Mike recently got access to Claude Code at work — and as a non-engineer, he's been using it in ways nobody expected. In this episode, Mike and Joe break down what happens when a PM starts interrogating the codebase, from learning how systems actually work to catching years of organizational mythology that turned out to be wrong. They explore practical use cases for non-technical folks — market research, data access, UI mockups — and get into the weeds on Mermaid diagrams, hallucination strategies, and sub-agents. They also both happen to be starting AI Guilds at their respective companies, and have a lot to say about why bottom-up beats top-down when it comes to AI adoption.

00:00 Intro & The Flowchart Problem01:29 Mike Gets Claude Code Access06:45 Use Cases for Non-Engineers09:30 Market Research & Data Science with AI Agents11:25 Read-Only Database Access: What's Safe?13:00 Two Challenges: Threading & Hallucination15:25 How to Pressure-Test AI Answers17:45 Mermaid Diagrams Explained21:44 Mermaid in Notion23:49 Building an AI Guild at Work28:46 Sub-Agents & Avoiding Hallucination30:23 Wrap Up & What's Next

When AI can build anything, how do you decide what's worth building?

Josh comes back on the show and throws a question at Mike and Joe that every solo dev and indie hacker is quietly wrestling with: is shipping still the goal?

We dig into what "value" actually means when code is free, why building for yourself beats building for the market, and how the shovel factory metaphor exposes the trap most AI-era developers fall into without realizing it. Mike breaks down how real product managers filter signal from noise and pick what to build next. Joe makes the case that what's timeless matters more than what's novel. And Josh gets honest about pausing a product he's been heads-down on — and what that decision actually cost him.

If you've ever vibe-coded three apps in a weekend and felt empty at the end of it, this one's for you.

Topics covered:

• Signal vs noise in product prioritization
• Why passion-first building outperforms market-first building
• The "shovel factory" trap and how to escape it
• What PMs actually do when they score backlog items
• When consulting beats shipping a product
• How to know if your beachhead is real

00:00 Reconnecting After a Break

00:37 Navigating Project Management Challenges

03:05 Defining Value in Product Development

08:23 Signals vs. Noise in Decision Making

18:22 Finding the Right Focus in Fast-Paced Environments

26:12 Building for Passion vs. Others

27:01 Finding Excitement in Projects

28:19 Navigating the Saturated App Market

30:02 The Shovel Factory Metaphor

30:55 The Value of Timeless Solutions

32:19 Identifying Real-World Outcomes

35:23 Consulting as a Viable Path

38:58 The Importance of Use Cases

43:48 Teaching and Sharing Knowledge

In this episode of Build It Faster, hosts Mike and Joe discuss their vision for creating a cohesive body of work from their podcast episodes. They explore the idea of synthesizing content into articles and books, the importance of indexing their discussions, and the potential for monetization through membership and workshops. The conversation emphasizes the need for organization and accessibility of their content, aiming to create a valuable resource for listeners.

00:00 Introduction and Goals

04:58 Exploring the Body of Work

11:22 Synthesis and Content Creation

16:37 Indexing and Organizing Content

33:25 Proof of Concept and Future Directions