Code Riff

Eric Tan, Yaohong Ch'ng

come see how ai is used for human flourishing and to have more fun.we interview ai-pilled practitioners using ai to enhance their work and lives.hosts:- Eric Tan - vibecoder https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/- Yaohong Ch'ng - senior engineer, founder of superuser hq. https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/subscribe and join us on our journey of figuring things out together.episode takeaways: https://coderiff.substack.com youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CodeRiffAI

Episodes

  1. We vibecoded an app for our grandparents

    May 21

    We vibecoded an app for our grandparents

    This is a secret episode we almost didn't release. Eric (vibe-coder, can't read code) and his cousin Jason (a software engineer) sat down to build a family app for their ageing grandparents. What you'll hear is a distilled 2.5h chat, with a brief demo near the end. We're releasing it because the mess is the whole point. If you're curious about vibe coding but scared to start, this is what it actually sounds like when two real people try. Key takeaways: - Get the AI to grill you before you build. Jason had it question his intent and features until they reached shared understanding - no code until then. - Leave the technical details out of planning. Focus on the job to be done and who's using it; the stack decisions come later. - Planning is painful but it pays off. An hour of arguing and changing our minds upfront beats iterating ten times on the wrong prototype. - A software engineer meets Claude/Opus for the first time and reacts to how it works vs his usual Cursor setup. - You don't need a finished product to start. We ended on a mock app - grab a friend, your cousin, your kids, and just start building. Hosts: Eric Tan (non-technical builder). Yaohong Ch'ng is the usual co-host - this episode is Eric solo with a guest. Guest: Jason - software engineer, Eric's cousin, daily Cursor + Sonnet 4.5 user trying Claude/Opus for the first time. Got a problem you want us to solve live? Fill out the form: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 A few terms you'll hear: - Vibe coding: building software by telling an AI what you want in plain English, instead of writing code yourself. - Claude / Opus / Sonnet: Claude is the AI assistant; Opus is the bigger, pricier model Eric uses, Sonnet the faster, cheaper one Jason uses at work. - Cursor: a code editor with AI built in - Jason's daily tool. - Plan mode: a Claude Code setting where it asks you questions and writes a plan before building anything. - Notion as a database: using Notion to store the app's data instead of paying for a proper database - a cheap shortcut with limits. - Mock data: fake placeholder content used to see how the app looks before real data goes in. Connect with us: - Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Jason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysjasonchen/ - Email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Code Riff - messy real-world problems, solved with AI, so you can too.

    36 min
  2. Global FMCG Researcher Uses AI for Ingredient Analysis

    Apr 28

    Global FMCG Researcher Uses AI for Ingredient Analysis

    Cosmetic scientists from FMCG companies spend days clicking between PubChem, INCI Decoder, and supplier sites just to figure out what's in one competitor product. Aidil is a cosmetic chemist. He does this manually in Excel and through hundreds of searches in a textbox. We tried to solve that task with Claude Code - live, in 90 minutes. 10 products decoded, and a similarity matrix. What you'll hear: - Why a trained scientist still loses a day per product to manual ingredient lookups - Aidil dictating what the tool should do - in plain English, no code - Building a Python script live that pulls CAS numbers, molecular formulas, and chemistry from PubChem - Tagging each ingredient's cosmetic function with INCI Decoder (surfactant, emulsifier, thickener) - The messy bits: synonyms, rate limits, caching, and a PubChem API that doesn't have pKa - A similarity matrix that clusters Pantene with Olaplex, and Head & Shoulders on its own - Aidil's payoff: "it has the potential to just take a few seconds" Hosts: Eric Tan (non-technical builder) & Yaohong Ch'ng (Founder, Superuser HQ, ex-Stashaway head of Data) Guest: Aidil Juhari - ex-FMCG R&D scientist, cosmetic chemist Got a problem you want us to solve live? Fill out the form: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 We write here: https://substack.com/@coderiff Join our community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Dmp5eEEsAZhJTB6LjcIG3c?mode=gi_t LEARN ALONG: - FMCG: Fast-Moving Consumer Goods - shampoo, toothpaste, detergent. Aidil's world. - INCI: The official scientific name for every cosmetic ingredient. - CAS number: A passport number for molecules - unique ID for every chemical. - PubChem: Free public chemistry database run by the US government. - API: How one program asks another for data, instead of copying from a webpage. - pKa: A chemistry number for how acidic or basic a molecule is. PubChem doesn't have it, which bit us. Connect with us: - Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - Superuser HQ: https://superuserhq.com/ - Email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Code Riff - messy real-world problems, solved with AI, so you can too.

    35 min
  3. Luxury Bag Restorer Finally Analyzes Her Sales Channels with AI

    Apr 3

    Luxury Bag Restorer Finally Analyzes Her Sales Channels with AI

    Lynn runs Dr. Bags, a luxury bag and shoes restoration business in Singapore - 11 years, 3 stores, about 30 staff. Her team is already stretched thin building a new ERP system, training staff, and handling daily operations. Analysing marketing data? That would take two days nobody has. We built her a marketing dashboard in under an hour using Claude Code with a month of her deal pipeline data. It wasn't perfect - and that turned out to be the most useful part. What you'll hear in this episode: - Why SME owners know they should analyse their data but never do - Building a marketing dashboard from raw ERP data, live in one session - Discovering that WhatsApp was getting credit for wins that started on social media ads - A pile of deals stuck in limbo that nobody had noticed - Why business acumen matters more than any AI tool - and how Lynn proved it Hosts: Eric Tan (non-technical builder) & Yaohong Ch'ng (engineer, Superuser HQ, ex-Stashaway head of Data) Guest: Lynn Kee - founder of DrBags, luxury bag and shoes restoration Got a problem you want us to solve live? Fill out the form: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 Listen/watch: - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5u9ShYoodc&t=56s - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/43mFsd6uOHqcYuE2c6nmkp?si=2MxLxpcFQyu1fvPYIiO6BA - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/luxury-bag-restorer-finally-analyzes-her-sales-channels/id1877603539?i=1000759069037 - Snipd: https://share.snipd.com/episode/829084df-c22c-4833-96e6-9fb7714b7275 Connect with us: - Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - WhatsApp community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Dmp5eEEsAZhJTB6LjcIG3c?mode=gi_t - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff - Email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Tools used in this episode: - Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code Tools we use: - Buzzsprout (podcast hosting): https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2371679 - Snipd (AI podcast highlights): https://get.snipd.com/pAbF/36jzrvki LEARN ALONG - Glossary: - ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): Software that tracks everything in your business - inquiries, jobs, inventory, delivery. Lynn's ERP follows a bag from first WhatsApp message through cleaning, QC, and return. - Dashboard: Charts and numbers on one screen so you don't dig through spreadsheets. What Lynn wanted instead of two days of manual Excel work. - Attribution: Figuring out which ad channel actually brought a customer. Lynn's data said 89% WhatsApp - but many customers found DrBags through Instagram or Facebook first. - Funnel: The journey from first contact to closed deal. Lynn's funnel: new inquiry to engaged to won or lost. 61% of deals were stuck in "Engaged." - Data cleaning: Getting your raw data accurate before doing anything with it. Yaohong called it "plumbing" - if your data isn't clean, your dashboard lies to you. - POC (Proof of Concept): A quick prototype to test if an idea works before investing serious time or money. - Plan mode: A Claude Code feature where it reads your data, proposes an approach, and waits for your OK before building anything. ABOUT: Code Riff - messy real-world problems, solved with AI, so you can too. One of us can't code. The other's been coding since he was 13. Every episode, someone brings us a real problem and we try to solve it with AI in one hour live.

    50 min
  4. Oil Analyst Saves HOURS Analyzing News (Live Build)

    Mar 13

    Oil Analyst Saves HOURS Analyzing News (Live Build)

    Bryan is an oil market analyst. Every morning he spends one to two hours reading news - Reuters, CNN, CNBC - trying to pull out the actual facts from opinion and spin. Two articles about the same event sometimes say opposite things. We tried building him an AI tool using Claude Code. It scraped hundreds of articles, stripped out the editorializing, and pulled just the verifiable facts. It covered about 80-90% of what he needs.  What you'll hear in this episode: - An oil analyst explaining the daily problem: separating fact from spin in news headlines - Building a fact extraction tool with Claude Code, live in one session - The moment two articles about the Strait of Hormuz directly contradicted each other - Why "dangerously skip permissions" exists in Claude Code (cowboy mode) - Bryan's live feedback: what worked, what didn't, and what he'd actually use - Yaohong on why confidence scores without defined criteria will hallucinate Hosts: Eric Tan (non-technical builder) & Yaohong Ch'ng (engineer, Superuser HQ, ex-Stashaway head of Data) Guest: Bryan - oil market analyst Got a problem you want us to solve live? Fill out the form: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 Connect with us: - Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - WhatsApp community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Dmp5eEEsAZhJTB6LjcIG3c?mode=gi_t - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff - Email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Tools used in this episode: - Claude Code: https://claude.ai/code - Gemini API (news classification/analysis): https://ai.google.dev/ - Python (RSS scraping + fact extraction) Tools we use: - Buzzsprout (podcast hosting): https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2371679 - Snipd (AI podcast highlights): https://get.snipd.com/pAbF/36jzrvki LEARN ALONG - Glossary: - RSS feeds: A way to automatically pull articles from news sites without visiting each one. Like a subscription pipe that delivers headlines to your tool. - API keys: Password-like codes that let your tool access paid services like AI models. You keep them secret and they track your usage. - Hallucination: When AI confidently generates information that sounds right but isn't real. The biggest risk when you need verified facts for trading decisions. - Sandbox: A restricted environment that limits what code can do on your computer. A safety net when running AI-generated code. - Dangerously skip permissions: A Claude Code setting that removes the safety sandbox. Useful for speed, risky if you don't trust what the code is doing. - Scenario analysis: A structured way of thinking through "if X happens, then Y follows." Bryan uses a specific framework: impact, market response, price implications. ABOUT: Code Riff - messy real-world problems, solved with AI, so you can too. One of us can't code. The other's been coding since he was 13. Every episode, someone brings us a real problem and we try to solve it with AI in one hour live.

    41 min
  5. Using Claude Cowork To Streamline Wet Market Operations (Live)

    Mar 9

    Using Claude Cowork To Streamline Wet Market Operations (Live)

    Chuyi quit her corporate job to help manage a wet market vegetable store at Marine Terrace. She tracks competitor prices and supplier orders through WhatsApp and spreadsheets — all by hand. So we used Claude Cowork to build her a competitor pricing guide and supplier management dashboard in one hour, having fun while doing it together. What you'll hear in this episode: - A wet market store operator walking through her daily pricing and supplier workflow - Using Claude Cowork to scrape and compare prices across FairPrice, Sheng Siong, Cold Storage, and more - Building a supplier management tracker with price logging, margin calculations, and trend analysis - AI "hallucinating" wet market prices — and Yaohong catching it live - Honest conversation about scraping ethics, data accuracy, and why "your data will never be clean" - Why not everything needs code — sometimes a spreadsheet is the real unlock Hosts: Eric Tan (non-technical builder) & Yaohong Ch'ng (engineer, Superuser HQ, ex-Stashaway head of Data) Guest: Chuyi (Le Fresco, 50 Marine Terrace) Got a problem you want us to solve live? Fill out the form: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 Connect with us: - Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - WhatsApp community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Dmp5eEEsAZhJTB6LjcIG3c?mode=gi_t - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff - Email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Tools used in this episode: - Claude Cowork: https://claude.ai - Google Sheets: https://sheets.google.com Tools we use: - Buzzsprout (podcast hosting): https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2371679 - Snipd (AI podcast highlights): https://get.snipd.com/pAbF/36jzrvki Also discussed: Notion, Airtable, Google CLI, Gemini LEARN ALONG — Glossary: - Claude Cowork: A browser-based AI assistant from Anthropic that can control your files and browse the web. Costs ~$30 SGD/month on the Pro plan. - Scraping: Automatically collecting data from websites using a bot instead of copying it by hand. Some websites block this. - Tokens: The units AI models use to process text. More tokens = more cost. Like minutes on a phone plan. - Hallucination: When AI confidently makes up information that isn't real. In this episode, it estimated wet market prices at "20-40% cheaper than supermarkets" — a guess, not data. - MCP (Model Context Protocol): A way for AI agents to connect to external tools like Notion or Google Sheets. Think of it as a universal adapter plug for AI. - Network egress: A security setting that controls which websites an AI tool can access from your computer. Like a bouncer checking IDs. ABOUT: Code Riff — messy real-world problems, solved with AI, so you can too. One of us can't code. The other's been coding since he was 13. Every episode, someone brings us a real problem and we try to solve it with AI in one hour live.

    1 hr
  6. We Built an ESG News Bot in 1 Hour using Claude Code (Live)

    Mar 3

    We Built an ESG News Bot in 1 Hour using Claude Code (Live)

    An ESG analyst at a bank spends her morning commutes reading news across Reuters, ESG News, and Financial Times, etc, then manually logging it into Excel and Word. She tried ChatGPT but got hallucinated headlines. So we automated the whole thing in one hour using Claude Code from scratch, having fun while doing it together. What you'll hear in this episode: - A real sustainable finance analyst walking through her daily news workflow - Building a Python news scraper live with little to no prior coding experience - AI classifying articles into sustainable finance, policy, and country news - Setting up a Telegram bot that delivers a formatted Word document daily - Honest explanations of API keys, prompt injection, and context rot - A conversation about AI in banking - augmenting jobs, not replacing them Hosts: Eric Tan (non-technical builder) & Yaohong Ch'ng (engineer, Superuser HQ, ex-Stashaway head of Data) Guest: Wachel - Sustainable Finance Analyst Got a problem you want us to solve live? Fill out the form: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 Subscribe to our newsletter: https://substack.com/@coderiff?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page Tools from this episode: - Claude Code: https://claude.ai - Newsdata.io: https://newsdata.io - Telegram (BotFather): https://t.me/BotFather Connect with us: - Eric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - Superuser HQ: https://superuserhq.com/ - Email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Code Riff - messy real-world problems, solved with AI, so you can too.

    1h 4m
  7. It's Time to Build Your Own Software

    Feb 16

    It's Time to Build Your Own Software

    I don't write code. Yaohong's been coding since he was 13. We sat down to figure out why we're making a podcast about building things with AI - live, on camera, with real people's real problems. In this episode, we talk about: - Why this moment is important for non-coders to build with AI - Singapore's 2026 budget and AI adoption - The problem with AI consultants selling to SMEs who don't understand AI - Why we picked Claude Code over Lovable, Bolt, and Cursor (for now) - Pains of 24/7 OpenClaw bots - What guests / subscribers can expect Hosts: Eric Tan (non-technical builder) & Yaohong Ch'ng (engineer, Superuser HQ) Got a problem you'd love to solve with AI? Submit it here - we'll try to build it live: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 Timestamps: 00:00 - Trailer 00:43 - Why we're doing this 01:59 - When AI became real for us 04:25 - How we met and what's changed since 05:16 - Building an AI-native company 07:22 - Why now 08:23 - Yaohong's backstory 10:40 - Our format and a little rant on OpenClaw bots 14:49 - Singapore's 2026 budget and AI strategy 16:54 - The problem with AI consultants 18:36 - What we're really trying to do 20:15 - Limits of AI 23:19 - Why Claude Code vs other vibecoding tools 26:17 - Using AI for writing 28:38 - Kids and AI 30:42 - Risk of AI dependence 35:51 - What guests can expect Links: Submit your problem: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 Superuser HQ: https://superuserhq.com/ OpenClaw (AI agent framework): https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw Eric's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ Yaohong's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohong/ Learn along (tech terms from this episode): - Claude Code: An AI tool you talk to in your terminal. You describe what you want in plain English, it writes and runs the code. - Vibecoding: Building software by describing what you want, not writing code yourself. What Eric does. - Terminal / command line: The text-based interface where you type commands. Like texting your computer instead of clicking buttons. - API key: A password that lets your app connect to another service. The "annoying part of vibecoding" according to Eric. - Lovable / Bolt / Replit: Web-based AI app builders. Simpler than Claude Code but less flexible. - Cursor: An AI code editor. More visual than Claude Code, less powerful. - OpenClaw: An open-source AI agent framework. Yaohong's team built personal virtual assistants (Ram and Connie) that collaborate with each other in Slack channels. Think AI coworkers that can switch roles and work on projects together. - Supabase: A database service where apps store data. Like a spreadsheet in the cloud. - Sycophancy: When AI agrees with everything you say instead of pushing back. Can lead people down dangerous rabbit holes. We get on a call with someone, hear what's bugging them, and try to solve it with AI in an hour. That's basically the whole show.

    41 min
  • 7 Episodes

About

come see how ai is used for human flourishing and to have more fun.we interview ai-pilled practitioners using ai to enhance their work and lives.hosts:- Eric Tan - vibecoder https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/- Yaohong Ch'ng - senior engineer, founder of superuser hq. https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/subscribe and join us on our journey of figuring things out together.episode takeaways: https://coderiff.substack.com youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CodeRiffAI

Information

  • Creator
    Eric Tan, Yaohong Ch'ng
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Code Riff
  • Show Website
    Code Riff