Using AI As a Thinking Partner, Not a Vending Machine

AI for Virtual Assistants: Skills, Automations, and the Human-in-the-Loop

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com. In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Kayla Helmick to talk about her journey from traditional virtual assistant work to leveraging AI for automations, podcast editing, and app development — and how she turned an early existential threat into the biggest boost her business has ever had. They get specific about the practical stuff: building reusable Claude skills to process podcasts, fixing stuck Zapier and Tally form automations, and going from playing around in Lovable to building and deploying a full Laravel app with Claude Code — her first being a memorial website for a friend. The conversation also widens out to the harder questions: keeping a human in the loop for quality, how AI is reshaping the future of virtual assistance and the work itself, and what it even means to call yourself a "virtual assistant" when you're shipping internal tools. * Matt Stauffer on X [https://x.com/mattstauffer] - https://x.com/mattstauffer [https://x.com/mattstauffer] * Tighten Website [https://tighten.com/] - https://tighten.com/ [https://tighten.com/] * Kayla’s Website [http://kaylahelmick.com] - http://kaylahelmick.com [http://kaylahelmick.com] * Kayla on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kayla.helmick/] - https://www.instagram.com/kayla.helmick/ [https://www.instagram.com/kayla.helmick/] * Kayla on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylahelmick/] - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylahelmick/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylahelmick/] * Kayla Helmick on X [https://x.com/kayla_helmick] - https://x.com/kayla_helmick [https://x.com/Kayyyla_Helmick] ----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten [https://tighten.com/] - https://tighten.com/ [https://tighten.com/] Big thanks to the companies that support the show: Mailtrap [https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_4] - https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_4 [https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_4]

The Conversations AI Forces Us to Have

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com. In this episode, Matt Stauffer talks with Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm [http://transistor.fm/], about what AI is really doing to creators, careers, and company culture — and why so little of it is actually about the technology itself. They get into the generational backlash against AI, the myth that "all the layoffs are because of AI," how building with AI sparked a hard conversation with Justin's own co-founder, and the practical ways Justin uses ChatGPT and Claude in daily life, from meal planning to packing for a trip to London. The through-line is a challenge for an AI world: as the easy work gets automated, all that's left is the hard stuff — so do the hard thing, increase your "luck surface area," and lean into the human connection AI keeps surfacing. * Matt Stauffer on X [https://x.com/mattstauffer] - https://x.com/mattstauffer [https://x.com/mattstauffer] * Tighten Website [https://tighten.com/] - https://tighten.com/ [https://tighten.com/] * Justin Jackson Website [https://justinjackson.ca/] - https://justinjackson.ca/ [https://justinjackson.ca/] * Transistor.fm [http://transistor.fm/] - https://transistor.fm/ [https://transistor.fm/] * Inception Point AI [https://www.inceptionpoint.ai/] - https://www.inceptionpoint.ai/ [https://www.inceptionpoint.ai/] * The Panel Podcast [https://panelpodcast.com/] - https://panelpodcast.com/ [https://panelpodcast.com/] ----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten [https://tighten.com/] - https://tighten.com/ [https://tighten.com/] Big thanks to the companies that support the show: Mailtrap [https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_3] - https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_3 [https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_3]

Relevance Engineering: How to Show Up in AI Search

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com. Matt Stauffer talks with Michael King, founder and CEO of iPullRank, about what he calls relevance engineering — the work of getting brands and people seen inside AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. Mike explains why he reads patents and white papers instead of public docs, how he built his own retrieval-augmented generation prototype to understand how these systems actually work, and why visibility now comes from building "surface area" across your whole content ecosystem — Reddit, LinkedIn, digital PR — rather than from links alone. They get into the disappearing line between white hat and black hat, and why AI search has no rulebook yet. The conversation also turns personal: how Mike mandated his team get  faster with AI, how he empowers people from the bottom up instead of issuing ultimatums, and how AI frees him to spend more time on the creative work — including music — that he actually wants to do. * Matt Stauffer on X [https://x.com/mattstauffer] - https://x.com/mattstauffer [https://x.com/mattstauffer] * Tighten Website [https://tighten.com/] - https://tighten.com/ [https://tighten.com/] * Michael on X [https://x.com/VeryWellVersed] - https://x.com/VeryWellVersed [https://x.com/VeryWellVersed] * Michael on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkingphilly/] - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkingphilly/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkingphilly/] * iPullRank Website [https://ipullrank.com/] - https://ipullrank.com/ [https://ipullrank.com/] * iPullRank on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/ipullrank/] - https://www.linkedin.com/company/ipullrank/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/ipullrank/] * iPullRank on X [https://x.com/iPullRank] - https://x.com/iPullRank [https://x.com/iPullRank] ----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten [https://tighten.com/] - https://tighten.com/ [https://tighten.com/] Big thanks to the companies that support the show: Mailtrap [https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_2] - https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_2 [https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_2]

Building a Self-Directed PhD With Claude AI

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com. In this episode, Matt Stauffer talks with software engineer and self-described "Renegade Historian" Dave Stanton, who has built an entire AI-driven workflow that lets him program — and write a 400-page history book — almost entirely by voice from his phone. They get into the nuts and bolts: an always-on Mac Mini running stacked Claude Code sessions in tmux, SSH access from anywhere, voice-to-text tools, and a self-designed "PhD" where Sonnet plays research assistant and Opus plays a hypercritical dissertation chair, with every critique tracked as a GitHub issue. Dave explains why the book itself was never really the goal. The conversation widens into the bigger questions — what gets lost when AI handles the rote work, whether to retain human connection on purpose, and Dave's honest 80/20 split between optimism and unease about where all of this is heading. * Matt Stauffer on X [https://x.com/mattstauffer]  * Dave Stanton’s Website [https://davestanton.com/book]  * Dave on X  [https://x.com/gotoplanb] * Tighten Website [https://tighten.com/]  * Blink for iOS [https://blink.sh/] * Superwhisper [https://superwhisper.com/]  * Geography as Destiny on GitHub [https://github.com/gotoplanb/geography-as-destiny]  * ngrok [https://ngrok.com/]  * Tailscale [https://tailscale.com/] * tmux [https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki] * Solo [https://soloterm.com/]  * Please Use AI by Sean Smucker [https://shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-use-ai]  ----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten [https://tighten.com/]. Big thanks to the companies that support the show: Mailtrap [https://l.rw.rw/pragmaticai_1]

Human Marketing in an AI Search World

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com. In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Meg Clarke, owner of Clapping Dog Media, to talk about how getting found online has shifted from gaming search engines to being discovered by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. They get practical fast: why keywords are giving way to 23-word prompts, why your About page suddenly matters, why LinkedIn beats Reddit as a source AI tools trust, and how Meg now runs tech audits and analysis through Claude skills and Cowork to cut payroll and take real vacations. The conversation also opens up into something bigger — how AI lowers the barrier to starting a business, why it changes the math differently for owners than for employees, and Meg's passion for helping more women step into entrepreneurship. * Matt Stauffer on X [https://x.com/mattstauffer]  * Tighten Website [https://tighten.com/]  * Meg Clarke on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/clappingdogmedia/] * Meg’s Website [https://clappingdogmedia.com/]  * Dan Martel Book [https://www.buybackyourtime.com/] * Allie K. Miller on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@AKMofficial] ----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten [https://tighten.com/].