Tool Use - AI Conversations How To Build A Successful AI Product (ft Swyx)
24 snips
Nov 18, 2025 
Swyx (Shawn Wang), co-founder of AI Engineer and a developer tooling expert, dives into the evolving landscape of AI products. He discusses why vertical AI agents are vital for developers, advocating against the standalone vector databases hype. The conversation explores the shift from 'vibe coding' to structured engineering, stressing the importance of extracting prompts from codebases. Additionally, Swyx highlights the challenges of agentic browsing and the significance of concise product quality over just distribution.
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Iterate To Reliability, Not Just Hype
- Many AI demos ride hype but fail because they don't iterate to reliable, cheap, and fast products.
- Shawn Wang warns rebuild from scratch around actual user goals when iteration stalls.
Personal Tooling Stack And Gemini Use
- Shawn describes using Windsurf, DevIn, Cursor, Riverside, Super Whisper and a Gemini tool for YouTube transcriptions.
- He prefers tools with reliable, built-in integrations like Gemini for YouTube understanding.
Ship Slack And Phone Voice Integrations
- Do integrate AI assistants into Slack because it's where much work happens and resembles a junior engineer workflow.
- Try telephony voice (PSTN) for robust voice interfaces since phone calls handle continuity better than VoIP.