Calling All Builders: Real AI Use with Keegan Knapp cover art

Calling All Builders: Real AI Use with Keegan Knapp

Calling All Builders: Real AI Use with Keegan Knapp

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 Everyone has dabbled. But what does it actually look like when someone who builds things for a living sits down with AI tools every day and puts them to real work? Not the worldview conversation. Not the hype. The actual workflow. The shortcuts. The moment you go, "Oh my god. That completely changed how I work." In this episode of Slackers, Jaime Solis and Jonathan Sasse bring in Keegan Knapp — senior strategist, product builder, and hands-on AI practitioner — for the show’s most tactical conversation to date. Keegan has been building AI products with AI, running multi-agent loops, and rethinking what a working knowledge base looks like at the project level. This one is for the builders. Key themes include: Why Cursor is more than a code editor — and how non-developers can use it for strategy workHow to build a working knowledge base using local folders, Markdown files, and context controlThe competitive intelligence workflow: building an agent that scrapes, synthesizes, and stores dailySynthesized executive teams and product advisory councils as AI personas that actively shape your buildThe Ralph Loops framework: how to run autonomous refinement cycles with human checkpointsWhy GitHub is becoming the new LinkedIn — and what that means for how we signal our valueThe difference between curiosity-driven use and shortcut-seeking — and why it mattersWhat a personal AI operating system looks like and why it’s closer than most people thinkThe “spoons” framework: how creation and discovery give energy rather than drain it Keegan walks through a concrete example — a cycling apparel startup — to show exactly how a small team would set up a shared repository, build a competitive intelligence agent, and start generating research in the background without ongoing manual effort. The workflow is more accessible than it sounds. The real barrier, as the conversation keeps returning to, is not technical fluency. It’s the willingness to be curious and to actually start. Jonathan frames the transition clearly: most people have been using AI as a super-powered search engine. The leap — to project-based context management, to building agents, to assembling virtual teams of expertise you don’t personally have — is closer than it looks. And for creatives especially, these tools don’t threaten the work. They finally give ideas somewhere to go. You don’t learn to ride a bike by reading about it. Pick a pet project. Try it one way. Abandon it. Try it a different way. The output will be completely different — and so will you. More from Keegan online: GitHubLinkedInGrindwell.ai (golf training w/AI project)Ralph Loops (learn about this new software engineer mindset) –––The Slackers Podcast is produced by Jaime Solis and Jonathan Sasse.Audio production by Stephen Kallao.Cover art by Jonathan Sasse Connect with the Hosts 🎙️ Jonathan Sasse — Chief Strategy Officer and executive advisor.🔗 Connect on LinkedIn · Forbes Communication Council 🎙️ Jaime Solis — Music & Media executive, strategist, and creator of the Red Threads newsletter.🔗 LinkedIn | Newsletter | Website📱 Social: Instagram · Threads · LinkedIn We want to hear from you!🤔 Do you have a question you'd love to ask us, or a topic you think we should dive into on the show? You can leave us a voice message right here! Thanks for listening!If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app—and leave a quick rating or review. It helps new listeners find the show.
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