S23-E08 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show
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In This Episode
Welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast, the live show. The BuiltOnAir Podcast is a live weekly show highlighting everything happening in the Airtable world.
Check us out at BuiltOnAir.com. Join our community, join our Slack Channel, and meet your fellow Airtable fans.
Episode Summary
Join us as we dive into the world of AI and Airtable with special guest Rob Breidner. We discuss the current state of AI, its potential impact on productivity, and how Airtable is uniquely positioned to lead the charge. Rob also shares his thoughts on the pros and cons of building on Airtable versus standalone platforms and showcases his work with HyperAgent, a cutting-edge AI tool. Don’t miss this exciting conversation!
⏱ Timeline:
- 5:52 - Community-led hackathon announcement
- 10:15 - Rob’s thoughts on the state of AI
- 13:26 - Rob’s thoughts on Airtable’s role in the AI space
- 22:05 - Introduction to HyperAgent
- 26:38 - HyperAgent demo and features
Full Transcription
The full transcription for the show can be found here:
[00:00:01] Welcome in to the BuiltOnAir podcast,[00:00:04] season twenty three, episode eight.
[00:00:06] This will be the last official episode for
[00:00:10] this season,
[00:00:11] but you may see us in between.
[00:00:14] So good to be with you, Dan Fellars,
[00:00:16] Kamille Parks,
[00:00:17] Ali Alosa and special guest Rob Breidner.
[00:00:20] Welcome in, Rob.
[00:00:21] Hey, everyone.
[00:00:24] Thanks for having me back.
[00:00:24] Been on the show before.
[00:00:26] So we’re excited to get an update on
[00:00:28] what’s going on with Rob.
[00:00:30] He’s got some exciting stuff that he’s
[00:00:31] going to show us.
[00:00:33] But a couple of things going on that
[00:00:35] we wanted to make you aware of.
[00:00:37] And so we’ve got there’s two hackathons
[00:00:40] coming up.
[00:00:41] One official one from Airtable.
[00:00:43] That one’s on site in New York.
[00:00:47] Dates again.
[00:00:48] What are the dates on that?
[00:00:51] March first.
[00:00:53] March first?
[00:00:54] As the beginning of when you could do
[00:00:56] your submissions, sorry.
[00:00:59] Oh, okay.
[00:01:01] There’s too many.
[00:01:01] I know.
[00:01:04] I think the Airtable one’s the nineteenth,
[00:01:05] I think.
[00:01:06] Okay.
[00:01:06] But I don’t know.
[00:01:10] If you’re on site in New York there,
[00:01:12] you can do that.
[00:01:13] Big prize money for that one.
[00:01:15] But there’s also a community-driven one.
[00:01:18] Allie, you want to talk about that one?
[00:01:20] Yeah, as Kamille had just started saying,
[00:01:23] the window for the community-led hackathon
[00:01:27] opened on March first.
[00:01:30] So this goes until March seventeenth.
[00:01:33] And during that time, you can submit,
[00:01:36] build and submit a Airtable base video
[00:01:42] that goes along with it if you go
[00:01:44] to the website,
[00:01:44] which I’ll post it in the link right
[00:01:48] here.
[00:01:49] Perfect, thank you, Dan.
[00:01:53] You can submit,
[00:01:54] and all the rules are there.
[00:01:56] There’s several prizes.
[00:01:57] There’s several categories of prizes,
[00:02:00] and one of those categories is a jury-led
[00:02:03] selection.
[00:02:04] And for the second time,
[00:02:06] Kamille and I are working together on that
[00:02:08] jury, along with Erika Pasquale,
[00:02:10] who won two out of the three prizes
[00:02:12] last time with her dodgeball base,
[00:02:16] which was super, super cool.
[00:02:18] So we’re really excited.
[00:02:20] The theme this year,
[00:02:21] we actually did a theme this time.
[00:02:23] Last year it was wide open.
[00:02:25] This time we chose a theme because a
[00:02:26] lot of people submitted games.
[00:02:29] Like there was like a huge percentage of
[00:02:32] them were games or like just fun themed
[00:02:36] bases or builds.
[00:02:38] So the theme is called Let’s Play.
[00:02:40] So anything that makes you think of or
[00:02:44] inspiration that you drive from that.
[00:02:46] We’d love to see.
[00:02:47] And this is all really spearheaded by Mike
[00:02:50] Simmons, I should say,
[00:02:51] Mike Simmons of Automatic Nation.
[00:02:53] Check him out on LinkedIn and check out
[00:02:56] the website that Dan just posted in the
[00:02:58] comments.
[00:03:00] We’re excited.
[00:03:03] Yeah.
[00:03:04] Rob might have something to submit to
[00:03:07] that.
[00:03:07] Yeah.
[00:03:11] I know I’m on the jury,
[00:03:12] but I want to submit one as like
[00:03:14] a,
[00:03:16] we’re obviously not going to vote for this
[00:03:17] one,
[00:03:18] but I’ve already built my own sort of
[00:03:20] game recreation in Airtable and just,
[00:03:22] you know, for the funsies of it all.
[00:03:24] Yeah.
[00:03:26] There’s two other categories are the AI,
[00:03:28] there’s an AI prize that’s chosen by
[00:03:30] Airtable themselves.
[00:03:32] And then there’s a community chosen prize.
[00:03:36] So just the most liked submission.
[00:03:39] So…
[00:03:40] You could put it under a pseudonym,
[00:03:43] Kamille.
[00:03:48] Maybe we could do,
[00:03:49] we’ve talked about this,
[00:03:50] maybe we’ll do a special podcast and go
[00:03:54] through what you built as maybe motivation
[00:03:58] for others.
[00:03:58] Yeah, I think that’d be really fun.
[00:04:04] Yeah, so we’ll do something like that.
[00:04:05] We’ll definitely highlight the
[00:04:07] participants and winners.
[00:04:16] So yeah, check that out,
[00:04:17] hackathon.airtabletemplate.com.
[00:04:21] The submission is there.
[00:04:22] So anytime between now and March,
[00:04:26] So be sure to submit yours and we’ll
[00:04:31] highlight them once they are coming in.
[00:04:35] Well, with that, we’ve got Rob on.
[00:04:36] Rob has dived deep into the weeds of
[00:04:40] AI and building.
[00:04:42] And before we get into some of the
[00:04:45] cool stuff that he’s been working on,
[00:04:46] we thought we’d talk a little bit about
[00:04:48] kind of the state of AI and some
[00:04:50] of the projects that are out there.
[00:04:53] So yeah, Rob,
[00:04:54] what are your thoughts on having spent
[00:04:56] some time in this world?
[00:04:58] Yeah, definitely.
[00:05:01] It’s definitely an exciting time.
[00:05:03] It brings me back to ten plus years
[00:05:07] ago when Airtable kind of first launched
[00:05:11] and it was kind of the first of
[00:05:15] these accessible,
[00:05:17] easy to kind of use and understand
[00:05:21] databases,
[00:05:22] I think in general that like people could
[00:05:24] have access to.
[00:05:25] And it kind of, you know,
[00:05:26] there was this progression between or from
[00:05:29] Excel sheets to like Google sheets.
[00:05:31] And then as soon as it was in
[00:05:32] a Google sheet, it was like online.
[00:05:34] And that was pretty awesome, you know?
[00:05:36] And then there was FileMaker, which was,
[00:05:38] you know, as we know, like,
[00:05:40] the Scots of the world,
[00:05:41] the Scott roses of the world,
[00:05:42] like the geniuses, uh, behind FileMaker,
[00:05:45] but then it, uh, you know,
[00:05:47] then Airtable kind of became this like
[00:05:49] always on database thing.
[00:05:51] So I think we had this wave of
[00:05:53] AI with like the chat GPTs and the
[00:05:56] chat, um, interfaces with AI.
[00:05:59] And I think we’re in this next wave
[00:06:01] of AI.
[00:06:02] We’re now,
[00:06:03] now that we’re really kind of like, uh,
[00:06:06] leaning more into like AGI and more like
[00:06:08] actual agentic artificial intelligence.
[00:06:12] I think it’s like this next big wave.
[00:06:15] And so I’m just hoping that, you know,
[00:06:19] I’m confident that it’s gonna be the
[00:06:22] future.
[00:06:22] It’s been extremely helpful for me.
[00:06:25] And I’ve even been telling people like
[00:06:27] with some of the,
[00:06:28] like with the tools that are out there
[00:06:30] and with the workflows that are out there
[00:06:32] now, it feels like for the first time,
[00:06:35] like computers and systems have been able
[00:06:37] to actually keep up with my brain.
[00:06:39] And I’ve been able to like, you know,
[00:06:41] actually be able to like legitimately kind
[00:06:43] of, you know,
[00:06:45] work on multiple things at one time.
[00:06:47] And whereas it would have been,
[00:06:50] like a lot of people talk about context
[00:06:51] overload and context in general,
[00:06:53] when it comes to AI is,
[00:06:54] very important to talk about um and to
[00:06:57] understand but um i actually feel like
[00:07:00] it’s it’s you know context switching is
[00:07:02] extremely taxing uh but it’s nice to be
[00:07:05] able to kind of for me at least
[00:07:06] offload my ideas and like offload my
[00:07:09] internal context and just put it into
[00:07:10] somewhere else and just know that like
[00:07:15] it’s there and i guess that’s like the
[00:07:17] biggest that’s actually the biggest um
[00:07:20] That’s the biggest thing that I’m trying
[00:07:21] to actually tackle right now is like,
[00:07:23] how do we have the trust and the
[00:07:24] confidence to know that when we put
[00:07:26] something into this AI slash like agent
[00:07:29] world, how can we actually trust it?
[00:07:31] And I think we’re all systems people here.
[00:07:34] We’re all kind of like computer people.
[00:07:36] And so when you…
[00:07:38] talk to the computer,
[00:07:39] you kind of expect the computer to do
[00:07:40] what you ask it to do.
[00:07:42] And that’s the beauty of computers.
[00:07:44] It’s the beauty of like calculators and
[00:07:45] things, you know, things like that.
[00:07:46] So, you know,
[00:07:48] I think that’s the biggest thing that we
[00:07:50] all should be worried about right now is
[00:07:52] like, you know,
[00:07:54] it’s great that these AIs can take a
[00:07:55] lot of authority for us on our behalf,
[00:07:58] but like from a,
[00:08:03] from a trust standpoint and from like a
[00:08:05] risk standpoint, I don’t know,
[00:08:07] there’s an inherent risk.
[00:08:10] And when it comes to like risk mitigation
[00:08:12] and all that stuff,
[00:08:12] like I think that’s where a lot of
[00:08:14] the conversation should be actually going
[00:08:15] into now because the technology is,
[00:08:18] is like growing exponentially and it’s
[00:08:20] growing with itself, right?
[00:08:21] Like AI is like self-improving itself.
[00:08:23] And so I think we,
[00:08:24] as the humans need to like be talking
[00:08:25] a lot more about risk mitigation and talk
[00:08:27] about like,
[00:08:29] how do we control this uncontrollable
[00:08:30] thing that yeah.
[00:08:33] So that’s kind of my two cents,
[00:08:35] I guess.
[00:08:39] That makes sense to me.
[00:08:40] I mean,
[00:08:41] one of the biggest things when you work
[00:08:43] as part of a team is you should
[00:08:45] be able to check each other’s work just
[00:08:48] to make sure everything comes out right.
[00:08:50] And if you’re working with a team of
[00:08:52] people, it’s, oh, you’re only human.
[00:08:54] A mistake is going to come in there
[00:08:57] at some point.
[00:08:59] Today, AI is still built by humans.
[00:09:02] So by its very nature,
[00:09:05] it’s going to mess up every now and
[00:09:06] again as well.
[00:09:07] So as long as you can use it
[00:09:10] as a tool and just do your own
[00:09:12] due diligence at what it outputs for you,
[00:09:15] you’re probably in the clear.
[00:09:17] You just keep your one hand on the
[00:09:21] steering wheel.
[00:09:22] That’s where I’m at right now.
[00:09:23] Yeah.
[00:09:26] I’ve been kind of telling people that
[00:09:29] we’re in this transition where we used to
[00:09:31] have atlases and maps.
[00:09:34] And then we got map quests.
[00:09:37] And then we got tom-toms and garments and
[00:09:40] things like that.
[00:09:40] And then nowadays,
[00:09:44] the maps are kind of the context.
[00:09:45] And the maps are actually kind of
[00:09:46] irrelevant.
[00:09:47] What’s actually important is the
[00:09:48] directions that we are taking.
[00:09:51] And so maps are kind of becoming this
[00:09:53] thing of the past.
[00:09:55] but maps are what are fueling the
[00:09:57] directions of like getting us from point A
[00:09:58] to point B.
[00:09:59] And we’ve inherently just trusted that
[00:10:01] like when we get directions to something,
[00:10:03] it’s gonna take us to where we wanna
[00:10:05] get to.
[00:10:07] And I think that like,
[00:10:09] not there yet with ai but we’re at
[00:10:11] the point where we know that ai can
[00:10:13] define a couple different ways to get to
[00:10:15] an end point um we just need to
[00:10:17] like influence it a little bit so i
[00:10:19] kind of like think of this analogy of
[00:10:21] like taxi drivers you know like there’s
[00:10:23] taxi drivers and then there’s like a waymo
[00:10:25] or a subway or something it’s like the
[00:10:28] subway’s only gonna go
[00:10:31] this like line of the subway you know
[00:10:33] like it’s not going to take a a
[00:10:34] left or a rights to like miss something
[00:10:38] you know uh unless it’s given some
[00:10:39] direction to to kind of like reroute
[00:10:41] itself whereas like a taxi driver who
[00:10:43] knows the back streets or you know knows
[00:10:46] its way to get around town and knows
[00:10:48] how to get around traffic and knows when
[00:10:49] school’s about to be out and all that’s
[00:10:51] like um yeah there’s that human aspect to
[00:10:55] it of that like human intuition uh
[00:10:59] But there’s a ceiling to that,
[00:11:01] and there’s a ceiling to, like,
[00:11:03] a taxi driver doesn’t necessarily know if
[00:11:04] there’s a traffic accident, you know,
[00:11:07] one mile ahead because that’s happening in
[00:11:10] real time,
[00:11:11] and they might not have access to, like,
[00:11:12] that real-time information.
[00:11:14] And that’s where, like,
[00:11:15] the computers and the systems come into
[00:11:17] play.
[00:11:18] Yeah.
[00:11:20] My thought was a question for you is,
[00:11:23] so Rob is the one that built the
[00:11:25] Olympic Games app.
[00:11:27] We highlighted it a couple of weeks ago.
[00:11:29] Very impressive, very cool stuff.
[00:11:32] BuiltOnAirtable,
[00:11:34] but vibe coded or AI generated on top
[00:11:38] of that.
[00:11:40] Where do you see the Airtables of the
[00:11:43] world fitting in this world of AI?
[00:11:46] It’s very interesting dynamic.
[00:11:48] What are your thoughts there?
[00:11:50] Yeah, I mean,
[00:11:51] my thoughts are when it comes to AI,
[00:11:55] it’s all about the context.
[00:11:56] It’s all about the information that we’re
[00:11:58] giving this AI in order to get an
[00:12:00] output.
[00:12:01] from the AI and the better the information
[00:12:04] that we can give it,
[00:12:05] usually the better the information that
[00:12:07] comes out of it.
[00:12:08] And that’s just kind of like a system
[00:12:09] in general, right?
[00:12:10] Like the better the plan for something is
[00:12:12] the better.
[00:12:13] Usually the outcome is of whatever,
[00:12:16] like whatever goal you’re trying to
[00:12:17] accomplish.
[00:12:19] And so I think Airtable is uniquely
[00:12:21] positioned as an established single source
[00:12:25] of truth.
[00:12:27] for information, for businesses,
[00:12:29] for personal use, for whatnot.
[00:12:32] Like it’s established itself as a single
[00:12:34] source of truth.
[00:12:35] And in this AI world,
[00:12:36] like where we have to have the confidence
[00:12:40] of what is true.
[00:12:42] Like I’ve been experimenting and playing
[00:12:44] around with like open claw rights,
[00:12:46] for example.
[00:12:48] which is this like incredible AI open
[00:12:50] source, like personal assistance,
[00:12:53] quote unquote, right?
[00:12:54] And one of the things that I tried
[00:12:57] to have it do for me was research
[00:13:00] some topics and some people that I wanted
[00:13:02] to kind of like on a daily basis,
[00:13:04] give me an update and like,
[00:13:06] let me know if anything is new has
[00:13:08] happened in the news throughout the night
[00:13:10] or something, right?
[00:13:11] And so you kind of just like chat
[00:13:13] to it and you’re like,
[00:13:13] give it to them.
[00:13:14] And you’re just like, here, do this.
[00:13:15] This is what I want, you know?
[00:13:20] And then you wake up the next morning
[00:13:21] and the thing you asked for isn’t there.
[00:13:25] Your research isn’t there.
[00:13:28] And it’s like, why is it not here?
[00:13:34] It’s there,
[00:13:34] but it’s only there for two of the
[00:13:36] ten people.
[00:13:38] And it would be nice to just have…
[00:13:44] a table of records of people that I
[00:13:47] wanna keep track of.
[00:13:49] And whenever I wanna add a new person,
[00:13:51] I just have to like add a new
[00:13:52] record to a table.
[00:13:53] Or whenever I tell it to do something,
[00:13:55] there’s some sort of like visual feedback
[00:13:57] and confirmation of like, okay,
[00:13:59] this is the list of people that I’m
[00:14:01] gonna like research every single night.
[00:14:03] And so taking that back to like the
[00:14:05] Airtable side of things,
[00:14:06] I think Airtable as it relates to AI,
[00:14:09] like big AI in general,
[00:14:11] is very,
[00:14:12] very uniquely positioned to already be
[00:14:14] that single source of truth and already be
[00:14:16] in a,
[00:14:17] like in businesses and organizations as an
[00:14:22] organized, like organized context.
[00:14:25] And so I think if we can figure
[00:14:26] out how to like harness that or that,
[00:14:29] that context and harness the information
[00:14:31] that is already being interpreted as the
[00:14:35] truth, um,
[00:14:38] I think it’s got legs to actually be
[00:14:42] a leader in the AI space.
[00:14:46] Yeah, that’s my thought.
[00:14:48] Yeah.
[00:14:49] Yeah, it’s really interesting.
[00:14:53] Yeah,
[00:14:53] just this like hybrid approach of like the
[00:14:55] no code aspect of the Airtable with the,
[00:14:58] especially like the interfaces and then
[00:15:02] putting the custom.
[00:15:04] Cause like for your example with the
[00:15:06] Olympic games,
[00:15:07] in theory you could have built that all
[00:15:09] standalone, you know, on its own.
[00:15:12] Like what would be the pros and cons
[00:15:14] of taking that approach versus doing what
[00:15:16] you did to build it on Airtable?
[00:15:18] Yeah.
[00:15:19] I mean, it was honestly,
[00:15:21] it was about speed.
[00:15:22] Like it was about pace.
[00:15:22] It was about speed.
[00:15:23] It was like,
[00:15:24] how quickly can I actually create
[00:15:25] something that’s valuable?
[00:15:27] And that’s something that’s not specific.
[00:15:30] Like that concept is not specific to air
[00:15:32] table or sorry to AI.
[00:15:33] Like how do I build something as valuable
[00:15:35] as possible?
[00:15:36] And like in as least amount of time
[00:15:38] is, is not unique.
[00:15:41] And so a lot of the, like,
[00:15:44] when I was thinking about how I was
[00:15:46] going to build this,
[00:15:48] and a lot of times when I think
[00:15:49] about these like complex problems,
[00:15:50] I always try to boil it down and
[00:15:52] break it down into like, okay,
[00:15:53] like what’s, what’s simpler here.
[00:15:55] Like what’s already been done.
[00:15:56] What’s the existing mental model that
[00:15:58] people are already used to when it comes
[00:16:00] to looking at data visualized for the
[00:16:04] Olympics.
[00:16:05] Um, and you know, so,
[00:16:08] so thinking about like, okay,
[00:16:10] metal counts are usually pretty important
[00:16:12] and thinking about like, uh, news,
[00:16:15] thinking about, um,
[00:16:17] you know, like all this stuff, it’s like,
[00:16:20] it’s essentially data.
[00:16:21] Like all this is just data.
[00:16:22] And so I was like, okay,
[00:16:23] I can put this all into Airtable.
[00:16:25] I can organize this all.
[00:16:26] Cause I have the muscle memory myself of
[00:16:27] like establishing an Airtable base or a
[00:16:31] database in general for this.
[00:16:34] But I needed to move fast.
[00:16:35] Like,
[00:16:36] cause the like opening ceremonies were in
[00:16:38] like three days or two days from the
[00:16:40] time I started building it.
[00:16:41] Yeah.
[00:16:43] And so, but I had work to do,
[00:16:46] like I had other work to do and
[00:16:47] everything.
[00:16:48] So I really kind of, you know,
[00:16:50] you reach into your toolbox and at the
[00:16:52] same time, you like,
[00:16:54] one of the things that I always say
[00:16:56] is like the most valuable lesson that I
[00:16:58] learned from my like amazing four year
[00:17:01] university degree that I was fortunate
[00:17:02] enough to get was not my like computer
[00:17:05] science degree.
[00:17:05] It was, I learned how to learn things.
[00:17:10] And I think that like,
[00:17:12] that couldn’t be more true and more
[00:17:13] valuable right now than like it was,
[00:17:16] I don’t know,
[00:17:17] fifteen years ago of like learning how to
[00:17:19] learn things is actually extremely
[00:17:22] important.
[00:17:22] And when we had like our,
[00:17:25] like whenever we had exams or projects or
[00:17:28] anything, it was all like open book,
[00:17:30] open online resources, open friends,
[00:17:33] open whatever.
[00:17:34] Like it was use the tools that are
[00:17:35] available to get to like the desired
[00:17:39] outcome within some constraints.
[00:17:41] And so it was nice to have some
[00:17:43] constraints, but at the same time,
[00:17:44] it was nice to be able to reach
[00:17:46] into my toolbox as well as say,
[00:17:47] what things can I add to my toolbox
[00:17:49] to make my toolbox more valuable?
[00:17:51] And that’s where I really kind of just
[00:17:53] leaned heavily on cloud code.
[00:17:55] I leaned heavily on skills within cloud
[00:17:58] code.
[00:17:59] I leaned heavily on MCP servers to be
[00:18:03] able to kind of use AI as this
[00:18:06] like thought partner.
[00:18:07] And then it was like a constant back
[00:18:10] and forth of,
[00:18:12] me kind of doing some work,
[00:18:13] handing it off, it doing some work,
[00:18:16] handing it back off to me,
[00:18:18] me doing some work, handing it off.
[00:18:19] And so I think like there’s still a
[00:18:21] lot of value in the human aspect and
[00:18:23] the human involved in this process.
[00:18:25] So yeah, I don’t know.
[00:18:27] Cool.
[00:18:29] Cool.
[00:18:29] Any other topics or questions before we
[00:18:32] move on to some of the stuff you’ve
[00:18:34] been working on?
[00:18:35] I had an urban planning analogy.
[00:18:38] At some point,
[00:18:39] you reminded me of my first sort of
[00:18:41] foray into the world of AI was with
[00:18:44] self-driving cars.
[00:18:46] And urban planners were sort of tasked
[00:18:49] with thinking of how does this affect how
[00:18:51] we write rules about what you can do
[00:18:53] in a city and where do cars go?
[00:18:55] And at one point,
[00:18:57] I don’t know what the general consensus is
[00:18:59] anymore, but we were like,
[00:19:01] well you still got to park the car
[00:19:02] somewhere you can’t eliminate the concept
[00:19:05] of garages unless you build them like the
[00:19:08] perpetual train from snowpiercer they have
[00:19:10] to stop at some point and um the
[00:19:15] interplay between Airtable and ai
[00:19:18] there’s always going to be value in things
[00:19:20] like Airtable of I just need to look
[00:19:22] at a list of stuff really quick.
[00:19:24] And then Airtable does a lot of other
[00:19:26] things nowadays,
[00:19:27] especially with interfaces.
[00:19:29] We’re going to see some that Rob built
[00:19:31] completely custom using AI to help.
[00:19:33] But
[00:19:35] no matter what you’re building with AI,
[00:19:36] you’re probably going to have some data
[00:19:38] that you need to store somewhere.
[00:19:40] And it’s helpful if your database is
[00:19:43] already AI enabled.
[00:19:44] So you get the leg up there of
[00:19:46] not having to get several tools to sort
[00:19:50] of jam together to make the thing that
[00:19:53] you’re making.
[00:19:54] Airtable is pretty well suited for certain
[00:19:56] use cases to do most of what you
[00:19:58] need off the top.
[00:20:00] Yeah.
[00:20:04] Yeah.
[00:20:05] Yeah, I’m excited for what,
[00:20:06] what comes next.
[00:20:07] I mean,
[00:20:07] the deep match thing is super exciting.
[00:20:11] Like I kind of, I just,
[00:20:13] I can’t wait until I can have it
[00:20:15] like make decisions based off of the whole
[00:20:18] data set, like actionable decisions.
[00:20:21] Um, but yeah, I could go on.
[00:20:25] I’m excited to see what you’ve got to
[00:20:27] show Rob.
[00:20:29] Yeah.
[00:20:29] So we could, so let’s see,
[00:20:32] why don’t we start with a hyper agent?
[00:20:35] Let’s start with HyperAgent if you wanna
[00:20:37] get that ready.
[00:20:38] So HyperAgent,
[00:20:39] we talked about a week or two ago,
[00:20:42] recently released.
[00:20:44] Well, not released,
[00:20:45] it’s still in private beta.
[00:20:46] So this might be a peak.
[00:20:48] It’ll be the first time I’ve seen it.
[00:20:50] I signed up for the wait list and
[00:20:52] I’m not yet added.
[00:20:53] So I’m excited to see this.
[00:20:55] So Rob, if you wanna share your screen.
[00:20:58] Get it on there.
[00:21:01] And so, yeah, so this is,
[00:21:03] this one we talked about,
[00:21:05] this one is under the name of Airtable
[00:21:08] and it says it’s from Airtable where
[00:21:10] SuperAgent is kind of under its own name.
[00:21:12] It didn’t have the Airtable owner on it.
[00:21:17] So HyperAgent.
[00:21:18] Yeah.
[00:21:18] Yeah.
[00:21:21] Okay, here it is.
[00:21:22] I was gonna try and like pull open
[00:21:24] the like website for it.
[00:21:27] I could probably just log out real quick.
[00:21:32] There’s a distinct difference between
[00:21:35] hyper-agent and super-agent.
[00:21:37] A hyper-agent
[00:21:39] Let’s actually talk about Super Agent real
[00:21:41] quick.
[00:21:41] Super Agent is this idea of essentially
[00:21:46] this research assistance.
[00:21:48] A lot of what’s actually been put into
[00:21:52] Airtable’s built-in AI functionality and
[00:21:55] features in terms of the field agents,
[00:21:58] in terms of those individual research
[00:22:01] components of Airtable is actually a lot
[00:22:04] of what Super Agent is in the background.
[00:22:07] And Super Agent was
[00:22:09] deep sky,
[00:22:10] which was a company that they acquired.
[00:22:12] And so, you know,
[00:22:14] super agent in its pieces is in air
[00:22:16] table and different pieces,
[00:22:17] but super agent as a tool and as
[00:22:19] a product is like all of those things
[00:22:23] put together.
[00:22:24] And so you can create like slide decks
[00:22:26] and you can create like reports and things
[00:22:28] like that.
[00:22:28] Right.
[00:22:28] So it’s like,
[00:22:29] it’s more of this like research agent for
[00:22:32] you.
[00:22:33] Whereas hyper agents are,
[00:22:36] Hyperagent is really this idea and this
[00:22:40] concept of the orchestration layer of AI
[00:22:45] agents at an
[00:22:50] enterprise level and so it’s it’s
[00:22:53] something that you know that howie is
[00:22:55] working on personally and some of his
[00:22:57] other um team members on his like is
[00:23:00] the ai team at Airtable and so
[00:23:03] if we log into this you’ll see um
[00:23:06] like a lot of a lot of the
[00:23:07] commentary on hyper agent that they’re
[00:23:10] saying is okay it’s great to have all
[00:23:12] these ai agents but if you don’t have
[00:23:15] this orchestration layer behind all these
[00:23:17] AI agents to actually know and control
[00:23:20] what’s going on,
[00:23:21] then it becomes
[00:23:23] you know, noisy and hectic essentially.
[00:23:26] And so they’ve, you know,
[00:23:27] kind of come up with some like recommended
[00:23:29] agents up at the top here.
[00:23:31] And essentially what’s going on in the
[00:23:33] background of hyper agents is it’s linked
[00:23:35] to a tool called Composio.
[00:23:38] And Composio is essentially this like tool
[00:23:41] that allows you to connect your agents to
[00:23:43] a whole bunch of different things.
[00:23:44] It’s like a whole bunch of different MCPs.
[00:23:47] So it’s kind of like an MCP as
[00:23:49] a service.
[00:23:50] And so
[00:23:51] when you hop in here you can see
[00:23:53] this integrations table here and you can
[00:23:55] see like all of these integrations so i
[00:23:58] can browse like a thousand integrations um
[00:24:01] sorry a thousand integrations here so you
[00:24:03] can see like perplexity google docs
[00:24:05] hubspot etc and so the cool thing about
[00:24:08] hyper agents is that similar to things
[00:24:11] like open claw and similar to things
[00:24:13] there’s a couple other tools out there um
[00:24:15] like twin tasklets and even your like open
[00:24:19] AI, your chat GPTs and your clods,
[00:24:21] they do have some ability to connect to
[00:24:24] MCP servers,
[00:24:26] to be able to kind of do AI
[00:24:27] things with integrations and whatnot.
[00:24:31] But HyperAgent is cool in that it’s this
[00:24:34] like layer
[00:24:37] on top of all that to just do
[00:24:39] agentic things.
[00:24:40] So I actually just like,
[00:24:41] I created an agent here,
[00:24:43] which is a BuiltOnAir podcast prep
[00:24:45] agents.
[00:24:45] And so you can see like, it’s a,
[00:24:48] it’s an actual age.
[00:24:49] Like this is an actual agent.
[00:24:50] This is an actual AI agents.
[00:24:53] So it’s not just a chat window.
[00:24:56] It’s not just like,
[00:24:58] this is an actual agent and we can
[00:25:00] see that this agent has usage, right?
[00:25:02] So it’s actually been like,
[00:25:03] calling certain AI endpoints.
[00:25:08] It’s giving us the cost of those
[00:25:09] endpoints.
[00:25:10] And then I had it…
[00:25:13] You can see here,
[00:25:14] you can hook it up to Slack.
[00:25:15] You can schedule jobs.
[00:25:17] You can have it be hooked up to
[00:25:19] webhooks so that whenever anything comes
[00:25:21] into this, it’ll do something.
[00:25:23] Again, email, SMS, like MC…
[00:25:25] You can create your own MCP server for
[00:25:28] this agent specifically.
[00:25:30] So it’s kind of like…
[00:25:31] it’s kind of trying to extrapolate all
[00:25:33] these individual pieces that are going
[00:25:35] into AI agents and giving it back to
[00:25:38] the user to say, hey,
[00:25:40] you can actually create your own.
[00:25:42] Again,
[00:25:42] taking the analogy of you can have your
[00:25:45] Excel spreadsheet if you want to,
[00:25:47] but if you want to have
[00:25:49] your data structured, always online,
[00:25:53] you know, always secure.
[00:25:56] You don’t have to worry about all that
[00:25:57] stuff.
[00:25:57] Like then use Airtable for that.
[00:25:59] As one example,
[00:26:00] this is their kind of answer.
[00:26:02] This is Airtable’s answer to,
[00:26:04] at least this is my understanding.
[00:26:05] This is my interpretation,
[00:26:06] just to be clear.
[00:26:07] This is my interpretation of it as well.
[00:26:11] And so I just did like,
[00:26:14] one quick research agent as well.
[00:26:18] So this is the research agent for the
[00:26:20] BuiltOnAir like agent itself.
[00:26:22] And it actually went through and it found
[00:26:25] like a whole bunch of like five potential
[00:26:29] guests.
[00:26:30] So, you know, Chris Chang,
[00:26:31] who’s the deep sky CEO, Alan Barter,
[00:26:34] who’s head of AI at Airtable,
[00:26:37] And then some builders as well,
[00:26:38] some like builders and company,
[00:26:40] Ben Green got put in here and Dimitri
[00:26:43] Shapiro.
[00:26:44] And so HyperAgent actually went out and
[00:26:47] did all of this for me on my
[00:26:51] behalf.
[00:26:51] And then you can even, you know,
[00:26:53] create websites from this.
[00:26:54] You can create videos,
[00:26:55] you can create images, audio, slides,
[00:26:57] tables, et cetera.
[00:26:58] So it’s pretty cool.
[00:27:00] It’s very much in beta, but yeah,
[00:27:02] happy to kind of answer any questions or
[00:27:04] poke around if you guys want to see
[00:27:05] anything else.
[00:27:08] Yeah, it’s cool.
[00:27:09] It’s like,
[00:27:10] so it’s more of a toolkit that you
[00:27:13] can build on top of.
[00:27:15] Does it connect to Airtable?
[00:27:18] Yeah, so you can connect it to Airtable.
[00:27:21] So you can feature connection,
[00:27:22] connect to Airtable.
[00:27:23] So you can connect it to Airtable,
[00:27:24] but you can also connect it to like
[00:27:26] Databricks and Snowflake and some other,
[00:27:29] yeah,
[00:27:31] some other like data sources as well.
[00:27:33] Linear.
[00:27:35] Yeah, linear, go linear.
[00:27:36] Connected, there it is.
[00:27:40] If you had a particular agent and you
[00:27:42] wanted it to be focused on a particular
[00:27:45] data set, that integration,
[00:27:47] can you be like, for this agent,
[00:27:50] use this set of data?
[00:27:52] Exactly, yeah.
[00:27:53] So you can see this agent has access
[00:27:56] to do all of these things.
[00:27:58] You can see Snowflake and Databricks down
[00:28:00] here as well.
[00:28:01] And then…
[00:28:04] There is a way I haven’t poked around
[00:28:06] and played as much as I,
[00:28:07] as I should.
[00:28:09] But yeah,
[00:28:10] there is a world where you then can
[00:28:12] say this agent, at least I would like,
[00:28:14] that would make sense.
[00:28:15] Like that’s kind of one of the biggest,
[00:28:17] the bigger concepts that I’ve been,
[00:28:19] admittedly like struggling to handle and
[00:28:22] manage is all these different projects
[00:28:24] that I’m working on.
[00:28:25] I want to make sure that the individual
[00:28:27] projects have guard rails to them in that
[00:28:30] they only have access to certain MCP
[00:28:32] servers, certain API endpoints,
[00:28:35] certain tokens.
[00:28:37] Um,
[00:28:38] and like there isn’t cross pollination.
[00:28:40] between all that.
[00:28:41] And that’s definitely something that I’ve
[00:28:42] been seeing as a huge risk for people
[00:28:45] that are just jumping right into things
[00:28:47] like OpenClaw or Cloud Code or whatnot.
[00:28:50] And they’re just kind of feeding it,
[00:28:52] you know,
[00:28:53] access tokens and they’re feeding it,
[00:28:55] you know, all these different things.
[00:28:57] And if you’re not
[00:29:00] If you’re not neat and organized,
[00:29:03] you can very easily not realize that your
[00:29:06] AI actually has access to something that
[00:29:09] you don’t want it to have access to.
[00:29:11] And then that’s kind of where it gets
[00:29:13] back to the trust and the guardrails of
[00:29:15] this whole thing that I’m really excited
[00:29:19] to dive into and try and do my
[00:29:21] part to help out with that.
[00:29:23] Yeah,
[00:29:24] the principles of app design haven’t
[00:29:26] really changed whether you build it
[00:29:28] yourself or you use AI to help you.
[00:29:30] You can’t just be giving out API tokens
[00:29:34] and things like that willy-nilly.
[00:29:36] You absolutely cannot just grant an agent
[00:29:41] or a person, hey, yeah,
[00:29:42] look at all of my databases.
[00:29:44] Get full right access to everything I own.
[00:29:48] Don’t do that.
[00:29:50] Recipe for disaster.
[00:29:52] Oh my goodness.
[00:29:54] Did you see the thing about a guy
[00:29:55] that like tried to like vibe code himself
[00:29:58] a little app to control his robot vacuum
[00:30:01] and he ended up with control of like
[00:30:03] all the robot vacuums on the planet or
[00:30:05] something?
[00:30:06] Yeah.
[00:30:07] From this what company?
[00:30:11] Yep.
[00:30:11] Was that news correct?
[00:30:12] Did I miss?
[00:30:13] Did OpenAI buy OpenClaw?
[00:30:16] Oh, yeah.
[00:30:17] So this is a daily brief.
[00:30:18] Yeah, go ahead.
[00:30:19] Go ahead.
[00:30:21] I was saying I thought they did.
[00:30:21] Yeah, I thought I read that.
[00:30:23] I didn’t hear that.
[00:30:25] They bought him.
[00:30:26] They bought Peter Steinberger,
[00:30:27] essentially.
[00:30:29] OpenClaw itself is going to be owned by
[00:30:32] a foundation.
[00:30:35] So it’s going to stay open source.
[00:30:38] But OpenClaw is going to be owned by
[00:30:41] a foundation specifically for OpenClaw.
[00:30:45] Peter now works in some fashion for OpenAI
[00:30:49] to help push their personal agents kind of
[00:30:53] agenda.
[00:30:54] but yeah,
[00:30:55] this is a daily agent brief that like
[00:30:57] happened yesterday.
[00:30:58] Um, you know,
[00:30:59] and some of this stuff wasn’t breaking.
[00:31:01] I like this happened like a week or
[00:31:03] two ago.
[00:31:04] Um, this happened last week.
[00:31:06] Um, but it is very like,
[00:31:08] this is a,
[00:31:09] an agent brief that I told it to
[00:31:12] make for me about AI agents in general.
[00:31:16] Um, and this is very accurate.
[00:31:17] Like Manus is top of like the headlines
[00:31:19] right now.
[00:31:20] Perplexity is top of the headlines right
[00:31:22] now.
[00:31:23] Um,
[00:31:24] it’s doing like a comparison on a whole
[00:31:26] bunch of them as well,
[00:31:27] which is really helpful for me.
[00:31:29] So this is actually something that like is
[00:31:31] useful.
[00:31:32] And I think it’s actually a website like,
[00:31:35] or no, it’s yeah.
[00:31:36] So I could turn this into a website,
[00:31:37] but yeah,
[00:31:37] there’s like a whole brief here that I’ve
[00:31:39] given it to build this for me.
[00:31:44] You’ll be curious how,
[00:31:45] cause it seems like super agent
[00:31:48] functionality is built into hyper agent.
[00:31:51] There’s, you know,
[00:31:52] like you could almost kind of do what
[00:31:55] super agent does inside of here.
[00:31:58] It’d be interesting to see how they
[00:31:59] support both those products.
[00:32:02] Totally.
[00:32:03] Yeah.
[00:32:04] Totally.
[00:32:05] A lot of people are talking about command
[00:32:06] centers as well with AI agents right now.
[00:32:08] Like, how do you,
[00:32:10] how do you keep track of all of
[00:32:11] your agents?
[00:32:11] Like,
[00:32:11] so there’s like a running list of like
[00:32:13] all of your agents here.
[00:32:14] What things like need your attention is
[00:32:18] like super important.
[00:32:19] Yeah.
[00:32:22] Let’s see what this says here.
[00:32:26] HyperAgent is actually really cool in that
[00:32:28] as you start to talk to it,
[00:32:30] it starts to suggest some things.
[00:32:33] Should we have a guest brief?
[00:32:35] Yeah, that sounds cool.
[00:32:36] Let’s take that.
[00:32:37] Should we do a, what else?
[00:32:42] Yeah, that’s cool.
[00:32:43] Let’s dismiss that.
[00:32:44] Again,
[00:32:45] it’s just this layer into your AI agents.
[00:32:50] like doesn’t make it as like a theory
[00:32:53] and like theoretical, it’s much more like,
[00:32:56] okay,
[00:32:56] this is actually what’s fueling my agents
[00:32:59] right now.
[00:33:01] Um,
[00:33:02] which is exciting to like have that
[00:33:04] visibility.
[00:33:05] Um,
[00:33:05] and then it gets into things like rubrics
[00:33:07] and evals,
[00:33:08] which is like when you talk about LLMs
[00:33:10] in general and training LLMs and a lot
[00:33:12] of people are talking about, well,
[00:33:14] I could use mini max or some of
[00:33:16] these other, um,
[00:33:18] like open source or local models, uh,
[00:33:21] versus using open AI or anthropics models.
[00:33:25] And you can certainly do that.
[00:33:27] And then you’re,
[00:33:27] you aren’t necessarily burning cloud
[00:33:29] tokens to, to, to, to do that.
[00:33:31] But, um, you know, you,
[00:33:35] if you’re running your own local models,
[00:33:38] it’s very important for you to train your
[00:33:39] own local models, because if it’s local,
[00:33:42] it means no one has access to it.
[00:33:44] There’s,
[00:33:44] there’s training that has gone into that
[00:33:46] model in, in general,
[00:33:47] but
[00:33:48] it’s not,
[00:33:49] it’s only being trained on what you’re
[00:33:51] training it on.
[00:33:52] And so AI in general is like,
[00:33:55] it’s only,
[00:33:55] it only gets better if it knows what’s
[00:33:58] right and what’s wrong.
[00:34:00] And so that comes, you know, that,
[00:34:01] that goes into the idea of like these
[00:34:02] evaluations and rubrics and things.
[00:34:04] So it’s,
[00:34:05] it’s cool that like a lot of these
[00:34:06] core fundamental concepts of AI are built
[00:34:10] into hyper agents to kind of
[00:34:12] learn about AI in general without having
[00:34:14] to go out and just do research.
[00:34:16] And you can kind of learn by clicking
[00:34:17] buttons, which is fun.
[00:34:20] This kind of reminds me of like the
[00:34:22] more like analog, so to speak,
[00:34:25] parallel in my brain is like,
[00:34:28] and just that page in particular,
[00:34:29] the rubric thing.
[00:34:31] And like, you know,
[00:34:33] we’ve done like an email parser,
[00:34:34] like a Zapier parser.
[00:34:36] And like,
[00:34:36] you can go in and just like keep
[00:34:37] redoing the template over and over again
[00:34:39] to like train it to be like, no,
[00:34:41] no, no.
[00:34:41] Like it’s this line,
[00:34:42] like over and over again,
[00:34:44] like it keeps getting it wrong.
[00:34:46] You have to keep highlighting the token,
[00:34:47] like.
[00:34:48] I don’t know.
[00:34:49] It kind of reminds me of that.
[00:34:50] It’s like nudging it in that direction.
[00:34:54] Definitely.
[00:34:55] Have they announced pricing for this or is
[00:34:58] it free during beta?
[00:35:00] Right now it’s free.
[00:35:01] I see you spent one dollar and forty
[00:35:03] six cents.
[00:35:03] Yeah.
[00:35:06] Where’s my one dollar and forty six cents?
[00:35:07] Yeah.
[00:35:08] I believe it’s free during beta right now.
[00:35:11] Where’s the pricing?
[00:35:12] There was a billing
[00:35:16] early adopter, free to use hyper agents.
[00:35:19] Appreciate your feedback.
[00:35:20] There’s a pricing details for you right
[00:35:21] there.
[00:35:21] So kind of similar standard.
[00:35:24] So pretty,
[00:35:24] pretty standard AI price points.
[00:35:30] Yeah.
[00:35:30] They’ve got to pay as you go as
[00:35:31] well.
[00:35:31] Interesting.
[00:35:34] Cool.
[00:35:35] Yeah.
[00:35:35] This will be interesting.
[00:35:36] Cool.
[00:35:36] Yeah.
[00:35:36] I’m excited to check it out.
[00:35:38] I don’t know how they’re deciding who gets
[00:35:41] access.
[00:35:41] I know in our community, people are like,
[00:35:43] I’m in and others are like, I’m not.
[00:35:45] So I don’t know if it’s random or
[00:35:48] Rob’s on the, on the VIP list.
[00:35:53] I’m on the, I’m, I’m begging.
[00:35:55] I’m at the front door, like knocking,
[00:35:57] you know, not leaving.
[00:36:00] Yeah.
[00:36:02] Awesome.
[00:36:02] Well, let’s move on.
[00:36:03] Okay.
[00:36:04] I know let’s look at some stuff you’ve
[00:36:06] built.
[00:36:06] So you built some cool stuff.
[00:36:08] I think it might be worthwhile to explain,
[00:36:12] you know, the technical aspects.
[00:36:14] Yeah.
[00:36:14] Why don’t we start here?
[00:36:15] Talk about, we mentioned it,
[00:36:17] but show us what you built.
[00:36:19] Okay, cool.
[00:36:21] Yeah, so what you’re looking at here,
[00:36:23] if I just launch this just so it
[00:36:24] looks as pretty as possible,
[00:36:26] because that’s important,
[00:36:28] is this like Airtable Fantasy Olympics
[00:36:32] custom interface.
[00:36:34] And this is live online.
[00:36:37] One of the cool things about interface
[00:36:39] pages in general is that some interface
[00:36:41] pages have the ability to be published to
[00:36:43] the web and you don’t have to have
[00:36:44] Airtable access to it,
[00:36:45] which is super cool.
[00:36:47] Um,
[00:36:47] custom interfaces is one of those
[00:36:48] interfaces that you can do that.
[00:36:50] Um,
[00:36:50] and so everything you’re seeing here was
[00:36:53] all, as you guys already talked about,
[00:36:54] like it was all vibe coded.
[00:36:56] Um, and it has, uh, you know, the,
[00:36:59] you know, upcoming, um,
[00:37:00] like the actual games themselves, uh,
[00:37:03] the countries themselves, uh,
[00:37:05] what medals they’ve, you know, they’ve,
[00:37:07] they’ve won as well as on the right-hand
[00:37:09] side here, we can see there was, um,
[00:37:12] like this opportunity to make your picks
[00:37:15] to see who you thought were going to
[00:37:18] win what medals and everything.
[00:37:20] And so it’s kind of cool to see
[00:37:22] that the community has actually been like
[00:37:24] engaging here.
[00:37:25] I probably should vibe code this to like
[00:37:28] say the Olympics are over.
[00:37:31] But as of right now,
[00:37:33] it’s all kind of just live like this.
[00:37:35] And then it was cool.
[00:37:36] The idea behind this whole,
[00:37:37] this whole thing was not only to like,
[00:37:39] create an inspiration of like, Holy cow.
[00:37:42] Like this is all built on top of
[00:37:44] Airtable,
[00:37:44] but also that it’s possible to build this
[00:37:47] on Airtable and it’s possible to, um,
[00:37:52] Whenever we’re building in general,
[00:37:54] it all starts in the data and having
[00:37:56] clean data is always a luxury.
[00:37:59] And so what we ended up doing at
[00:38:01] the bottom here is giving all these data
[00:38:06] sets out for anyone to use.
[00:38:09] So you could open up and sync any
[00:38:11] of the tables that…
[00:38:14] eye builds um and are keeping up to
[00:38:16] date and build something like build your
[00:38:19] own custom interface with it so it was
[00:38:21] kind of cool to see um like someone
[00:38:23] created like a comic strip uh generator
[00:38:25] and we should be able to actually open
[00:38:26] it up as well um and these are
[00:38:28] like comic strips of all the um athletes
[00:38:31] which is really cool um let’s see if
[00:38:33] it opens yeah we showed this on a
[00:38:36] podcast we saw
[00:38:38] Yeah.
[00:38:40] No, it’s fine.
[00:38:41] So some people made some games,
[00:38:42] which was cool.
[00:38:44] There was this globe of all the countries,
[00:38:47] which was cool.
[00:38:48] This guy here made this,
[00:38:51] which was really cool.
[00:38:53] Someone made a Tinder app as well,
[00:38:55] where you could swipe through the athletes
[00:38:57] Tinder style, which was kind of funny.
[00:39:00] We didn’t necessarily put that in, but…
[00:39:04] Yeah,
[00:39:04] so everything here was all built with
[00:39:06] Claude Code as my kind of thought partner
[00:39:11] in the background.
[00:39:12] And I really used Claude as well as
[00:39:17] some specific skills to be able to help
[00:39:20] me go through the brainstorming process
[00:39:23] and go through the like
[00:39:26] prd process and go through the feature
[00:39:28] process of this all the way through to
[00:39:31] like actually pushing things to github as
[00:39:33] well so if we like you can even
[00:39:35] open it up on on github and see
[00:39:37] on github like this is the actual code
[00:39:40] base for what i just showed and so
[00:39:43] you can see like the two contributors
[00:39:45] claude and myself claude being the primary
[00:39:47] contributor
[00:39:50] But yeah,
[00:39:51] I definitely just felt like it was a
[00:39:53] great opportunity to use AI to just help
[00:39:55] me move faster and to keep things
[00:39:57] organized and make sure that things were
[00:40:01] easy to read, for example.
[00:40:04] And so yeah,
[00:40:05] I don’t know if you guys have any
[00:40:09] questions about that so far?
[00:40:10] Yeah,
[00:40:10] I’ll put a link to that in here
[00:40:18] as well.
[00:40:22] One thing I’ll just highlight is the
[00:40:23] Airtable MCP server.
[00:40:25] There’s an Airtable MCP server that this
[00:40:29] guy here, Dom, I’m assuming his name is.
[00:40:32] Dom Dom Egg.
[00:40:33] Adam Jones.
[00:40:34] There you go.
[00:40:35] So he works for Anthropic.
[00:40:37] And so he’s put out an MCP server
[00:40:40] for Airtable, which is great.
[00:40:42] And he keeps it pretty up to date.
[00:40:43] Five days ago, it was released.
[00:40:46] So you can pretty much do anything that
[00:40:47] the API can do,
[00:40:50] this MCP server can do,
[00:40:52] which is really cool.
[00:40:53] Explain MCP.
[00:40:55] We’ve talked about it in the past,
[00:40:56] but give your definition of what it is.
[00:40:59] So the couple of analogies I’ve heard is
[00:41:01] like,
[00:41:02] it’s the USB-C for APIs and AIs in
[00:41:08] general.
[00:41:08] So there’s two core differences between an
[00:41:13] MCP.
[00:41:15] There’s core differences between MCPs and
[00:41:18] APIs.
[00:41:19] APIs, if we just look at the…
[00:41:23] APIs in general,
[00:41:24] there’s documentation for APIs,
[00:41:26] and then there’s the actual like written
[00:41:28] API of the code base in the backend.
[00:41:31] And you have to,
[00:41:32] if you wanna know what an API can
[00:41:34] do,
[00:41:35] You go to the documentation.
[00:41:37] You look through the documentation.
[00:41:38] You look through sample payloads and stuff
[00:41:40] like that to learn about what it can
[00:41:42] do.
[00:41:44] And so I can just quickly open up
[00:41:46] the API documentation for this specific
[00:41:50] base.
[00:41:52] But you have to know how to work
[00:41:54] your way around API documentation.
[00:41:59] and then if you if you if you
[00:42:00] do you can make api calls to your
[00:42:04] data sets or to this tool to this
[00:42:06] application and get information in and out
[00:42:08] of it but mcp essentially there is no
[00:42:14] documentation the documentation is built
[00:42:16] into the mcp and so if you want
[00:42:19] to know what an mcp can do
[00:42:21] the MCP has a specific set of tools
[00:42:25] that it can do.
[00:42:25] So you can point your AI to an
[00:42:28] MCP and you don’t have to worry about
[00:42:30] pointing it to documentation and matching
[00:42:32] documentation or anything like that.
[00:42:34] So it’s like,
[00:42:35] it’s cool because it happens in real time
[00:42:38] as opposed to making,
[00:42:39] needing to make sure that the
[00:42:40] documentation is up to date to the API.
[00:42:42] And I’m sure like we all have experienced
[00:42:44] it when the documentation is not actually
[00:42:47] what the API actually returns.
[00:42:50] and how frustrating that is.
[00:42:51] You have to like manage and keep track
[00:42:53] of both.
[00:42:56] So yeah, is that a decent?
[00:43:00] Yeah,
[00:43:01] you’re gonna show us the project using it.
[00:43:05] You wanna show us that?
[00:43:09] Using the MCPs, using the table?
[00:43:12] Yeah, so let me,
[00:43:13] so I can open up,
[00:43:15] let me do this.
[00:43:17] Let me just open up a warp terminal
[00:43:19] real quick.
[00:43:22] Actually, I can do it here.
[00:43:22] It’s totally fine.
[00:43:25] Can you see my warp,
[00:43:26] or are you just seeing my browser?
[00:43:27] We’re seeing browser.
[00:43:30] My fault.
[00:43:31] One second.
[00:43:32] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:43:36] Hello.
[00:43:36] Hello, crazy.
[00:43:39] Let’s share my screen.
[00:43:39] Here we go.
[00:43:45] Okay, can you see Warp here?
[00:43:48] Yeah.
[00:43:49] Okay, cool.
[00:43:50] So as you can see,
[00:43:51] like I actually use Cloud Code to just
[00:43:54] kind of like identify some talking points
[00:43:57] for this specific podcast,
[00:43:59] which was pretty cool.
[00:44:00] What you’re looking at is Warp,
[00:44:01] which is a terminal that allows you to
[00:44:04] interact with things like Cloud Code.
[00:44:07] And so if I just type forward slash
[00:44:09] clear,
[00:44:10] you can see like now we’re in Cloud
[00:44:12] Code.
[00:44:14] The nice thing about Warp is that you
[00:44:15] have all of your documents on the
[00:44:17] left-hand side here.
[00:44:18] This is a folder that I’m in right
[00:44:20] now on my computer.
[00:44:21] This is the actual terminal.
[00:44:24] I can say what
[00:44:30] In Cloud, if I do forward slash MCP,
[00:44:33] you can see here that these are all
[00:44:35] of the MCPs that are either installed on
[00:44:39] this project at a user level or at
[00:44:42] a Cloud level themselves.
[00:44:44] You can see I have the Airtable MCP
[00:44:46] that’s installed and connected on this
[00:44:49] specific project.
[00:44:51] I can escape out of this and say,
[00:44:53] show me my tables.
[00:44:56] And it should, everything happens,
[00:44:59] everything should work perfectly.
[00:45:03] But this should essentially do a call to
[00:45:06] the Airtable MCP.
[00:45:08] So you can see it loaded context here.
[00:45:10] Okay,
[00:45:10] so it’s running a list tables MCP call
[00:45:14] on my specific table.
[00:45:16] This is my base ID that’s saved within
[00:45:18] the context of MCP.
[00:45:21] this specific Olympics app.
[00:45:23] And you can see here like, OK,
[00:45:25] here’s fourteen tables that are within the
[00:45:27] Winter Olympics fantasy base.
[00:45:29] And so all I had to do was
[00:45:31] say, show me my tables.
[00:45:32] And it knew all the context that it
[00:45:34] needed to know to know that what tables,
[00:45:37] what base I was even talking about.
[00:45:39] this specific MCP server only has a
[00:45:42] personal access token to only this
[00:45:45] specific base as well.
[00:45:47] So if I were to give it a
[00:45:49] base ID of some other base ID and
[00:45:52] say, what tables are in this base?
[00:45:54] It should error out completely and say,
[00:45:56] I don’t have access to that base,
[00:45:58] which is kind of a good general best
[00:46:00] practice.
[00:46:00] So from here,
[00:46:02] you can do so many things.
[00:46:04] I think you can say,
[00:46:06] what can you do with the…
[00:46:09] MCP from Airtable, but yeah.
[00:46:16] Any questions about the Airtable MCP?
[00:46:19] This is just King’s Quest.
[00:46:23] Exactly.
[00:46:24] The dopamine of like playing games and the
[00:46:27] dopamine of using AI and like Claude is
[00:46:30] exactly the same.
[00:46:31] It’s just like never ending.
[00:46:32] Like, oh my gosh, I can keep going.
[00:46:33] I can keep going.
[00:46:34] I can keep going.
[00:46:38] which you can’t do.
[00:46:38] That’s cool.
[00:46:39] Yeah.
[00:46:43] That’s cool.
[00:46:44] So it’s like an interesting highlight to
[00:46:45] point out here with this MCP is that
[00:46:48] it can do… There’s this MCP,
[00:46:51] Airtable themselves have an MCP server.
[00:46:54] And then there’s like Omni,
[00:46:56] which is Airtable’s…
[00:46:58] AI and they all do different things.
[00:47:01] This MCP server can do pretty much
[00:47:03] anything that the actual public API can
[00:47:06] do.
[00:47:06] It can do things like create tables,
[00:47:08] it can update tables, update fields,
[00:47:10] all that stuff,
[00:47:11] but it can’t create a new base because
[00:47:13] the public API,
[00:47:14] you can’t create a new base with the
[00:47:15] API, you have to create that base.
[00:47:19] This MCP is the most comfortable to me
[00:47:23] because I’m the most comfortable with the
[00:47:25] public API.
[00:47:28] The Airtable MCP server,
[00:47:29] which is the one that’s actually built
[00:47:31] into ChatGPT.
[00:47:33] And for example,
[00:47:35] like you can load up ChatGPT and link
[00:47:36] up your Airtable.
[00:47:37] That MCP can only read from your Airtable,
[00:47:42] I think.
[00:47:42] It can’t actually write anything.
[00:47:44] It can’t create tables.
[00:47:45] So it’s kind of like a more locked
[00:47:47] down MCP that’s in the Airtable one.
[00:47:51] And then the beauty about Omni is that
[00:47:53] Omni can do a whole bunch of things.
[00:47:56] that neither MCPs can do and the public
[00:48:00] API can’t do.
[00:48:02] And so as I was going through this
[00:48:04] process of building this Olympics app,
[00:48:08] there were times where I would say,
[00:48:10] and I can say like,
[00:48:12] show me a plan for Omni…
[00:48:16] that I created that AI created that works.
[00:48:18] It’s funny how easy I’m like typing AI
[00:48:20] and I at the same time.
[00:48:24] But there were times where I had Claude
[00:48:28] actually come up with an Omni prompt for
[00:48:31] me.
[00:48:31] because Omni can do things that these
[00:48:34] things can’t do.
[00:48:35] And so things like building interfaces,
[00:48:37] building automations,
[00:48:40] building certain fields that aren’t
[00:48:42] possible to be built with the API was
[00:48:47] super, super helpful.
[00:48:48] So I kind of like used Claude for
[00:48:51] some things, I use Omni for some things,
[00:48:53] and then I use just like domain experience
[00:48:56] and like domain expertise for other
[00:48:58] things.
[00:48:58] And there’s a lot of times where,
[00:49:01] you know okay here you go like there’s
[00:49:02] some interesting things like a plan that
[00:49:05] Airtables uh where is it oh the
[00:49:08] the landing page like so there’s a plan
[00:49:10] here an implementation guide uh like
[00:49:12] document for the landing page specifically
[00:49:15] and so i like i could if i
[00:49:18] wanted to just actually pull this entire
[00:49:21] document and give this entire document to
[00:49:23] omni and let omni
[00:49:26] build this entire thing,
[00:49:27] which was pretty cool.
[00:49:31] So.
[00:49:31] Yeah,
[00:49:32] I wish Omni had a public API or
[00:49:35] MCP server.
[00:49:36] I would hope it’s close.
[00:49:40] Like I would hope it’s close.
[00:49:41] That’s all I’ll say.
[00:49:42] Okay.
[00:49:43] Yeah.
[00:49:43] Fair enough.
[00:49:46] And just a correction,
[00:49:47] you can create a base through the public
[00:49:49] API.
[00:49:50] So I’m surprised that the MCP doesn’t
[00:49:53] expose that.
[00:49:57] I forget exactly what it is.
[00:49:59] I know this is for enterprises,
[00:50:01] but the enterprise API,
[00:50:03] you can create a managed app instance,
[00:50:06] which creates a base.
[00:50:08] But there’s got to be some other endpoint
[00:50:11] that just give me an empty base.
[00:50:13] It’s weird if it can’t.
[00:50:19] that’s where those like AI agents that are
[00:50:21] doing like the constant research every
[00:50:22] single night is like actually been super
[00:50:24] helpful, you know, cause things change.
[00:50:27] Like,
[00:50:27] like that’s actually one of the most
[00:50:28] helpful things that I’ve found with AI is
[00:50:31] like, I just give it some GitHub repos.
[00:50:33] I give it some like tools that I
[00:50:35] use and I just have it do research
[00:50:38] for me on a routine basis.
[00:50:40] And this isn’t something that like you
[00:50:41] could do this in an Airtable.
[00:50:43] Like you could do all this like web
[00:50:45] research actually in Airtable.
[00:50:46] It doesn’t have to be something super
[00:50:48] complex, but,
[00:50:49] But with so much new stuff happening,
[00:50:52] it’s so hard to stay on top of
[00:50:54] things and actually deliver value and
[00:50:56] like, yeah,
[00:50:57] like deliver value as like a human in
[00:50:59] this world, you know,
[00:51:02] to keep track of all this stuff gets
[00:51:04] exhausting for sure.
[00:51:07] So talk about the skills repo that you
[00:51:11] have.
[00:51:11] Like, what does that add on top?
[00:51:14] Yeah, for sure.
[00:51:16] So one of the things that was extremely
[00:51:18] frustrating was the simple fact that not
[00:51:22] everything… Admittedly,
[00:51:25] I wish that Airtable’s MCP and or the
[00:51:30] documentation for what Airtable can and
[00:51:32] cannot do was in a more central location.
[00:51:37] There’s some things that aren’t documented
[00:51:39] at all.
[00:51:39] There’s some things that are new.
[00:51:40] There’s some things that have old
[00:51:41] documentation to it.
[00:51:43] And so there were times where like either
[00:51:46] Claude or Omni, I think,
[00:51:49] was it you Ali that had posted something
[00:51:50] of like,
[00:51:51] I just taught Omni that it couldn’t do
[00:51:53] something that it thought it could do,
[00:51:55] or I don’t know.
[00:51:58] Maybe I, Oh,
[00:52:00] that happens all the time where it’s like,
[00:52:02] I mean,
[00:52:02] my clients will come to me and they’ll
[00:52:03] be like, well, chat GPT said that,
[00:52:06] that it can work.
[00:52:07] And I’m like, no, it can’t.
[00:52:10] Or like, it’ll,
[00:52:11] it’ll kind of get them halfway there,
[00:52:13] but not quite like, it’s just, yeah.
[00:52:16] It’s sometimes.
[00:52:17] I’ve seen formulas that Omni builds and
[00:52:20] I’m not impressed yet.
[00:52:21] Yeah, exactly.
[00:52:24] So, so what, um,
[00:52:27] Real quick,
[00:52:29] as I was actually building this interface,
[00:52:32] I was also building my own Airtable skills
[00:52:37] for Cloud Code.
[00:52:38] There’s a handful of skills here that you
[00:52:42] can just go and download off my GitHub
[00:52:44] repository.
[00:52:45] and install in your own Cloud Code.
[00:52:47] You can see that there’s actually other
[00:52:48] people that are contributing to it now.
[00:52:49] Shout out to Andrew Mitchell.
[00:52:51] He’s been contributing to these skills as
[00:52:53] well, which is super helpful.
[00:52:56] Ultimately,
[00:52:57] the goal of this repository and the goal
[00:52:58] of these skills is to
[00:53:00] be able to go into something like Claude.
[00:53:03] And if you do forward slash Airtable,
[00:53:06] these are my specific Airtable skills.
[00:53:10] So if I just wanted to do like
[00:53:11] a field audit, for example, on this base,
[00:53:14] I can just do my Airtable field
[00:53:16] audit skill.
[00:53:17] And obviously there’s some,
[00:53:19] opinions that i have injected into these
[00:53:22] skills that you can take and do on
[00:53:25] your own like you know go for it
[00:53:26] so i’m just gonna say so this is
[00:53:27] gonna walk me through the process of like
[00:53:30] what do you want me to field audit
[00:53:31] so i’m gonna say like do my entire
[00:53:33] base right like let’s do a field audit
[00:53:35] on my entire base and so there’s a
[00:53:37] series of prompts that this will go
[00:53:38] through
[00:53:40] And each individual skill has some prompts
[00:53:42] that it goes through and it has other
[00:53:44] skills that it knows about and everything.
[00:53:46] And so right now it’s going through,
[00:53:48] it’s auditing this entire base.
[00:53:50] And so as we can see here,
[00:53:51] I’ll just pull open the actual base itself
[00:53:55] just so we can keep everyone honest here.
[00:53:57] So there’s like, you know,
[00:53:59] what’s nice is that like,
[00:54:01] Cloud Code and the MCP has put
[00:54:05] descriptions for every single one of my
[00:54:07] fields.
[00:54:08] Every single one of my tables has really
[00:54:11] nice, neat, built-in documentation.
[00:54:15] And so if anything,
[00:54:16] as you’re building Airtables with or
[00:54:20] without AI help,
[00:54:22] um just linking up the mcp server and
[00:54:25] hopping into cloud code and saying like i
[00:54:27] need help documenting like my entire air
[00:54:30] table uh ask me a bunch of questions
[00:54:33] and i’ll give you answers and then like
[00:54:34] go for it you know uh it just
[00:54:37] helps so much for those things that just
[00:54:39] would normally take a lot of time or
[00:54:40] quite honestly like i would just skip i
[00:54:42] just wouldn’t do it you know yeah um
[00:54:47] Yeah,
[00:54:47] so skills are kind of like the next
[00:54:49] evolution of,
[00:54:51] and Claude’s the one that kind of defined
[00:54:53] it.
[00:54:53] Others are starting to adopt it.
[00:54:55] So it’s kind of becoming the standard now.
[00:54:59] It’s basically a way to like,
[00:55:02] the way I view it is in theory,
[00:55:05] you could create MCP endpoints that do
[00:55:07] what skills do,
[00:55:09] but skills run locally and don’t use the
[00:55:13] credits.
[00:55:17] as much.
[00:55:17] Yeah.
[00:55:17] Yep.
[00:55:18] Yep.
[00:55:19] And I will,
[00:55:19] I will just plug as well.
[00:55:20] Like Claude Academy is what it’s called.
[00:55:24] I know that like everyone has like their
[00:55:26] opinions about Airtable Academy and all
[00:55:28] that stuff.
[00:55:28] I think the Airtable Academy is
[00:55:29] incredible,
[00:55:30] but the Anthropic Academy just came out
[00:55:34] like a couple of weeks ago and it’s
[00:55:36] like a wildly,
[00:55:38] wildly in depth actual Academy that you
[00:55:42] can go through to learn about Claude and
[00:55:44] from like end to end.
[00:55:47] And so if you’re trying to learn about
[00:55:49] Claude and you’re trying to learn about AI
[00:55:50] and what things can happen,
[00:55:51] and here’s the thing about agent skills,
[00:55:53] that’s what got me thinking about this.
[00:55:54] Like if you want to learn how to
[00:55:55] build agent skills,
[00:55:57] I’m not going to be able to teach
[00:55:58] you better than this.
[00:55:59] Cool.
[00:56:02] So.
[00:56:03] Yeah.
[00:56:04] Yeah.
[00:56:05] So that’s kind of the next evolution of
[00:56:07] that to the point where, you know,
[00:56:10] I was,
[00:56:12] as I’ve been kind of processing this,
[00:56:14] you know, skills,
[00:56:16] it used to be you like we create
[00:56:18] like these mini agents that had their
[00:56:20] context,
[00:56:21] and you’d have like lots of different,
[00:56:23] you know,
[00:56:24] agents that did different things.
[00:56:26] Now, you don’t create multiple agents,
[00:56:28] you just kind of have your one like
[00:56:30] master agent that is exposed to different
[00:56:34] skills, and the skills,
[00:56:36] take it essentially like,
[00:56:38] tell the agent what to do for that
[00:56:40] specific use case.
[00:56:42] exactly yeah so you can see here like
[00:56:44] this just did a little field audit for
[00:56:46] me it like changed some fields and that’s
[00:56:49] cool and i could say like add my
[00:56:52] emoji prefixes to like everything as well
[00:56:56] and i can like so one of the
[00:56:58] things like i use this a lot for
[00:57:00] is to like this specific skill is for
[00:57:02] creating formula fields or like lookup
[00:57:05] fields and roll up fields i’ll have it
[00:57:06] actually create the field
[00:57:08] and then put a little emoji in the
[00:57:11] beginning of the fields.
[00:57:12] I’ll go into manage all my fields.
[00:57:15] I’ll like search for that emoji.
[00:57:17] So it only will show me fields with
[00:57:19] that little emoji in it.
[00:57:20] And then I can go in and I
[00:57:21] can actually change a long text field or
[00:57:24] a single line text field,
[00:57:25] which is just like the default that it
[00:57:26] gets created to.
[00:57:27] And it’ll say like changes right here,
[00:57:30] like formula changes to round.
[00:57:32] So I’ll literally just go in,
[00:57:33] copy this like that, come in here.
[00:57:36] paste this here, as you can see,
[00:57:37] I’ve done, and then like just hit enter.
[00:57:40] And so if I,
[00:57:42] and you can see like things are getting
[00:57:43] created here right now,
[00:57:46] cause doing a whole bunch of stuff right
[00:57:47] here.
[00:57:48] So, but yeah,
[00:57:49] that’s just like some of the things that
[00:57:51] the Airtable skills can do.
[00:57:52] It also will tell you if it can
[00:57:54] and cannot do some certain things,
[00:57:56] which is super helpful as opposed to like
[00:57:58] it get into these infinite loops of, oh,
[00:58:00] I can do this.
[00:58:01] It’s like,
[00:58:01] it has a little bit of documentation in
[00:58:03] terms of what it can and cannot actually
[00:58:04] do.
[00:58:06] Metadata has been the theme of the season.
[00:58:09] I have been loving it.
[00:58:14] Yeah.
[00:58:14] Awesome.
[00:58:14] Yeah, no, it’s inspired me.
[00:58:15] I’ve been building stuff on that point as
[00:58:17] well.
[00:58:18] So very useful.
[00:58:20] Awesome.
[00:58:20] Thank you, Rob, for coming on.
[00:58:23] Exciting stuff.
[00:58:24] And we’ll be hearing from Rob in the
[00:58:26] future, I’m sure,
[00:58:27] keeping us up to date on all the
[00:58:29] latest and greatest.
[00:58:31] So appreciate it.
[00:58:34] and that concludes this season uh we’ll be
[00:58:36] back next month we might have some special
[00:58:39] um episodes during the next month
[00:58:41] especially with the with the community
[00:58:43] hackathon want to promote that so
[00:58:46] everybody check it out the links in the
[00:58:47] notes and um submit your play i don’t
[00:58:51] know rob you’re gonna submit your your
[00:58:53] olympics you can put that in there let’s
[00:58:56] let’s play full enough i think yeah we’ll
[00:58:58] see maybe there’s i don’t know maybe
[00:59:00] something else will percolate up uh
[00:59:04] Very cool.
[00:59:05] Great.
[00:59:05] Everybody have a great week and month and
[00:59:07] we will be back next time.
[00:59:09] Take care.
[00:59:09] Sounds good.
[00:59:10] See you everyone.