude there's a feature called Projects, which is basically a folder with a memory, and that's going to matter a lot today. Claude Cowork is a desktop app from the same company. If regular Claude is a conversation in a browser tab, Cowork is closer to a coworker with access to your computer. You point it at a folder, it can read the files in there, create new ones, run jobs on a schedule, and keep working through multi-step tasks while you do something else. It comes included with the paid Claude plan.

    11 min

  5. Jun 10

    How to Sell Software Built in Free Claude for $200 a Pop

    Most people think selling software means building an app. It doesn't. A static HTML, CSS, and JS file solves real problems for local businesses, costs nothing to build with Claude's free tier, and sells for $200 a pop with the right framing. This episode walks through the whole process — what kinds of businesses buy this, what you actually hand them, and how to price and pitch it without a portfolio or a product page.

    12 min

  6. May 28

    How to choose what systems to automate with Anthropic's Claude

    Most service businesses either automate the wrong things or try to automate everything at once. This episode walks through a simple process using Claude to figure out what's actually worth automating, what order to do it in, and what to leave alone.What You'll Walk Away With1. A method for tracking where your time actually goes each week 2. A scored automation roadmap based on frequency, consistency, and risk 3. A filter for catching the automations that sound good but won't work. Spend one week logging every repetitive task in your phone's notes app. Paste the full list into Claude and ask it to group by type and estimate weekly time per category. The patterns are easier to see from the outside.Score each task on frequency (how often), consistency (how similar each time), and risk (cost of a mistake). For most service businesses, the first automation is almost always the initial response to new inquiries.Skip anything requiring real judgment on specific situations, anything with volume too low to justify setup time, and anything your customers expect a human to handle. Pressure-test each candidate by describing real examples to Claude and asking whether it's a good fit.

    9 min

  7. May 27

    The Podcaster's Claude Workflow That Turns One Episode Into Ten Pieces of Content

    Wil walks through how he repurposes each Frontier AI Labs episode into a newsletter draft, five or more social posts, and a set of show notes using Claude. He covers how to set up a Claude Project with your own writing samples so the output matches your voice, how to prompt for each deliverable in the same conversation, and what the whole workflow costs. About thirty minutes of work after recording for ten pieces of content. 0:00 — What the episode covers and what Claude is2:30 — Bio3:00 — Setting up a Claude Project with writing samples and voice context4:30 — Getting a transcript from your phone5:00 — Newsletter: writing a standalone issue from a transcript, not a summary7:00 — Social posts: pulling five posts from different sections of the episode9:00 — Show notes: specific descriptions, timestamps, and keywords for discoverability10:30 — Cost and weekly workflow11:00 — CTApodcast content repurposing, Claude for podcasters, AI newsletter workflow, social media from podcast transcript, podcast show notes, Claude Projects Frontier AI Labs: [youtube.com/channel/UCX3HDBasMU2qS3svgtuzD2g/]Claude: [https://claude.ai]Book an AI Systems Audit: [https://wilwaldon.com]

    9 min

  8. May 25

    Why Most AI Chatbots Make Your Business Look Worse

    Today I want to talk about something I see constantly, which is small businesses putting AI chatbots on their websites and thinking they've solved a problem when they've actually created a new one. I'm going to walk through a better approach using three tools, Claude, Make, and Tally, and by the end you'll know how to replace your chatbot with a form that actually performs better, capture leads without annoying the people visiting your site, and respond to inquiries faster than the chatbot would have anyway. Get a free AI evaluation for your business - https://wilwaldon.com

    11 min
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About

Hi 👋 I'm Wil Waldon. I build products with Claude and I teach others how to do the same. I've been writing code for 15+ years. Fullstack product engineering, MVPs for early-stage founders, a couple of exits. These days most of my workflow runs through Claude. Claude Code, the API, system prompts, MCP servers. I use all of it daily. This channel is where I break down how I actually use Claude to build and ship work. Not hype. Not demos that fall apart outside a screen recording. PROMPTS --- https://www.skool.com/ai-and-automation-3750/about

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