Code Riff

Eric Tan, Yaohong Ch'ng
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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

  1. 9h ago

    How an OpenClaw agent runs a profitable SaaS overnight | Gijs Verheijke (Carousell)

    Gijs Verheijke runs a SaaS on the side that an OpenClaw agent called Maggie looks after with minimal to no supervision. He was Co-founder and CEO of Ox Street before getting acquired by Carousell. He is now head of AI Chapter at Carousell. We recorded this live at Lorong AI. https://lorong.ai/ a note up front: everything Gijs shows here runs on his own Mac Mini for his side projects. he doesn't use OpenClaw for his Carousell work. Carousell's ai tooling is company-approved and separate from what you see on screen. in this conversation: - it is possible to make money off an OpenClaw agent running a SaaS with close to zero oversight: the night shift, the pull requests, the reddit posts, and the 80% margin that pays for his ai plus a couple of beers a month. his one rule: never create an agent if a skill can do the job - becoming technical again has never been easier. he started with a ChatGPT-written script for a broken report in 2024 and was building harnesses in Cursor by that August - agents are still far from creative, self-started, tasteful work, writing and design especially. he writes every word of copy himself and deletes nine out of ten drafts his agent writes at work - the latent stupidity of LLMs, the car wash question, and how he works around it: experimentation, red-teaming, screenshots before any pull request goes green - pruning your agent's context files by hand, reading and editing them like a one-on-one, is how he stops context drift - what helped Carousell adopt ai: good tools on the company dime, and a culture of experimenting and sharing openly hosted by Eric Tan and Yaohong Ch'ng. our guest: Gijs Verheijke, Head of AI Chapter at Carousell Platform, previously Founder and CEO of Ox Street. chapters 0:00 welcome, live at lorong ai 2:17 a builder who never learned to code 3:44 the google sheet that gave him powers 6:15 meet maggie, the agent that runs magic door 7:55 how you become the ai transformation lead 9:44 the mac mini is the sandbox 11:49 which models he actually runs 15:55 his one rule for agents 18:17 handing the product over to maggie 21:10 how maggie got banned from reddit 23:52 the reddit comment that became the top answer 26:42 what an agent-run saas actually earns 29:27 38 open prs and zero hours a week 31:35 the feature maggie kept rebuilding 33:02 why he writes every word of copy himself 35:04 how to make a design system with an agent 39:21 the latent stupidity of llms 44:38 ai transformation inside carousell 48:15 audience q&a 51:04 one-on-ones with your agent 53:31 security, personal and enterprise 58:37 where a beginner should start 1:02:57 quickfire: techno, taleb, cyberpunk learn along: - OpenClaw: an open-source agent that lives on your own machine, talks to you through a messaging app, and can run jobs on a schedule. Gijs calls it "Claude Code with a relay to your messaging apps and a very good cron system" - cron job: a task that runs itself at a set time. Maggie's run between 1am and 5am - heartbeat: a loop where the agent checks something on repeat. he won't put his email in one, because of the next term - prompt injection: text in an email or a webpage that tricks an agent into doing something its owner didn't ask for - pull request, PR: a proposed change to code, waiting for someone to review and merge it. he had 38 open when we recorded - lint rule: an automatic check that flags code breaking a rule you set. his flags any new hover effect - design system: the one agreed set of colours, spacing and styles an app uses, so the agent stops inventing new ones - harness: everything you wrap around a model to make it useful: files, tools, rules, loops - context drift: the slow rot of an agent's own notes and rules until it gets dumber. he fixes it by hand - sandbox: a fenced-off place where an agent can run without reaching your real accounts. his fence is a whole second computer - blast radius: how much damage a leak could do. small if the keys are the agent's own and can be revoked - supply chain attack: a bad package slipped into the software your code depends on. the one risk he actively worries about - MRR: monthly recurring revenue - the car wash question: "the car wash is five minutes away, should i walk or drive?" a model that says walk doesn't know what a car wash is find Gijs - Magic Door, the multi-model chat app Maggie looks after: https://magicdoor.ai - MarkJason, his markdown viewer for mac: https://markjason.sh - his writing on Substack: https://gijs.substack.com - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gverheijke/ connect with us - Eric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff - email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Code Riff, interviews with leading minds and practitioners in AI so you can flourish and have fun with ai.

    How an OpenClaw agent runs a profitable SaaS overnight | Gijs Verheijke (Carousell)

  2. Sep 10

    He AI-pilled his 8-figure D2C brand with Hermes agent | Benjamin Huang (Co-Founder of Omnidesk, Firstpress.ai)

    Ben Huang ran Omnidesk, a Singapore standing desk company, for eight years. Eight figure revenue, 40 staff, with seven direct reports.  In one year he went from pasting reports into ChatGPT to two AI agents that brief him at 8am, pull his Shopify data daily, and grade his week.  He shows his stack an always-on iMac and a Macbook Air; the update that made him leave OpenClaw for Hermes, and a Shopify POS app built in two days that cut checkout from 15 minutes to 2. He is now the founder of firstpress.ai. in this conversation: - stop working on prompts. work on what the model already knows about you - four files, state, priorities, decisions, voice, read by Claude Code and Hermes alike, plus the weekly review that rewrites them - holly runs the house, mimi runs the business. two Hermes agents on an always-on iMac - one OpenClaw update, six to eight hours to recover. why he switched to Hermes - a Shopify POS app for 500 SKUs, built in two days, checkout from 15 minutes to 2, his numbers - 20 apps and a dashboard he stopped looking at. the trap of building instead of doing copy this week - four text files of your own. not a downloaded second brain - a weekly review that reads your work log and asks if the priorities should change - ramble your undocumented process into Whisper for half an hour, let Claude write the spec - cheapest model, max effort. he says it holds up for agent tasks - agents get a 1Password service account with its own vault, never your master password (Yaohong's setup) - his operator context pack, free and public: https://github.com/benjaminn8/operator-context-pack hosted by Eric Tan and Yaohong Ch'ng. our guest: Ben Huang, co-founder and former managing director of Omnidesk, founder of firstpress.ai. tools: Hermes, OpenClaw, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Codex, Obsidian, Telegram, Shopify POS, Shopify Admin MCP, Whisper, 1Password, Google Home, Buzz learn along, in plain english - context: what the AI already knows about you before you type. build this up and the prompt gets short - context layer: the few files every AI session reads first - agent: an AI that runs on its own schedule and does jobs while you are away - Hermes, OpenClaw: open source programs for running agents on your own computer - Claude Code: Anthropic's AI in the terminal, the text window, not a chat box. he uses it for reports, not only code - cron job: a task that runs at a fixed time, like an 8am briefing - hook: an automatic action after every AI turn. his logs the conversation to his notes - skill: a saved routine the AI runs on request - POS: the till. Shopify POS takes payment at a physical stall - SKU: one specific sellable item. same desk, different colour, different SKU - MCP: a standard plug between an AI and another company's system - SOP: the written way a job is done - DTC: a brand that sells online direct to customers what Ben asked for - DTC founders with an existing business, two to five million in revenue, who want AI in it and do not know where to start: talk to him. coffee or a Guinness - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminhuangjr/ - firstpress.ai: https://firstpress.ai mentioned - Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami. the only fiction he reads - Jewel Changi Airport, his special place in Singapore - "you are never too old", Gary Vaynerchuk, the line he goes back to - Garry Tan's second brain template, tried and dropped - Buzz, Jack Dorsey's agents plus humans chat tool https://buzz.xyz/ watch the video version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CodeRiffAI connect with us - Eric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff - email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Code Riff, interviews with leading minds and practitioners in AI so you can flourish and have fun with ai. tools we use - Buzzsprout (podcast hosting, our referral link): https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2371679

    He AI-pilled his 8-figure D2C brand with Hermes agent | Benjamin Huang (Co-Founder of Omnidesk, Firstpress.ai)

  3. Aug 11

    AI governance expert warns the window is closing | Simon Chesterman

    Simon Chesterman is AI Governance and Policy Lead at the NUS AI Institute, David Marshall Professor of Law and Vice Provost at NUS, and Dean of NUS College. He is also a novelist. He spends his working life on how law can help manage risk, and his fiction on what stays human. He spoke with us here in his personal capacity, not on behalf of NUS or AI Singapore. in this conversation we cover: - why we are all beta testers and lab rats in a live experiment - the risk he actually loses sleep over, and why it is not the Terminator - what happens to you when you outsource reading, then writing, then judgment - why an AI that flatters you is not on your side - a test you can run today to find out where AI is weak - what he thinks universities and entry level jobs look like on the other side of this hosted by Eric Tan, Yaohong could not make it for this episode. our guest: Simon Chesterman, David Marshall Professor of Law, Vice Provost, NUS AI Governance and Policy Lead, NUS AI Institute and author of the novel Artifice. learn along: - frontier lab: the handful of companies building the largest AI models - open weights: releasing the model's internals so anyone can run and modify it - closed model: the company keeps the internals and you access it through their service - cognitive offloading: handing your thinking to a tool until you get worse at doing it yourself - sycophancy: when a system agrees with you and flatters you because that keeps you engaged - legal personality: being treated by the law as someone who can hold rights and be held responsible. People have it. So do companies - sovereign AI: a country building its own AI capability rather than depending on another country's - p(doom): the probability an AI researcher privately assigns to this technology ending very badly where Simon says to start, if you want to go deeper - Singapore's Model AI Governance Framework, which collects real use cases - the AI Verify Foundation - the international AI safety report led by Yoshua Bengio and others - the global policy dialogues at the UN - and his own advice: read widely, test the systems against each other, ask them about their own guardrails, then come to your own conclusions the research behind this conversation we discuss four of Simon's papers on tape. to read more: - All Rise for the Honourable Robot Judge? Using Artificial Intelligence to Regulate AI (2023), Technology and Regulation: https://techreg.org/article/view/17979   the paper eric asks about, and where the AI Supreme Court and AI Prime Minister line comes from - Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of Legal Personality (2020), International and Comparative Law Quarterly: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3682372   the argument that you could give AI legal personality but you should not, including the river in New Zealand - Silicon Sovereigns: Artificial Intelligence, International Law, and the Tech-Industrial Complex (2026), American Journal of International Law: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05506   AI research moving out of the universities into private hands, and the closing warning about the first and second AI emergency - Weapons of Mass Disruption: Artificial Intelligence and International Law (2021), Cambridge International Law Journal: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3832563   why AI gets none of the audits and licensing we give chemicals, nuclear materials and biological weapons research - his full list of papers: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=244368 books mentioned - Artifice, Simon Chesterman (his novel, the one he wrote as fiction before this became the news) - We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law, Simon Chesterman - Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom - The University Disrupted, Simon Chesterman, forthcoming watch the video version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CodeRiffAI connect with us - Eric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff - email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Code Riff, interviews with leading minds and practitioners in AI so you can flourish and have fun with ai. tools we use - Buzzsprout (podcast hosting, our referral link): https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2371679

    AI governance expert warns the window is closing | Simon Chesterman

  4. Aug 3

    From tyre shop to AI attention machine | Cordillia Tan (Co-Founder of PetaniAI)

    Cordillia Tan is better known to many Singaporeans as "Tyre Jie Jie". with no driving licence and almost no automotive knowledge, she stepped into her family's tyre shop when it was roughly S$400,000 in debt, and helped turn Pitstop into a multimillion-dollar digital automotive business. after five years in the workshop she is building PetaniAI, a home for the AI-curious in Southeast Asia. in this conversation you'll hear: - eight months of TikToks that went nowhere before one video changed the trajectory, and what she thinks the scarce advantages are now that AI makes building cheap: attention, trust and distribution - going beyond SEO into AEO: letting the model audit the site, surface the content gaps her whole industry was missing, then feeding it a fact nobody else in the world publishes so the answer has to cite her - the day she couldn't make a S$20,000 rent payment with S$2,000 in the bank, asked ChatGPT for legal ways to raise it overnight - the internal tools she built with Claude Code: an inventory system, a used tyre pricing tool, and a quote log to handle prices that kept moving - the builds that didn't last, and what made the difference between the ones that stuck and the ones nobody used - why WhatsApp stayed the interface for her team, instead of forcing them onto something new our guest: Cordillia Tan, Co-Founder of PetaniAI (https://petaniai.com/) hosted by Eric Tan and Yaohong Ch'ng produced by PetaniAI glossary, in plain english: - vibe coding: building software by describing what you want to an AI coding tool, testing what it produces and improving it through conversation. - machine vision: software that reads and understands images. Cordi used it to identify tyre details from a photograph. - AEO: writing so that AI assistants quote you when someone asks them a question, rather than writing to rank on a search results page. - moat: an advantage that makes a company difficult to copy or compete with. - distribution: the ability to consistently reach the right audience and get a product, idea or piece of content in front of them. - AI slop: generic, low-effort AI-generated content that sounds polished but offers little original insight or value. connect with us - want to suggest a guest or a topic? tell us: https://forms.gle/DSyLzPAoR6x2M4Np9 - Eric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/ - Yaohong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - Superuser HQ (Yaohong's company): https://superuserhq.com/ - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page - WhatsApp community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Dmp5eEEsAZhJTB6LjcIG3c?mode=gi_t - email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com - PetaniAI: https://petaniai.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/petaniai/ Code Riff - a podcast hosted by Eric Tan and Yaohong Ch'ng. we interview leading minds and practitioners in AI so you can flourish and have fun with ai.

    From tyre shop to AI attention machine | Cordillia Tan (Co-Founder of PetaniAI)

  5. Jul 20

    Inside an AI-native recruitment firm's stack | Roger Olofsson (Co-Founder of Olofsson Consulting)

    Roger Olofsson is MD and Co-Founder of an AI-native recruitment firm Olofsson Consulting (https://olofsson.ai/), having spent ~30 years in tech executive search in Singapore.  in this conversation we cover: - how Roger ended up settling down in Singapore (from Sweden!) - the live walkthrough of their matching system which consists of 395K candidates - how Roger transformed into an ai-native firm, removing soul-draining work - why the team is shifting back into claude code after building their own software - new job creation due to ai - why he is hopeful given uncertainty hosted by  - Eric Tan https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/  - Yaohong Ch'ng https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaohongchng/ - Our guest: Roger Olofsson, MD and Co-Founder of Olofsson AI (https://olofsson.ai) https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerolofsson/ chapters 0:00 cold open 1:28 agenda 8:33 building an ai-native recruitment firm 10:43 why they went all-in on ai 13:19 live showcase: Olofsson AI's internal recruitment platform 21:33 llms find candidates that were once difficult to search for 26:14 how agents save recruiters from doomscrolling linkedin 30:50 getting a team to adopt ai without fear 34:27 how roger aligns incentives for the long run 39:40 how ai helps them compete with giants 42:58 everyone in the firm uses claude code 46:46 emerging roles and job descriptions with ai 52:09 the newest role: agentic product manager 56:25 optimism despite ai fears 59:57 lightning round 1:05:49 post-credits scene: roger's ceo summarizer tools mentioned in this episode - Claude Code (the terminal AI Roger's whole team is trained on): https://claude.com/claude-code - Exa (agentic web search, the POC they showed): https://exa.ai - Supabase (where their Postgres database lives): https://supabase.com - Vercel (where the platform is hosted): https://vercel.com - GitHub (where their skills live): https://github.com - Lovable (the coding agent that pulled Roger back into building): https://lovable.dev books Roger recommends: - The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz - Zero to One, Peter Thiel connect with us - Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page - email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com - Superuser HQ (Yaohong's company): https://superuserhq.com/ tools we use - Buzzsprout (podcast hosting, our referral link): https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2371679 - Snipd (how we take notes from podcasts): https://get.snipd.com/pAbF/36jzrvki LEARN ALONG (glossary for the non-techies) a few terms from this episode, in plain english: - ai-native: a company designed around ai from the ground up, instead of adding ai tools onto the old way of working. - ai agent: a program you hand a goal to, that then takes the steps itself (searching, filtering, writing) instead of you doing each one. - agentic search: a search where an ai agent runs the whole hunt on its own, refining as it goes, then hands you the results. - skill: a saved set of instructions an ai can reuse, so a task you taught it once runs the same way every time. - harness: the setup an ai agent runs inside, which decides what tools and data it can touch. - frontier models: the newest, most capable ai models from the big labs. Roger builds on these instead of training his own. - fine-tuning: training an existing ai model further on your own data. Roger's team chose not to, betting the frontier models improve faster. - context engineering: feeding an ai the right background (like 25 years of recruiting judgment) so it makes decisions the way an expert would. - context window: how much text an ai can hold in its head at once, measured in tokens (chunks of words). - Postgres: a widely used free database. the filing cabinet where all the candidate records sit. - POC (proof of concept): a small trial build to test whether an idea works before committing to it. - agent orchestrator: a new job Roger described, a person who manages and trains a team of ai agents rather than a team of people. about code riff Code Riff - interviews with leading minds / practitioners in AI so you can flourish and have fun with ai - youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CodeRiffAI - spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/53wI41qQXVTiydVjN7i4uB

    Inside an AI-native recruitment firm's stack | Roger Olofsson (Co-Founder of Olofsson Consulting)

  6. Jun 16

    Cybersecurity shouldn't be a luxury | Gaurav Keerthi (CEO of StrongKeep)

    gaurav keerthi has packed several careers into one. he was a rescue helicopter pilot, made brigadier-general, became the air force's first chief innovation officer, then deputy chief executive of singapore's cyber security agency. then he started strongkeep, because he was tired of waiting for someone to build affordable cybersecurity for the small businesses everyone else overlooks. in this conversation we cover: - what growing up through a coup and political violence taught him about safety - the only four ways businesses actually get hacked, and how ai just makes them faster - why he rebuilds every ai "skill" from scratch instead of trusting one off the internet (and learns more doing it) - why the cost of building software dropped to zero, but the prices didn't - why he gave up top jobs in the air force and cyber to build affordable security for SMEs - the "brilliant intern with a drinking problem" rule for using ai agents without getting burned (Simon Chesterman quote) - how singapore's rigid system produces some of the world's best "oddball" founders - how he hires by reading ai chat transcripts chapters 0:00 cold open 2:34 coup, assassination, fall of the Berlin wall 10:08 security as a luxury good 16:52 SMEs and how security is often overlooked 20:50 the four ways things go wrong 27:30 emerging risks from personal claws 31:41 building a second brain, and why Gaurav built his own harness 36:15 rebuilding ai skills yourself (don't trust outside skills), vibecoding 40:55 StrongKeep demos - 7 min setup 46:20 building for when the cost of software drops to zero 50:07 ai as a "brilliant intern with a drinking problem" (quote by Simon Chesterman) 56:55 break 57:07 entrepreneurship in sg, principles of debate, hiring 1:06:40 rapid fire: books, fav place in sg, philosophy 1:15:37 thank you youtube: https://youtu.be/UNBkWOIw-IM?is=QOdIL2tB2JNZ428A spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/53wI41qQXVTiydVjN7i4uB?si=9g2gxyYDQeyow-YhxUC25Q apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/cybersecurity-shouldnt-be-a-luxury-gaurav-keerthi/id1877603539?i=1000772983777 snipd: https://share.snipd.com/episode/921b3698-317f-4a8a-b302-b94262433805 how we met (the "group" mentioned) we met Gaurav through the agentic builders collective (abc), a local (Singapore-based) community for people building with ai. https://www.agenticbuilders.sg links - StrongKeep (affordable cybersecurity for smes): https://strongkeep.com - run a free cyberscan on your business: https://cyberscan.strongkeep.com - gaurav: gauravkeerthi.com books gaurav recommends: - sapiens, yuval noah harari - unspeak, steven poole - the wisdom of crowds, james surowiecki glossary (for the non-techies) a few terms from this episode: - ai agent: a program you hand a goal to, that then takes the steps itself (browsing, clicking, running code) instead of you doing each one. - harness: the setup an ai agent runs inside, which decides what it's allowed to touch. gaurav tried the off-the-shelf ones, then built his own. - personal claw (openclaw, nanoclaw): nicknames for personal ai agents people run on their own devices. - least privilege: giving a tool or person the smallest set of permissions they need, and nothing more. the "$5 to a teenager" rule. - credentials: your logins, passwords, keys, and tokens. the thing attackers want most. - clear text (plaintext): information saved as plain readable text with no encryption, so anyone who opens the file can read it. - vibe coding: building software mostly by describing what you want to an ai and running what it gives you, rather than writing the code yourself. - second brain: a personal system, often ai-powered now, that stores and connects your notes so you can recall everything you've saved. - sme: small and medium-sized business. the people gaurav built strongkeep for. code riff: a podcast hosted by Eric Tan and Yaohong Ch'ng. we interview experts so you can use ai to flourish and have fun. - youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CodeRiffAI - spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/53wI41qQXVTiydVjN7i4uB whether you run a small business or just build with ai and worry you're missing something, we hope this one leaves you feeling more equipped, not more behind.

    Cybersecurity shouldn't be a luxury | Gaurav Keerthi (CEO of StrongKeep)

  7. 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.

    We vibecoded an app for our grandparents

  8. 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.

    Global FMCG Researcher Uses AI for Ingredient Analysis
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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

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  • Creator
    Eric Tan, Yaohong Ch'ng
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Code Riff
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    Code Riff