Human in the Loop

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Programming Schedule

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Behind the Show

How It's Built

Every episode runs the same two-command pipeline. The infrastructure is the show.

01 / Pre-Show /episode

Prep and Schedule

One command creates the episode doc, generates show notes template, schedules the LinkedIn event, and stages the OBS overlay. Chris and Sash pick the tool - the pipeline handles everything else.

02 / Show Day Live

15 Minutes, No Retakes

OBS to VDO.Ninja to LinkedIn RTMP. Real tool, real mistakes, real workarounds. The episode flips status automatically at 16:05 ET and marks aired at 16:20 ET - no manual intervention.

03 / Post-Show /turnover

Automated Wrap

One command uploads to YouTube with chapters, publishes show notes, updates the episode archive, and posts the LinkedIn recap. Hosts talk - machines ship.

Show Memory

Echo knows the library. Ask her about any episode - tools covered, key moments, what was built. She gets sharper every Friday.

Ask Echo →

Learn It, Use It

Takeaways (46)

Passing unit tests can still hide a broken system. 671 green tests checked the code, not whether the real automations fired - test the outcomes you actually depend on, not just the units.
EP010 - Watchdogs for Your Personal AI
Turn every incident into a permanent check. Log each break to a regressions.md and collect them into one smoke-test skill so the same failure can never silently return.
EP010 - Watchdogs for Your Personal AI
Keep secrets out of chat logs - pipe credentials through a hook that injects from a vault into the environment, never into the prompt.
EP009 - Refactor Your AI, Don't Set It
Treat MCP as the API surface for agents - if a vendor or community MCP exists, try it before writing custom API plumbing.
EP008 - API vs MCP
Split your personal AI stack into a body (always-on, reachable) and a brain (heavy session-based work). Don't try to make one tool do both.
EP007 - My Agents Had a Convo at Midnight Without Me
Use plan mode in Claude Code (Shift+Tab) before you let it write anything - it cannot touch files, so a misclick is harmless and the output is sharper.
EP006 - The 5-Step Method for Handing Real Work to AI

Browse all 46 takeaways - The Catalog Showing 6 of 46

Tools & Assets (4)

A Claude skill that fans out parallel web research and synthesizes a cited report.

Drive tmux sessions from Claude Code - panes, windows, long-running jobs.

Interactive click-through of the regression + smoke-test watchdog setup.

How two agents coordinated overnight without a human in the loop.

The Builders

Your Hosts

Co-Host / Producer

Chris Shanku

Builder. Storyteller. Moth StorySLAM Winner.

8 years at Microsoft FSI. Solution Engineer turned seller turned builder. Now Senior Director at iLink Digital, building AI systems that run in production every day. Created TheGrove - a personal AI operating system powered by Silas, with 23 agents and 41 skills.

System TheGrove / Silas

shanku.net →

Co-Host / Rift Lab AI

Sash Mohapatra

Explorer. Course Creator. Product Builder.

20 years at Microsoft. Started as an Exchange server engineer in India, ended as Director of Data & AI Sales for Capital Markets. Now building what he wished existed during that transition - courses, newsletters, and AI-native products.

System Nuro

riftlab.ai →

Every Friday

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Two ex-Microsoft builders. One real AI lesson. Live every Friday.