In this episode, Gui Ferreira is back for the second of two episodes we recorded back-to-back. In the last episode we did a deep dive into Claude Code - and this time we're talking about using coding agents for things that aren't code! We chatted about pointing an agent at a folder of markdown files, daily briefs and personal podcasts, running coach agents built on Strava and Garmin data, an Obsidian vault as a "life agent", and building personal software just for yourself - and when it's worth turning into a product. We also got into what all of this means for hiring, system thinking, and the flow state and fatigue of juggling multiple agents.

Gui Ferreira

Guilherme Ferreira, also known as Gui, is a Minimalist Software Craftsman, passionate about simplicity and continuous learning. After around twenty years as a .NET developer, and a journey through roles including Software Engineer, Architect, CTO, and Developer Advocate, Gui now focuses on education - building his own projects, working with companies, delivering in-person workshops, and creating courses on Dometrain. He's a Microsoft MVP for Developer Technologies, a tech speaker, a YouTuber, and a .NET content creator, and is based near Porto in Portugal.

• Website
• Dometrain courses
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
• X / Twitter
• GitHub

Links from the show

• Episode 89: Claude Code - with Gui Ferreira - the first of the two episodes we recorded together
• Episode 78: Goals and time management - with Gui Ferreira - Gui's first appearance on the show, where we talked about focus and time blocking
• Claude Cowork - agents for non-developers
• Claude Code
• Codex
• Obsidian - the markdown note-taking tool Gui uses as the vault his agents work in
• NotebookLM - Google's research tool that can generate a two-host podcast
• Strava - where Gui's running coach agent gets its data
• garmin_mcp - the community-built Garmin Connect MCP server Dan uses for his running agent
• OpenClaw
• Hermes Agent
• Dan's newsletter - weekly dev and AI news, put together with the help of a newsletter agent
• Spectre.Console - used for the newsletter triage tool
• AGENTS.md
• Agent Skills
• Model Context Protocol
• Remember The Milk, Todoist and TickTick - the to-do list apps Dan used before building his own
• Miro and Xmind - the mind mapping tools that led Dan to build his own
• Episode 88: Agent Skills - with Matt Pocock - where the strategic vs tactical programming discussion came up
• A Philosophy of Software Design - John Ousterhout's book, and the source of the tactical vs strategic programming framing
• Dan's blog post: Developers are System Thinkers, Not Code Monkeys
• Cotypist - Gui's dev tip: AI autocomplete for natural language anywhere you type, which can run on a local model (Mac only)

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