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Welcome back.
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We’re on the BuiltOnAir podcast.
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Good to be back with you.
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Today is season twenty three,
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episode five.
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And we are going to talk about some
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latest features.
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We’ll run through all the latest updates
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in the last month or so,
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and any other interesting news and
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highlights and things like that.
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Good to be back with everyone, Kamille,
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Ali, and myself, Dan,
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with you each week to give you up
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to date on all the latest and greatest
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of Airtable world.
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So with that, let me start off.
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I gotta share my screen.
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this works there we go we have another
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hackathon coming up ali and Kamille you
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guys are much more involved in this so
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why don’t you give us an update on
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what’s going on here
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Yeah, super exciting.
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We had so much fun last time that
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we’re going to do it again.
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And this is really spearheaded by Mike
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Simmons of Automatic Nation.
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And he’s very passionate about the
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community.
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He really wants this to be a community-led
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event.
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Last year, technically,
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but it was just in November,
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we had a little over twenty submissions
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and you can look at them here.
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There were some really,
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really cool things that people were
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submitting.
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It was so hard.
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Kamille, myself,
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and Ben Green were the jury to award
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one of the awards.
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And a lot of people submitted games last
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year, which I found really fun.
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And a lot of people have come on
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this podcast and showed some games.
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There’s been a lot of games demonstrated
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at their table over the years.
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So this time we decided to pick a
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theme for the hackathon and the theme is
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let’s play.
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And so we’re,
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open it up,
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whatever you take from that theme,
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if you want to build a game,
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something you just think is fun,
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that would be amazing.
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So signups are now,
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you don’t necessarily need to sign up
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before the event,
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but the
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I believe it’s March first through the
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seventeenth.
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And you can submit something during that
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window and at the end of that we’re
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going to select three winners.
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I believe there’s three prizes,
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one from Airtable themselves.
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They’re going to be selecting an AI
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specific winner.
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And then there will be a community chosen
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winner and a jury chosen winner.
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Yeah.
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Very cool.
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Okay.
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So March first is the deadline.
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So that’s coming up.
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Oh, let’s see.
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March.
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Seventeenth is the deadline, right?
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Yeah.
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Cool.
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Awesome.
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Yeah.
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So we’ll get involved.
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I know we’ll try to try to promote
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it on,
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on our podcast and channel and get
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involved in that way.
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So,
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Love to see what everybody builds and
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showcase having fun with Airtable playing
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good stuff.
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Yeah, not long after the first hackathon,
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I recreated a card game known as Flip
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Seven in Airtable.
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And I don’t believe I’ll be submitting
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because I may or may not be on
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the jury again this year.
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We’ll see.
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But I can show it on the podcast
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for inspiration for anybody who is
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wondering,
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what kind of games could you replicate in
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Airtable?
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All of the submissions from last year are
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available to watch on YouTube.
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Through this website,
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you can find all of the submissions and
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the creator of each of those submissions
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will give you a run through.
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Some of those submissions for the games,
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someone built like D&D in there.
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So the sky is the limit.
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It’s really how much patience do you have?
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That’s really the question.
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So if you have big ambitions,
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you might want to start before March
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first,
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just so you give yourself that wiggle
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room, but it’s all in good fun.
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So whatever fun idea you have,
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I think this is just a good time
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to like flex your skills.
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Absolutely get creative super fun.
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I remember one time in like twenty
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eighteen Airtable did a formula contest
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and one of the winners was a rock
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paper scissors game and they had made a
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formula that would just return either rock
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paper scissors.
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I think they did it based on like
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the last digit in the current millisecond
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or something like that.
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It was it was cute.
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Yeah, it’ll be interesting.
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I imagine some of the applications will
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leverage maybe some of the custom
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interfaces or something,
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which opens it up completely,
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which I’m a fan of.
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I’m a developer, so I like doing that.
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But there’s something to be said with the
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constraints of old school Airtable and
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figuring out workarounds around those
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constraints.
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Should be like brownie points for like
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overcoming the obstacles of Airtable.
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And sometimes you have to start with those
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obstacles so you can really think through,
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is this feature actually needed or am I
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just, you know,
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adding it just to add it or yeah,
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it really is needed.
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So I need to find a different approach
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to implementing or even go above and
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beyond and make a completely custom
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interface for it.
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I generally now see the constraints of
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SaaS applications almost like prompts in
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and of themselves of, is this enough?
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It might be, but if it isn’t,
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what can I do?
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Yeah, very true.
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Where could it go wrong?
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Yeah.
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It’s even got a weird idea generator as
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well.
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So if you need inspiration…
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I like that.
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There was one on there that was like
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tool for grandma or something,
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but I thought that was cute.
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I saw if Airtable had feelings,
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which is just everything Chris Dancy has
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built.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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Okay.
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Let’s talk about Airtable is making waves.
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So there’s a, there’s an article that,
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in TechCrunch,
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an interview with Howie Liu,
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CEO of Airtable.
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Interesting.
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I thought it was interesting.
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It does talk about their public valuation
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at one point was eleven point seven,
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now roughly four billion on secondary
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markets.
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But they are profitable,
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according to what to what this says.
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So anyways,
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give some behind the scenes info on on
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the company.
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But they launched a new product,
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Super Agent.
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We’ve talked about actually broke it here.
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I believe Ben Bailey was the one that
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broke it in the community and it was
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while we were doing a live podcast.
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So we showcased it here first and got
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a chance to play with it a little
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bit.
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So I thought we’d, anyways,
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a couple of things from this article.
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that were interesting is he just talks
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about how he just talks about, you know,
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what what he thinks of this product and
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the potential for it,
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kind of use it as, you know,
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the future and even someday,
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not anytime soon,
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but thinks that it could potentially
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surpass,
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what Airtable as a product is.
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And so that’s for me where I’m curious
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of like, okay,
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how much are they betting on this product?
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Or is this more of a proof of
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concept to flush out technologies and
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things like that?
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I’d be curious to see where they take
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super agent and what kind of emphasis they
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put on it.
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Yeah, this one was interesting.
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We had seen before,
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and we’ve talked about previously on the
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podcast,
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Airtable had made some acquisitions that
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were in the AI space.
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And I think this is kind of like
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an offshoot of one of those acquisitions.
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And it was different in some of their
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other announcements where product central
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is a separate like skew than like an
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Airtable subscription, if you will,
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but it’s still Airtable.
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You know what I mean?
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It’s just,
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it’s packaged a little bit differently and
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it has a slightly different set of
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features,
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but it is ostensibly Airtable and
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recognizably.
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So super agent feels like a completely
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different product and
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that just so happens to be owned by
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the same company so it’s not as it’s
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it’s easier to define i think what super
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agent is as opposed to product central
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where we were like what is this this
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is just interfaces this is different in
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that regard but it is also interesting how
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much emphasis seems to be placed
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on Airtable.com’s homepage of like,
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you super agent, but if I needed Airtable,
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that’s not what super agent is,
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it’s something else.
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I did, I saw somebody,
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I really enjoyed seeing the post on
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LinkedIn about like how people are using
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super agent,
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like the people that are using it and
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what they’re doing with it.
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There were a couple ideas that people had
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that I thought were interesting.
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One was just trying to use it to
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start approaching how to solve a problem.
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Putting in, I need to do this.
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How do other people do it?
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And getting basically a big manual on how
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people do solve that problem.
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And then another really interesting one
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was actually making…
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a proposal for a potential client,
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like they loaded in their deck,
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the client’s deck,
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they loaded in what their goals were,
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and then had it output like a project
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plan in a really visually stunning way.
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So I’d be interested to just see how
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well those came out.
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Like, can you tweak them afterwards?
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Like,
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can you hook it up to your real
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data?
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Yeah, we’ll play with that in a second.
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Yeah,
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this other quote I thought was
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interesting.
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So how he kind of talks about this
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wartime leadership, um,
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being very fast on the draw to be
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able to adapt the most value creative way
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to run things right now.
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It’s also the most exciting way to do
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things.
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So it might be a little fast and
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loose with, uh,
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new products and things like that.
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Um, yeah, it’s kind of interesting.
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wartime leadership kind of implies where
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Airtable’s at.
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Yeah,
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I’d be curious to know if they still
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have intentions to go public and timeline
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for that.
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I know at one point they felt like
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they were getting pretty close and but
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this loss in value might be looking for
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ways to gain that back.
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Hmm.
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All right, yeah,
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so let’s look at SuperAgent.
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So essentially what it is,
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is it’s a chat interface.
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It’s really a asset building solution.
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Yeah, there’s no direct ties to Airtable,
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like it doesn’t ask for a sync to
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your Airtable or anything.
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So it really is a completely separate
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product.
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Under the hood,
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What it does, why don’t we,
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any ideas of something we could build?
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One thing I thought would be interesting,
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I’ve seen examples of like their slide
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deck super report.
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I haven’t seen their website builder.
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So I was thinking maybe we kick off
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a website builder.
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Sure.
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Let’s do it.
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We can have it generate a built on
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air.
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Perfect.
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Okay, let’s do that.
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I wanna do this.
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I wanna select website and run.
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So we won’t watch this whole thing,
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but it basically kicks off a bunch of
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agents that do different things.
[00:13:06]
So it’s got four steps of planning,
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researching, verifying, synthesizing.
[00:13:12]
So it sends out all these web crawlers
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that do market research and competitive
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analysis and everything like that.
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And you can’t really do a whole lot
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during this.
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That’s one area I think it could be
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better is like breaking it and you could
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check off the planning and researching and
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say, yeah,
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I think we’re good before you move on.
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It just kind of does everything for you.
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which I think is cool for demo purposes,
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but real world,
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I think we’re gonna need more control to
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fine tune it.
[00:13:48]
But anyways, while this is, okay, yeah,
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there you see.
[00:13:52]
So now here’s all the agents that are
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running and doing the web research.
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And so the cool thing I think is,
[00:14:00]
and I think I saw somebody post this
[00:14:02]
in one of the communities,
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is they’re expanding their abilities and
[00:14:07]
this understanding of these types of
[00:14:10]
agents will hopefully eventually make
[00:14:12]
their way back into
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you know,
[00:14:17]
Airtable and the agent fields that
[00:14:21]
Airtable has.
[00:14:22]
So they are expanding their understanding
[00:14:25]
of these technologies and whatnot.
[00:14:30]
But let’s look at a built one.
[00:14:32]
This one was kind of cool.
[00:14:34]
So this was one of just their examples.
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So it gives you a sense of,
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I think this is considered a super report.
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So it’s basically a full-blown report and
[00:14:46]
fully interactive.
[00:14:48]
The prompt was to compare,
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do an analysis of the different AI coding
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assistance, cursor, windsurf,
[00:14:58]
and clog code.
[00:15:00]
And so, yeah,
[00:15:02]
it kind of built this report.
[00:15:04]
You can then prompt it, you know,
[00:15:08]
cause it doesn’t have the one that I’m
[00:15:10]
currently using, which is anti-gravity.
[00:15:14]
So let’s see if it will,
[00:15:21]
see what it does.
[00:15:25]
See how much you can modify it
[00:15:28]
Cause a lot of these tools where I
[00:15:31]
think it’s lacking is you want to be
[00:15:33]
able to get in here and like,
[00:15:35]
you know,
[00:15:36]
just make changes to like a single page
[00:15:38]
or something.
[00:15:39]
Um, cause now I,
[00:15:41]
it looks like it’s going back and
[00:15:43]
rebuilding the entire report.
[00:15:46]
Um,
[00:15:46]
maybe that’s cause mine was more extensive
[00:15:49]
to add to the entire report, but, uh,
[00:15:53]
See.
[00:15:55]
Yeah,
[00:15:55]
so it’s now it’s going through the entire
[00:15:57]
process.
[00:16:01]
But yeah,
[00:16:02]
most people I think you know you almost
[00:16:03]
want like a working document at this point
[00:16:06]
that you can then modify and be like,
[00:16:08]
oh,
[00:16:08]
I want you to reword this paragraph and.
[00:16:11]
You know things like that or modify this
[00:16:15]
chart.
[00:16:17]
Can you only prompt it to do
[00:16:18]
modifications?
[00:16:20]
Yeah.
[00:16:21]
OK.
[00:16:22]
Yep, this is the output, yeah.
[00:16:26]
I know it would be difficult to
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standardize,
[00:16:29]
but I think what would be nice is
[00:16:32]
after it reaches a certain point,
[00:16:34]
there’s almost like a database where you
[00:16:37]
can have a record per each of the
[00:16:42]
assistants that you want analyzed.
[00:16:44]
So you could just add a new row
[00:16:46]
and then super agent would pick up, oh,
[00:16:49]
there’s a new row.
[00:16:50]
Let me do all the same steps I
[00:16:52]
did for each of the previous records for
[00:16:54]
this new one, rather than,
[00:16:57]
everything has changed, let’s start over.
[00:16:59]
You don’t have to start over,
[00:17:01]
except for in this particular use case,
[00:17:03]
there might be a section somewhere on here
[00:17:05]
where it compares specific ones against
[00:17:07]
each other.
[00:17:08]
Maybe that section might need to change
[00:17:10]
because now you have a new thing to
[00:17:11]
compare.
[00:17:12]
But stuff like that chart that was just
[00:17:14]
on screen where each one was just its
[00:17:16]
own column, you just add another column.
[00:17:18]
The other columns are fine.
[00:17:19]
Exactly.
[00:17:24]
Yeah.
[00:17:24]
Yeah.
[00:17:25]
So that’s where like,
[00:17:26]
I kind of view this,
[00:17:26]
like this output is awesome.
[00:17:28]
I mean, it’s definitely, you know,
[00:17:30]
like these kinds of charts, you know,
[00:17:33]
I haven’t used another AI builder, um,
[00:17:37]
There is one builder that I’ve been
[00:17:39]
playing with that makes cool charts,
[00:17:42]
not like this, but it’s called Napkin AI.
[00:17:44]
That’s pretty cool.
[00:17:46]
Builds some nice charts and graphs,
[00:17:50]
but I haven’t seen one that does stuff
[00:17:53]
like this.
[00:17:54]
So definitely some cool output,
[00:17:57]
but I still kind of view this as
[00:18:00]
like demo wear,
[00:18:01]
like it has like a nice wow factor
[00:18:03]
to it.
[00:18:06]
not quite functional when it’s done this
[00:18:10]
looks like a single page web app to
[00:18:12]
me in terms of like what is it
[00:18:14]
it’s not a pdf and it’s not a
[00:18:15]
video and it’s not a presentation as in
[00:18:19]
slides are you able to download it and
[00:18:22]
customize it yourself or what do you do
[00:18:27]
yes so you can publish it and then
[00:18:38]
So this one,
[00:18:43]
you could save it like any web page,
[00:18:45]
but it doesn’t have an export.
[00:18:50]
I think if you did the deck version,
[00:18:52]
like the one that you start with a
[00:18:53]
deck, it would let you export it.
[00:18:56]
Yeah, but it’d be really hard.
[00:19:00]
Where was that?
[00:19:00]
Where was that?
[00:19:02]
Yeah, so let’s try debug.
[00:19:04]
I don’t know what’s going on here.
[00:19:06]
It’s kind of cool, but
[00:19:09]
If you wanted to improve just kind of
[00:19:12]
this functionality,
[00:19:14]
it’s kind of going crazy now.
[00:19:16]
Yeah.
[00:19:20]
But yeah,
[00:19:22]
you need to be able to zone in
[00:19:24]
on just this mini app that it built,
[00:19:27]
make changes to this without going through
[00:19:31]
the entire rebuild process.
[00:19:33]
Mm-hmm.
[00:19:33]
Mm-hmm.
[00:19:36]
Yeah.
[00:19:37]
So, but yeah,
[00:19:39]
it is for the right audience.
[00:19:42]
Wow.
[00:19:45]
It is cool.
[00:19:47]
Like it’s building many,
[00:19:49]
many apps and things like that.
[00:19:54]
It is certainly visually like stunning.
[00:19:57]
It just, yeah.
[00:19:58]
Yeah.
[00:20:00]
I am missing the customization component.
[00:20:07]
Yeah,
[00:20:07]
I just don’t think we’re at the point
[00:20:09]
where purely through prompting,
[00:20:12]
you’ll get exactly what you want slash
[00:20:14]
need.
[00:20:15]
This does look like it gets you pretty
[00:20:18]
darn close.
[00:20:20]
However, there’s little stuff.
[00:20:22]
like if you wanted to add your company’s
[00:20:25]
logo,
[00:20:27]
I feel like that shouldn’t have to be
[00:20:28]
something that you’d have to go through a
[00:20:29]
prompt to do.
[00:20:30]
I feel like that should just be a
[00:20:32]
thing you could click.
[00:20:34]
So it might be a little bit leaning
[00:20:37]
too heavy on the agentic nature for me,
[00:20:39]
but in terms of like the promise of
[00:20:42]
it to generate a pretty interactive
[00:20:47]
visually appealing
[00:20:50]
I’m not reading this analysis as it’s on
[00:20:52]
screen,
[00:20:53]
but I’m assuming it’s a fairly decent
[00:20:55]
analysis of each of the three agents that
[00:20:59]
it’s covering in the content.
[00:21:02]
It’s pretty impressive,
[00:21:03]
but there are some things that I would
[00:21:05]
personally want before I could deploy
[00:21:07]
this.
[00:21:08]
Yeah.
[00:21:10]
Yeah.
[00:21:11]
So yeah,
[00:21:12]
I’d be curious to know who their market
[00:21:14]
is.
[00:21:15]
I have seen on X and other places,
[00:21:17]
like definitely has the wow factor,
[00:21:19]
you know, for the most part,
[00:21:21]
people are impressed.
[00:21:23]
We’ll see what kind of traction it gets
[00:21:26]
or how this ties into Airtable.
[00:21:29]
I’m remembering my old boss back when I
[00:21:31]
was an urban planner.
[00:21:34]
We were going over, we,
[00:21:37]
our company was hired to redo a plan
[00:21:40]
that at that point was like, years old.
[00:21:43]
And in the plan, it had
[00:21:46]
like some sections and diagrams,
[00:21:49]
some renderings of what the area could be
[00:21:52]
typical planner stuff.
[00:21:53]
And they looked beautiful.
[00:21:54]
And my boss who had.
[00:21:56]
Forty,
[00:21:57]
fifty years experience in the field took
[00:22:00]
one look at it and said,
[00:22:01]
that doesn’t work.
[00:22:02]
And I was like, what do you mean?
[00:22:03]
And she was like, well,
[00:22:04]
that the width of that street isn’t wide
[00:22:07]
enough to fit emergency vehicles,
[00:22:10]
which is required by law.
[00:22:13]
So it looked great.
[00:22:15]
But the content wasn’t quite there.
[00:22:18]
Again,
[00:22:19]
I’m not sort of saying that what we
[00:22:21]
have on screen,
[00:22:22]
the content isn’t what it needs to be.
[00:22:23]
But if you needed to tweak the content,
[00:22:26]
you should be able to get in there
[00:22:28]
and do it yourself.
[00:22:29]
And current state,
[00:22:31]
it seems like it might be a little
[00:22:32]
bit difficult.
[00:22:33]
So I’m still remembering her teachings in
[00:22:37]
sort of…
[00:22:38]
Do not be fooled by it looking pretty.
[00:22:42]
It’s got a function as well,
[00:22:44]
and it looks pretty,
[00:22:45]
and I’m sure it functions,
[00:22:47]
but part of functioning means you’ve got
[00:22:49]
to be able to slap your logo on
[00:22:51]
something, little stuff like that.
[00:22:53]
Yeah.
[00:22:55]
Let’s see where our website is.
[00:22:58]
Oh, we’re still researching.
[00:23:00]
Oh, wow.
[00:23:03]
To be fair,
[00:23:05]
it would take significantly longer for a
[00:23:07]
human to go through each of these steps
[00:23:09]
by itself.
[00:23:10]
So yes,
[00:23:11]
for a live demo such as this,
[00:23:14]
it would have been cool if we came
[00:23:15]
back and it was done.
[00:23:17]
But in fairness…
[00:23:20]
It takes,
[00:23:21]
it takes time to build a website,
[00:23:23]
whether it’s, you know,
[00:23:25]
hand built or built by AI.
[00:23:26]
Yeah, for sure.
[00:23:29]
Yeah.
[00:23:29]
I’d be curious with this one,
[00:23:31]
like the website builder, even just the,
[00:23:36]
like there are,
[00:23:37]
there are some pretty advanced website
[00:23:39]
builders using AI now out there.
[00:23:41]
I’ve been,
[00:23:42]
I’ve been using a few of them lately
[00:23:44]
and, uh,
[00:23:46]
they get more granular.
[00:23:47]
Like this is gonna be kind of a
[00:23:49]
one shot attempt and you’re not gonna want
[00:23:52]
to make changes that take this long.
[00:23:57]
And so I don’t think there’ll be
[00:23:59]
competitive on the website building,
[00:24:01]
but maybe on the content side,
[00:24:03]
because they’re doing all this research on
[00:24:05]
the copy side,
[00:24:06]
the other ones are more for the visual
[00:24:08]
design layout.
[00:24:10]
So I’d be curious to see what kind
[00:24:11]
of content this creates.
[00:24:15]
So maybe we’ll come back to it.
[00:24:17]
Still verifying on this one.
[00:24:20]
Okay.
[00:24:22]
Now we’re generating.
[00:24:25]
This feels like a silly question,
[00:24:26]
but if you close this tab and come
[00:24:28]
back to it,
[00:24:29]
is it going to remember where you are
[00:24:30]
in the chat or is it strictly stored
[00:24:33]
in like your session?
[00:24:36]
Uh, it keeps a chat history over here.
[00:24:40]
Mm-hmm.
[00:24:42]
So I think, yes, because I can jump,
[00:24:46]
yeah, and it keeps,
[00:24:47]
it knows where it’s at.
[00:24:49]
Okay, that’s good.
[00:24:54]
Yeah, so.
[00:24:57]
all right well maybe at the end we’ll
[00:25:00]
we’ll come back and check that out so
[00:25:04]
let’s move on for now we’ll come back
[00:25:06]
to that okay speaking of playing with air
[00:25:09]
table uh in the BuiltOnAir community
[00:25:12]
just this morning uh friend of the show
[00:25:15]
rob weidner who actually will be coming on
[00:25:17]
to showcase some other stuff that he’s
[00:25:19]
been working on
[00:25:21]
in a couple of weeks,
[00:25:21]
but he just released,
[00:25:23]
we are in the middle of the winter
[00:25:25]
Olympics and released a custom interface,
[00:25:30]
a custom interface extension to track the
[00:25:35]
Olympics, the gold,
[00:25:36]
and you can actually play along and
[00:25:37]
predict
[00:25:40]
who’s going to get the gold, silver,
[00:25:41]
and bronze for each of the events.
[00:25:45]
And he’s even pulling in all the results
[00:25:49]
by using a web agent.
[00:25:52]
So that’s pretty cool.
[00:25:53]
He’s not tapping into an API call or
[00:25:56]
anything.
[00:25:56]
It’s just a field agent going out and
[00:26:00]
web searching and pulling in the latest
[00:26:03]
results.
[00:26:04]
Standings for the Olympics.
[00:26:06]
Looks like it refreshes every fifteen
[00:26:08]
minutes.
[00:26:11]
So yeah, so let’s check it out.
[00:26:14]
So he’s got a link to it.
[00:26:15]
He also released the code so you can
[00:26:17]
see what a custom extension looks like.
[00:26:21]
and how that works.
[00:26:22]
You can set it up.
[00:26:23]
I got close to setting it up.
[00:26:25]
There’s one thing I couldn’t overcome,
[00:26:27]
but he actually,
[00:26:28]
I think responded during the show that
[00:26:30]
says he updated it.
[00:26:32]
So it’s likely available now.
[00:26:34]
So here’s the custom interface.
[00:26:37]
So it shows what’s on, what’s coming up,
[00:26:43]
all the upcoming events.
[00:26:45]
Let’s see, full schedule here.
[00:26:49]
You can see this does not look like
[00:26:52]
it was built with standard Airtable
[00:26:54]
interfaces,
[00:26:54]
so this was all custom built and he
[00:26:57]
goes through how he built it the
[00:26:58]
technology used and approach,
[00:27:01]
and this was all built with Ai.
[00:27:04]
Claude code, let’s see here.
[00:27:09]
The thing that impresses me with this
[00:27:12]
approach is this hybrid approach.
[00:27:14]
So you see here,
[00:27:15]
this is a standard Airtable form.
[00:27:19]
And so just that integration between the
[00:27:21]
custom
[00:27:22]
and then opening up a standard form that
[00:27:26]
you can configure through the standard
[00:27:28]
interfaces.
[00:27:32]
It’s very interesting.
[00:27:33]
It’s different than other platforms that
[00:27:36]
are one way or the other.
[00:27:37]
I’m really curious how this hybrid
[00:27:42]
approach plays out.
[00:27:45]
One of the things I miss most from
[00:27:48]
data layer interfaces are
[00:27:52]
Extensions?
[00:27:54]
What is the current term?
[00:27:55]
OK, thank you.
[00:27:56]
Because they changed it on me twice.
[00:27:58]
Extensions for data layer.
[00:28:01]
The SDK for that includes some pre-made
[00:28:04]
components for inputs so that you can
[00:28:08]
collect data to edit or create new records
[00:28:12]
in Airtable and have it look like
[00:28:14]
Airtable.
[00:28:14]
You don’t have to code those yourself.
[00:28:16]
But the extension SDK for interfaces
[00:28:19]
doesn’t have that.
[00:28:21]
So using just an embedded Airtable form
[00:28:26]
lets you not have to go find the
[00:28:29]
exact right styling of every select
[00:28:32]
component under the sun to make it look
[00:28:36]
like Airtable so you could edit data is
[00:28:39]
probably a significant time savings.
[00:28:41]
And then you get the benefit of Airtable
[00:28:44]
form validation,
[00:28:45]
which isn’t the most advanced in the
[00:28:46]
world,
[00:28:47]
but can do certain things like
[00:28:49]
only let you select records that are
[00:28:53]
related to whatever thing you just clicked
[00:28:55]
on.
[00:28:55]
So things like that are come enabled with
[00:28:58]
this approach.
[00:29:01]
Yeah.
[00:29:01]
And even one of the biggest ones here
[00:29:03]
is like knowing who filled out the form.
[00:29:06]
You have to have an Airtable account.
[00:29:08]
So, okay.
[00:29:10]
I just made my pick.
[00:29:12]
Love it.
[00:29:15]
And, you know,
[00:29:17]
it’s even smart enough to know which
[00:29:18]
events have already passed.
[00:29:20]
And so you can’t pick, you know,
[00:29:22]
events that already happened.
[00:29:26]
So that’s cool.
[00:29:30]
You know,
[00:29:30]
just things that you just can’t do with
[00:29:32]
Airtable, you know,
[00:29:34]
having like different layouts per row per
[00:29:38]
record.
[00:29:38]
There’s so many times I’ve been like,
[00:29:41]
The field has this type value.
[00:29:43]
I want to show these fields.
[00:29:45]
It’s not these other fields.
[00:29:47]
Oh yeah.
[00:29:50]
Yeah,
[00:29:51]
that custom interface extensions are huge
[00:29:53]
for that.
[00:29:56]
I’ve found one thing I just used them
[00:29:59]
for yesterday was I needed a dashboard
[00:30:02]
that had data from.
[00:30:05]
Four different tables like and I wanted to
[00:30:06]
show the totals across the top and have
[00:30:09]
it still be.
[00:30:11]
filterable and all this stuff.
[00:30:12]
And I just had it.
[00:30:14]
I was like,
[00:30:14]
show me these things and like number
[00:30:16]
elements at the top.
[00:30:17]
And it was able to do one element,
[00:30:20]
four tables, one interface page.
[00:30:23]
It was really cool.
[00:30:23]
Yeah.
[00:30:27]
This is great.
[00:30:28]
Yeah.
[00:30:28]
This is pretty cool.
[00:30:29]
You get, you know,
[00:30:31]
all the athletes and everything.
[00:30:33]
It’s even got community spotlights.
[00:30:37]
I think this is, uh,
[00:30:39]
coming in through a field agent likely.
[00:30:46]
I wonder if that’s what the web table
[00:30:48]
that you can try.
[00:30:49]
I haven’t,
[00:30:50]
I’ve yet to use that AI labs feature.
[00:30:54]
Okay, yeah.
[00:30:55]
So Alex works at their table.
[00:30:57]
So that’s kind of cool.
[00:31:19]
And it’s even got news.
[00:31:21]
It’s pulling in.
[00:31:22]
Let’s see.
[00:31:25]
Email a friend.
[00:31:28]
Nope.
[00:31:29]
It even creates an email.
[00:31:33]
All the events.
[00:31:36]
There’s a lot going on here.
[00:31:40]
Very cool stuff.
[00:31:43]
the cool thing is is he built this
[00:31:44]
interface and then you can now share
[00:31:47]
interfaces publicly and so this is now
[00:31:50]
public you know web page um that’s cool
[00:32:00]
The only thing I’ll say is that we
[00:32:03]
are now getting Dangerously close to what
[00:32:05]
was my biggest beef with Retool for a
[00:32:09]
while,
[00:32:10]
which was you could build a great app,
[00:32:13]
but it would be a single-page web app.
[00:32:16]
And as soon as you needed a second
[00:32:17]
page, it was a completely distinct app.
[00:32:20]
The code couldn’t talk to each other.
[00:32:22]
It just is literally not how you would
[00:32:25]
build if you didn’t use a SaaS platform
[00:32:28]
to help you build.
[00:32:30]
And what we’re currently seeing is a great
[00:32:34]
single page app.
[00:32:35]
But again,
[00:32:36]
as soon as you need another page,
[00:32:38]
it’s a completely divorced interface
[00:32:41]
element, so to speak.
[00:32:42]
So what I would like to see is
[00:32:44]
the ability in the future to have more
[00:32:46]
interconnected
[00:32:49]
extensions sort of talk to each other or
[00:32:51]
sort of behave in a way that is
[00:32:52]
more traditional but that is maybe not the
[00:32:56]
direction that your table is going perhaps
[00:32:59]
it’s fine if they don’t just something
[00:33:01]
that I recall having previous beef with a
[00:33:05]
different company about this yeah yeah you
[00:33:07]
see here we go to this
[00:33:10]
other page and it doesn’t update the URL.
[00:33:14]
So the URL always stays the same.
[00:33:15]
So there’s no state to link directly to
[00:33:19]
this page.
[00:33:24]
I was just going to say this is
[00:33:27]
related to what Kamille was just talking
[00:33:28]
about.
[00:33:29]
And I don’t know if this is just
[00:33:30]
a bug that happened to me yesterday or
[00:33:32]
not.
[00:33:32]
But I created a custom interface element.
[00:33:36]
And then I was trying to move it
[00:33:38]
to a different group on a dashboard page.
[00:33:41]
And so I created a new group and
[00:33:42]
then I went to go change the source
[00:33:44]
of that group.
[00:33:46]
And in the source dropdown,
[00:33:47]
usually there’s tables, it’s all tables.
[00:33:51]
I saw all of the other groups that
[00:33:53]
I had on that page as options to
[00:33:55]
make my source, including custom elements.
[00:34:01]
It was wild.
[00:34:02]
And I tried it and nothing actually
[00:34:04]
happened.
[00:34:06]
So it might have just been a bug,
[00:34:07]
but maybe it’s something that’s coming.
[00:34:12]
I don’t know.
[00:34:14]
If it happens again,
[00:34:15]
I’ll send a screenshot and BuiltOnAir.
[00:34:19]
That doesn’t feel intentional.
[00:34:21]
No, it didn’t.
[00:34:24]
Dan, what is this?
[00:34:26]
What are we looking at?
[00:34:28]
So this is one of the Airtable employees
[00:34:31]
built a Olympic athlete comic strip.
[00:34:34]
Discover the stories of Olympic athletes
[00:34:37]
through their AI generated comic strips.
[00:34:40]
So I assume this is real.
[00:34:42]
I hope this is real.
[00:34:44]
Looks like one of the ice skaters is
[00:34:49]
a cancer survivor and came back to win
[00:34:52]
bronze at the World Championships.
[00:34:55]
So I assume this kind of tells their
[00:34:56]
story in comic strip format.
[00:35:00]
So that’s kind of cool.
[00:35:02]
So it kind of uses the,
[00:35:03]
I’m assuming it uses Airtable’s image
[00:35:09]
generation.
[00:35:12]
Yeah, so cool.
[00:35:15]
fun all right let’s move on congrats uh
[00:35:20]
rob for pulling this off and launching
[00:35:22]
this and uh yeah check it out um
[00:35:25]
he’s he’s open to feedback play with it
[00:35:28]
make it better um but yeah there’s there’s
[00:35:31]
there’s a ton going on there
[00:35:36]
Let’s move on.
[00:35:36]
Okay.
[00:35:37]
What’s new?
[00:35:38]
What’s new?
[00:35:39]
Okay.
[00:35:40]
So we’re going,
[00:35:41]
we’ve already kind of got through all the
[00:35:43]
December ones.
[00:35:45]
I know we talked about this one.
[00:35:47]
Display names for linked records.
[00:35:49]
I believe we even demoed it.
[00:35:53]
So let’s go on here.
[00:35:54]
Okay.
[00:35:55]
Filtered your data the way you,
[00:35:59]
not computers, think.
[00:36:01]
Okay.
[00:36:02]
I think a computer generated that.
[00:36:07]
Yeah, so let’s check this out.
[00:36:09]
So basically this is kind of cool,
[00:36:11]
but nothing crazy.
[00:36:15]
I’ll showcase this.
[00:36:16]
So if you have a table and you
[00:36:18]
go into filter and you’re like,
[00:36:20]
I don’t know how I want to group
[00:36:22]
this or whatever,
[00:36:23]
how to figure out the filter I want,
[00:36:24]
you can just type it in here.
[00:36:26]
I like that.
[00:36:36]
it automatically creates the filter for
[00:36:38]
you.
[00:36:38]
Lead source is any website.
[00:36:40]
So it did that one correctly.
[00:36:41]
And there you go.
[00:36:44]
So it’s kind of nice.
[00:36:46]
I think I like building my filters.
[00:36:49]
I haven’t switched to this one.
[00:36:50]
Formulas,
[00:36:51]
I have switched to using AI to create,
[00:36:55]
not Airtables AI, go to ChatGPT,
[00:36:57]
but filters,
[00:37:00]
I don’t think I’ll adopt this one.
[00:37:02]
I think I’ll still build my own filters.
[00:37:05]
Is this available everywhere you can
[00:37:08]
filter or just in views?
[00:37:13]
Let’s see.
[00:37:16]
Let’s see in here.
[00:37:21]
It’s not here.
[00:37:22]
I don’t know if it’s in other interfaces.
[00:37:27]
I don’t believe I’ve seen it anywhere
[00:37:29]
else.
[00:37:32]
I think they only show it in the
[00:37:35]
data layer.
[00:37:40]
Open the filter many in any view.
[00:37:42]
Yeah, it’s just in views.
[00:37:44]
Okay.
[00:37:48]
So yeah,
[00:37:49]
it’s just kind of funny because they’re
[00:37:50]
trying to push people out of the views.
[00:37:57]
Sometimes there’s feature parity for
[00:37:58]
stuff, and sometimes there’s not.
[00:38:00]
Like interface filters,
[00:38:03]
you can copy and paste from element to
[00:38:06]
element, which is great.
[00:38:07]
But a lot of the times,
[00:38:09]
I’ll have a view in the data layer
[00:38:12]
that is the filters I want,
[00:38:13]
and I want to copy and paste those
[00:38:15]
filters.
[00:38:16]
into the interface.
[00:38:18]
So using something like this in the data
[00:38:20]
layer,
[00:38:21]
it might help me write that filter even
[00:38:23]
faster,
[00:38:24]
but then I still have to manually do
[00:38:26]
it over in the interface.
[00:38:27]
So would like to see those features play
[00:38:31]
nicely.
[00:38:33]
Yeah.
[00:38:35]
A hundred percent.
[00:38:36]
Well,
[00:38:36]
like in this one where the user could
[00:38:37]
filter down.
[00:38:38]
Yeah.
[00:38:38]
Yep.
[00:38:38]
That would be nice.
[00:38:43]
I’ve also really,
[00:38:44]
I would love the same functionality,
[00:38:46]
much like how you can do in views
[00:38:48]
in the data layer,
[00:38:49]
you can copy a configuration,
[00:38:52]
which is the field order,
[00:38:53]
the field visibility, the sort order,
[00:38:55]
like all of that kind of thing.
[00:38:58]
Like the filter copying and pasting is
[00:39:00]
great.
[00:39:00]
It’s very helpful.
[00:39:01]
I want more.
[00:39:03]
I need to be able to do that
[00:39:04]
with field visibility.
[00:39:06]
Like that would be such a time saver.
[00:39:09]
Yep.
[00:39:10]
Yep.
[00:39:12]
So this is kind of nice to have.
[00:39:14]
I don’t think anybody was begging for this
[00:39:16]
feature.
[00:39:19]
Okay, here’s one.
[00:39:21]
I don’t know who’s using HyperDB,
[00:39:24]
but if you are,
[00:39:25]
you can now modify the field types after
[00:39:29]
it’s been imported.
[00:39:30]
It used to be you could only set
[00:39:33]
what the field type is when you do
[00:39:36]
the initial import.
[00:39:38]
or configuration,
[00:39:39]
but now you can go back and modify
[00:39:41]
it and change it to a different field
[00:39:42]
type.
[00:39:44]
Yeah, this is helpful.
[00:39:46]
I’m still waiting on any type of array.
[00:39:51]
You can’t.
[00:39:52]
It’s single line or text, date, number,
[00:39:59]
and single select.
[00:40:00]
But those are the only field types.
[00:40:02]
And Boolean, I believe.
[00:40:04]
Those are the only types that are allowed.
[00:40:07]
Yeah.
[00:40:08]
Yeah.
[00:40:09]
So these are all single tables still,
[00:40:11]
right?
[00:40:11]
They don’t have any linking between
[00:40:13]
tables.
[00:40:14]
Correct.
[00:40:14]
So you’d have to do that kind of
[00:40:16]
after the fact.
[00:40:17]
And it’s more difficult if you have a
[00:40:20]
many-to-many or a many-to-one relationship
[00:40:23]
where one of those directions is an array,
[00:40:26]
but you have to treat it as text.
[00:40:28]
You can’t say if your ID is any
[00:40:31]
one of these IDs, for example.
[00:40:34]
Yes.
[00:40:35]
So if you link,
[00:40:37]
but those fields don’t get saved back to
[00:40:40]
HyperDB.
[00:40:40]
So if those records get filtered out from
[00:40:44]
your HyperDB filter and then it comes back
[00:40:47]
a month later, those links are lost,
[00:40:51]
right?
[00:40:52]
Yeah.
[00:40:52]
It’s not great.
[00:40:53]
You have to get real creative real fast
[00:40:55]
with, uh, using it.
[00:40:57]
So it’s still helpful,
[00:40:59]
but it’s not going to solve all your
[00:41:00]
problems quite yet.
[00:41:01]
Yeah.
[00:41:05]
Yeah.
[00:41:05]
Exact same question was from the beginning
[00:41:08]
when they said, okay, well it’s,
[00:41:09]
it’s stored somewhere else.
[00:41:10]
Like what happens if those records need to
[00:41:14]
be filtered away and then you need to
[00:41:16]
bring them back?
[00:41:17]
Like, yeah.
[00:41:18]
Is it basically like a new record?
[00:41:24]
I don’t think it’s a new record.
[00:41:26]
Well, in Airtable, yeah,
[00:41:29]
does it maintain the same record ID?
[00:41:31]
I don’t know.
[00:41:32]
Right.
[00:41:32]
Does it retain that?
[00:41:33]
Does it retain if you made any edits
[00:41:35]
to that record while it was in the
[00:41:36]
base?
[00:41:36]
Do those come back?
[00:41:38]
I don’t know.
[00:41:40]
So many questions.
[00:41:41]
Yeah,
[00:41:41]
that I think would require some testing to
[00:41:45]
see how that goes,
[00:41:46]
just because it’s not…
[00:41:50]
You have the HyperDB and there’s no like
[00:41:52]
one dedicated base that is the HyperDB
[00:41:55]
instance.
[00:41:56]
You could deploy the HyperDB table to
[00:41:59]
multiple different bases that you can’t
[00:42:01]
just treat one as the owner of which
[00:42:04]
records to keep and which ones not to,
[00:42:06]
for example.
[00:42:08]
And yeah, it’s, it’s still helpful,
[00:42:11]
but it’s not perfect.
[00:42:14]
Yeah.
[00:42:16]
Yeah,
[00:42:16]
if there’s any HyperDB experts out there
[00:42:18]
that have done experimenting and using it
[00:42:21]
in production,
[00:42:22]
we’d love to have you on and learn
[00:42:24]
more about it.
[00:42:27]
Okay, so that’s that one.
[00:42:29]
I’m going to skip one and then come
[00:42:32]
back because this is kind of related.
[00:42:34]
I think in this effort to…
[00:42:37]
I’m reading between the lines here.
[00:42:39]
This feature,
[00:42:40]
which is basically very annoying,
[00:42:43]
but it now starts to show you if
[00:42:46]
the base,
[00:42:46]
I don’t know where their cutoff is when
[00:42:48]
they start to show this,
[00:42:50]
if it literally is anything more than a
[00:42:52]
thousand records,
[00:42:53]
but it’ll start to just show you a
[00:42:54]
thousand records, you know,
[00:42:56]
give you a message at the bottom saying,
[00:42:58]
showing just the first one thousand of
[00:43:00]
however many there are.
[00:43:02]
And then you click load all to get
[00:43:04]
all of them.
[00:43:06]
This one,
[00:43:09]
I know I’ve been caught where I was
[00:43:10]
looking for a record.
[00:43:11]
I’m like, where’s the record?
[00:43:13]
And then I realized I was being cut
[00:43:15]
off.
[00:43:15]
It didn’t show up in my filter.
[00:43:20]
Lots of problems with this.
[00:43:24]
I understand why.
[00:43:25]
I get it.
[00:43:26]
But if you have your view grouped,
[00:43:29]
And then you come back to it and
[00:43:31]
it has the little red triangle.
[00:43:33]
And so it looks like it’s broken,
[00:43:35]
but it’s not broken.
[00:43:37]
It’s just warning you that it doesn’t show
[00:43:38]
all the records.
[00:43:41]
And then the summary bars don’t total
[00:43:43]
because it’s not showing all the records.
[00:43:49]
But yeah.
[00:43:50]
At- At- Five thousand is the cutoff when
[00:43:52]
they start to show it.
[00:43:55]
Early, early on in Airtable’s development,
[00:44:00]
it was decided that they weren’t going to
[00:44:02]
paginate.
[00:44:04]
Absolutely no pagination ever,
[00:44:06]
unless it’s a gallery view in an interface
[00:44:10]
specifically.
[00:44:12]
And I think the chickens have come home
[00:44:14]
to roost.
[00:44:16]
They’ve increased how many records can be
[00:44:19]
stored in a table and a base as
[00:44:21]
a whole.
[00:44:22]
And when you load Airtable,
[00:44:25]
it’s being loaded into your browser.
[00:44:28]
I’m assuming you’re using the browser and
[00:44:29]
not the app, your browser’s memory.
[00:44:32]
So you’re getting the whole table at once.
[00:44:35]
And if you have a lot of records,
[00:44:37]
it could be slow,
[00:44:39]
but you could have paginated and it would
[00:44:41]
be less confusing.
[00:44:43]
I think people understand pages.
[00:44:46]
It’s less intuitive to say, well,
[00:44:48]
here’s a random thousand of your
[00:44:51]
potentially a hundred thousand records.
[00:44:54]
Do with that what you will.
[00:44:56]
The odds that the record I’m looking for
[00:44:59]
is in the first thousand are slim.
[00:45:04]
Yeah.
[00:45:05]
Yeah, I agree.
[00:45:05]
I think this is a precursor to them
[00:45:08]
figuring out how to expand and get to
[00:45:12]
pagination, which generates a lot.
[00:45:18]
There’s so many ramifications.
[00:45:23]
you know,
[00:45:23]
like scripts that loop through all the
[00:45:26]
records in the table and all sorts of
[00:45:30]
stuff that need to be addressed to be
[00:45:34]
able to implement pagination.
[00:45:37]
I think this is like a precursor to
[00:45:39]
that.
[00:45:40]
Yep.
[00:45:42]
It does say if you try and search
[00:45:44]
in that view, it will search everything,
[00:45:46]
not just the first thousand that are
[00:45:47]
previewed.
[00:45:49]
But
[00:45:52]
Yeah,
[00:45:53]
I would like to see where they’re going
[00:45:54]
because there’s performance issues
[00:45:57]
generally in Airtable.
[00:45:58]
I think when you get not even at
[00:46:00]
the top of their requirements,
[00:46:02]
but when you get…
[00:46:04]
Fifty thousand records to me is when I
[00:46:06]
start consistently seeing performance
[00:46:08]
issues with a base.
[00:46:10]
And if you’re on the enterprise plan,
[00:46:14]
that’s significantly less than half of
[00:46:18]
what you should be able to store.
[00:46:20]
I’m wondering how they intend to continue
[00:46:22]
to optimize.
[00:46:23]
And this seems like just one of the
[00:46:25]
methods that they might be doing.
[00:46:33]
All right.
[00:46:33]
Yeah, go ahead.
[00:46:34]
I was going to say,
[00:46:34]
ever since that release,
[00:46:35]
I’ve had a bug happening that I’ve been
[00:46:38]
in touch with support about.
[00:46:39]
I’m curious if either of you have seen
[00:46:41]
this, where all of a sudden,
[00:46:44]
it’ll show that all of my records or
[00:46:47]
a handful of them are just empty,
[00:46:49]
don’t have any field values.
[00:46:51]
But I can see on the table,
[00:46:54]
I have a formula field that’s referencing
[00:46:56]
a field that appears to be empty,
[00:46:58]
but the formula would also be empty if
[00:47:00]
it were truly empty.
[00:47:01]
So I was like, that doesn’t make sense.
[00:47:04]
Expanded the record.
[00:47:05]
All the field values were there.
[00:47:07]
And then when I closed it and clicked
[00:47:09]
on the record,
[00:47:10]
all the field values showed up again.
[00:47:12]
I have a Loom video of it.
[00:47:13]
It’s wild.
[00:47:15]
Not that exactly,
[00:47:16]
but I have experienced similar sort of
[00:47:19]
data wonkiness.
[00:47:21]
And I think it is related to this
[00:47:22]
and that, like you were saying,
[00:47:24]
if you’re grouping by something,
[00:47:25]
it’s not quite working right.
[00:47:28]
I had a view that didn’t have a
[00:47:31]
thousand records.
[00:47:31]
It was fewer than that.
[00:47:33]
And like a group that shouldn’t have been
[00:47:36]
possible based on the filter is
[00:47:38]
kept appearing and if you opened it up
[00:47:41]
and there were several records in there,
[00:47:44]
I’m putting in quotes because if you
[00:47:45]
looked at them, they were all empty.
[00:47:47]
So they weren’t if you expanded them,
[00:47:51]
like they did in fact have data,
[00:47:52]
but I have experienced a similar sort of
[00:47:56]
visual glitch.
[00:47:58]
I don’t know what’s happening there.
[00:48:00]
It was really weird.
[00:48:00]
It was exactly that.
[00:48:01]
I had a group at the top that
[00:48:03]
was an empty group.
[00:48:05]
And I was like,
[00:48:06]
I know that those are not empty groups
[00:48:07]
because my filter is set to only show
[00:48:10]
things that are filled.
[00:48:11]
And when I did this whole loom and
[00:48:15]
recorded it and refreshed the page,
[00:48:17]
that empty group went away because all the
[00:48:19]
records went into their actual groups.
[00:48:22]
Um,
[00:48:23]
and I don’t know when I wrote to
[00:48:24]
support, I was like,
[00:48:25]
this is a really scary thing because not
[00:48:26]
only like,
[00:48:27]
were the records not truly empty,
[00:48:29]
but my summary bars were all totaling as
[00:48:31]
if they were empty.
[00:48:33]
Like they were not recognizing or summing
[00:48:34]
those values.
[00:48:35]
Um, so it’s wild.
[00:48:39]
Do you think Airtable’s very clear
[00:48:42]
preference in interfaces for lists over
[00:48:44]
grids is because lists don’t aggregate?
[00:48:48]
Maybe.
[00:48:49]
I mean,
[00:48:49]
I just think they look so much nicer,
[00:48:51]
but I miss the summary bar every time.
[00:48:53]
This is my conspiracy theory.
[00:48:55]
I think there’s a significant amount of
[00:48:57]
extra infrastructure or load or what have
[00:49:01]
you that is required to do those
[00:49:03]
aggregations.
[00:49:04]
And I think they’ve been very clear,
[00:49:08]
please use a list and not a grid.
[00:49:09]
In fact,
[00:49:10]
you have to go out of your way
[00:49:11]
to make a grid on an interface nowadays.
[00:49:14]
And I just feel like that might be
[00:49:18]
a reason why.
[00:49:19]
There’s something.
[00:49:23]
Yeah.
[00:49:24]
Be extra careful if you’re going off your
[00:49:26]
summary bars.
[00:49:28]
Just refresh the page and then get your
[00:49:31]
total.
[00:49:31]
Yeah,
[00:49:33]
I freaked out because I thought an
[00:49:36]
automation was running to do the process
[00:49:38]
and I was babysitting it.
[00:49:40]
And I thought my automation was deleting
[00:49:42]
my data.
[00:49:43]
And I was like, oh, God,
[00:49:45]
I’ve done the thing every developer fears.
[00:49:48]
Yeah.
[00:49:51]
And no,
[00:49:51]
it was just some sort of bug.
[00:49:53]
But yes,
[00:49:54]
I would venture to guess it’s related to
[00:49:57]
this update.
[00:50:00]
And it’s confusing, to say the least.
[00:50:03]
Yes.
[00:50:03]
Interesting.
[00:50:09]
Okay, last one.
[00:50:11]
Automation subscribers, finally.
[00:50:14]
So if you have ever had an error
[00:50:18]
in an automation,
[00:50:19]
which if you ever built an automation,
[00:50:22]
you likely have.
[00:50:25]
In the past,
[00:50:26]
it used to be whoever was the last
[00:50:28]
to click to turn it on was the
[00:50:31]
one that would get the error notification.
[00:50:35]
And so you’d always, and the only way,
[00:50:38]
and for a while you didn’t even know
[00:50:40]
who clicked last.
[00:50:42]
Then they finally added this right here,
[00:50:44]
last updated by and give the name of
[00:50:47]
who updated it.
[00:50:48]
So you could at least look at this
[00:50:50]
and be like, okay,
[00:50:51]
this person is getting the error
[00:50:53]
notifications.
[00:50:54]
They finally helped with that.
[00:50:57]
And so now you can go here and
[00:50:59]
click manage subscribers and add people,
[00:51:04]
remove people and decide who gets air
[00:51:06]
notifications.
[00:51:08]
You have to be a base level creator.
[00:51:13]
Well, let’s see, can manage and subscribe,
[00:51:17]
right?
[00:51:18]
So you have to be a creator level
[00:51:20]
to be on the list.
[00:51:22]
Which is kind of annoying because you
[00:51:23]
can’t have like a centralized email to
[00:51:25]
send them to or something.
[00:51:27]
And it has to be a user as
[00:51:28]
well.
[00:51:28]
It can’t be just an email address.
[00:51:32]
I have a lot of thoughts about this
[00:51:34]
implementation.
[00:51:36]
Once again, great idea.
[00:51:38]
Excellent idea.
[00:51:39]
And it’s implemented in a way that is
[00:51:42]
tremendously frustrating for me and I
[00:51:44]
believe is the source of another bug.
[00:51:48]
So…
[00:51:49]
I work primarily in an enterprise where we
[00:51:52]
frequently have bases that’ll have thirty,
[00:51:55]
forty,
[00:51:56]
fifty automations and there has never been
[00:52:02]
a single instance in all of the bases
[00:52:05]
that I manage where an automation failing
[00:52:09]
should alert one person on the team
[00:52:12]
and then other automation should alert a
[00:52:14]
different person on the team if
[00:52:15]
something’s wrong with one product the
[00:52:18]
base then everybody who should know about
[00:52:20]
it should know so managing this per
[00:52:24]
automation is so cumbersome to do for
[00:52:29]
fifty automations per base i would have
[00:52:32]
preferred if this were per base where
[00:52:36]
All of the people who should be notified
[00:52:38]
about an automation error for this base,
[00:52:41]
set them here and maybe you can override
[00:52:43]
it per automation.
[00:52:45]
I could see that being useful for some
[00:52:47]
use cases, but then to Dan’s point,
[00:52:50]
they have to be a creator.
[00:52:52]
Now I get that in terms of when
[00:52:54]
an automation fails, the notification is,
[00:52:57]
It sends you one is an Airtable
[00:52:59]
notification.
[00:52:59]
So that bell icon in the bottom left,
[00:53:02]
you see it there,
[00:53:03]
but it also emails you.
[00:53:04]
And that email has a button that takes
[00:53:07]
you to this automation.
[00:53:09]
Well,
[00:53:09]
if whatever email it gets sent to isn’t
[00:53:12]
a creator,
[00:53:12]
they’re not going to be able to open
[00:53:13]
that page.
[00:53:14]
I get it.
[00:53:15]
But at the same time,
[00:53:17]
If you’re like me and you have a
[00:53:18]
team, I want to just say,
[00:53:22]
use our group email,
[00:53:23]
which is not an Airtable user.
[00:53:26]
Or I want to set up my own
[00:53:28]
automation where you can have an
[00:53:30]
automation that’s when an email is
[00:53:32]
received.
[00:53:33]
I want to set it to that email
[00:53:35]
so I can have an Airtable automation say,
[00:53:38]
hey, an automation in Airtable failed.
[00:53:40]
Do these steps.
[00:53:41]
You can’t do that without forwarding your
[00:53:44]
own email after the fact.
[00:53:47]
or we actually explored this,
[00:53:52]
creating a user that is the email of
[00:53:56]
a webhook entry into an automation,
[00:54:01]
creating a user with that email,
[00:54:05]
And it’s funny because you have to verify
[00:54:07]
that login.
[00:54:08]
So you have to create a user.
[00:54:09]
So first you get the email of an
[00:54:12]
automation entry point and then you create
[00:54:15]
a user and you have to like have
[00:54:17]
it send the confirmation email to that
[00:54:20]
automation and then click on the output to
[00:54:24]
verify that user.
[00:54:26]
So you can actually,
[00:54:27]
but it does use up a license because
[00:54:29]
it has to be a creator level access.
[00:54:33]
So there’s a nice hack if you want
[00:54:35]
to try that.
[00:54:37]
There’s so many steps.
[00:54:40]
That’s using the when email received
[00:54:42]
trigger.
[00:54:42]
Is that what you’re saying?
[00:54:43]
Okay.
[00:54:44]
Wow.
[00:54:45]
Creative.
[00:54:46]
I like it.
[00:54:46]
Yeah.
[00:54:48]
It would be much nicer if you could
[00:54:50]
just put a list of emails of where
[00:54:53]
they go.
[00:54:54]
And absolutely.
[00:54:55]
I don’t know how that got through.
[00:54:58]
any kind of revision process of that
[00:55:01]
product to be like,
[00:55:02]
let’s do it where you have to set
[00:55:04]
it up for every single automation.
[00:55:09]
I would love to hear from somebody where
[00:55:11]
that is the preferred approach because my
[00:55:15]
experience is not everyone’s experience,
[00:55:17]
but I genuinely cannot think of a time
[00:55:20]
where my team is so large that one
[00:55:24]
person is key for this automation and the
[00:55:27]
other forty nine are forty nine other
[00:55:30]
people.
[00:55:31]
Yeah.
[00:55:34]
I had a situation.
[00:55:38]
When they made this feature,
[00:55:39]
I feel like they changed it so that
[00:55:41]
when it was only one person getting it,
[00:55:43]
they made all the admins get it for
[00:55:45]
some automations.
[00:55:47]
Not all, it seems.
[00:55:49]
It’s really weird.
[00:55:50]
And so this one automation,
[00:55:52]
I had been being really lazy for like
[00:55:53]
a month.
[00:55:53]
I had been getting a daily error that
[00:55:55]
I knew wasn’t a real error that I
[00:55:57]
needed to worry about because it was just
[00:55:59]
somebody put in the year two instead of
[00:56:01]
two thousand two.
[00:56:03]
So it was like not matching up to
[00:56:05]
things.
[00:56:05]
And I just was like ignoring it.
[00:56:07]
And then my boss started also getting that
[00:56:09]
error.
[00:56:10]
And I was like, oh, my gosh,
[00:56:12]
what’s going on?
[00:56:13]
Why?
[00:56:14]
But.
[00:56:15]
Yeah, the behavior before,
[00:56:17]
if I’m not mistaken,
[00:56:18]
was whoever was the last person to update
[00:56:21]
or turn on the automation would get the
[00:56:23]
email.
[00:56:24]
And if that person’s account was
[00:56:26]
deactivated or they no longer had access
[00:56:28]
or creator level access to the base,
[00:56:31]
then every workspace owner would get the
[00:56:35]
email.
[00:56:36]
I think that behavior is still in there,
[00:56:38]
except it’s imperfect,
[00:56:40]
which is why I called it a bug.
[00:56:42]
Because in my enterprise,
[00:56:44]
the person who is the subscriber,
[00:56:47]
according to this new UI subscription
[00:56:52]
feature, is still a creator.
[00:56:54]
So why am I getting the email?
[00:56:56]
I look and it says I’m not subscribed.
[00:57:01]
I feel like it’s lying to me.
[00:57:03]
I feel like there’s an extra layer of
[00:57:05]
hidden subscriptions and that should be
[00:57:07]
visible or it should warn me in some
[00:57:10]
way because I get emails left,
[00:57:13]
right and center from stuff I’ve never
[00:57:14]
heard about.
[00:57:15]
Yeah.
[00:57:17]
Yeah.
[00:57:18]
Yeah.
[00:57:18]
But you’re the workspace owner or a
[00:57:20]
workspace owner.
[00:57:22]
Yeah,
[00:57:22]
but the problem is my enterprise is
[00:57:25]
massive.
[00:57:25]
So we have multiple org units.
[00:57:27]
These are from different org units that
[00:57:29]
I’m, yes,
[00:57:30]
I’m technically a creator by the nature of
[00:57:32]
my job,
[00:57:33]
but it’s not my responsibility at all.
[00:57:37]
And it won’t leave me alone.
[00:57:40]
How do I get off this?
[00:57:44]
Yeah.
[00:57:44]
So this is like, thank you, Airtable,
[00:57:47]
for giving us something.
[00:57:49]
Now let’s make it usable.
[00:57:53]
It’s a solid V one,
[00:57:55]
but I would love to see the V
[00:57:57]
two.
[00:57:57]
Yeah.
[00:57:58]
Yeah.
[00:57:59]
Okay.
[00:58:00]
We’re coming up on the top of the
[00:58:01]
hour.
[00:58:02]
Let’s check in real quick on our super
[00:58:04]
agents.
[00:58:04]
See where we’re at.
[00:58:05]
So here’s our website.
[00:58:10]
Um, refresh this page.
[00:58:16]
See where we’re at.
[00:58:22]
This might be a… There we go.
[00:58:25]
Okay.
[00:58:26]
Here’s our built-on error.
[00:58:27]
Let’s see.
[00:58:36]
Search doesn’t work.
[00:58:41]
Look at that.
[00:58:42]
Scott made it.
[00:58:43]
Community expert of the week.
[00:58:44]
Congratulations, Scott.
[00:58:46]
I love it.
[00:58:49]
Okay, good.
[00:58:50]
It’s probably better than my current
[00:58:52]
sites,
[00:58:54]
but still feels pretty standard AI web
[00:58:59]
generation.
[00:59:01]
Got a lot of pages.
[00:59:05]
There we go.
[00:59:05]
Okay.
[00:59:14]
Got a lot of stuff here.
[00:59:15]
And yeah,
[00:59:16]
like the only way to change things would
[00:59:18]
be to reprompt and rebuild everything.
[00:59:21]
So yeah, that’s not going to be… Huh.
[00:59:33]
Uh-oh.
[00:59:34]
Okay.
[00:59:34]
And this is all just random stuff.
[00:59:37]
Interesting.
[00:59:40]
Real quick, let’s check out our…
[00:59:46]
Update, see if it added.
[00:59:49]
This might be a rendering.
[00:59:51]
It might be running too much.
[01:00:05]
Yeah,
[01:00:05]
this might be a display memory issue on
[01:00:10]
my machine.
[01:00:12]
Sometimes this does this.
[01:00:12]
So anyways, it did update.
[01:00:15]
I’m assuming it added.
[01:00:19]
It’s interesting.
[01:00:20]
Here’s like the quick and dirty version.
[01:00:24]
And then this one’s the more detailed
[01:00:27]
version that displays for a second.
[01:00:34]
Okay, well, there’s your super agent.
[01:00:39]
This might be a me issue and not
[01:00:40]
a super agent issue, so.
[01:00:43]
All right,
[01:00:44]
well that concludes this week’s show.
[01:00:46]
Next week we’ll be on and dive deep
[01:00:49]
into a demo use case.
[01:00:50]
So good to see everybody and we’ll see
[01:00:53]
you next week.
[01:00:54]
Thank you.