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I'm building a new product end to end through Slack. No IDE open. No terminal. My dev environment is a chat thread with an AI agent. Here is the whole stack: • Slack • Hermes (on Opalstack) • OpenCode Go Sharing my experience here

Why Slack? Because with slack, I don't have to expose any port from opalstack. Hermes uses Socket Mode mode to connect to slack So no public exposure of Hermes It doesn't eliminate security threats; but reduces it to a large extent.

All the product code lives under produce/hermes/products When I start coding a product, hermes creates a new folder under this main folder. Everything related to the products goes here.

Research PRD Mockups Feature Breakups Code Tasks for generating each features Retro of each cycle

When I have a "thinking" job, I sit on my computer and chat with the agent (via slack). Thinking Job = what is the product, JTBD, what it shouldn't be etc. This goes back and forth Often this will have >150 messages or so

This results in a PRD and other documents. At the end of a thread, I will ask the agent to document as well as to create a hand-off message. With a hand-off message, I move to a new thread. (After 100 - 120 messages the cost goes up and possibility of drift also goes up)

When "doing" comes, I am not so attached to my laptop. I pick up my mobile and instruct the agent as I move around. I ask it to create a task.md for each feature; I ask it to be sure of each task item. Then I ask it to generate code, while I am busy elsewhere.

After it generates code, it runs tests. If the tests pass it will tell me to test the code. Then I will test it and give feedback (again via slack). 90% of them this goes ok Some times the feature doesn't work as I expect.

If a feature doesn't work then another round of chatting back and forth happens to clarify the expectation.

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What surprised me in all these: My time goes to deciding, reviewing plans, and saying no. The agent does the mechanical work and catches what I miss.

As a CTO, this is the only way I can build hands-on experience and develop insights rather than reading hyped-up influencers thought-leadership pieces. I know: What works What doesn't work What still needs human capabilities ...