How Andrew Wilkinson Uses Opus 4.5 in His Work and Life
AI and I21 Tammi

How Andrew Wilkinson Uses Opus 4.5 in His Work and Life

Entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson used to sleep nine hours a night. Now he wakes up at 4 a.m. and goes straight to work—because he can’t wait to keep building with Anthropic’s latest model, Opus 4.5.

Two years ago, Wilkinson was obsessed with vibe coding on AI software development platform Replit. It was thrilling to describe something in plain English and watch an app appear, less thrilling when the apps were always broken in some way, often full of maddening bugs. So he set his app creation ambitions aside until technology caught up with them.

Then, a few weeks ago, he started playing with Claude Code and Opus 4.5. It felt, he says, like having a “$100,000-a-month payroll of engineers” working for him around the clock.

Wilkinson is the cofounder of Tiny, a company that buys profitable businesses and holds them for the long term. The Tiny portfolio includes the AeroPress coffee maker and Dribbble, a platform where designers can share their work and find jobs. Dan Shipper had him on AI & I to talk about the automations Wilkinson has built for his work and personal life, including an AI relationship counselor, a custom email client, and a system that texts him outfit recommendations each morning. Wilkinson revealed how all of this individual exploration has changed the way he thinks about buying software companies at Tiny.


If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!


Want even more?


Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.


To hear more from Dan Shipper:


Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe

Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper


Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded—without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at framer.com, and use code DAN to get your first month of Pro on the house!


Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Start

00:01:07 - Introduction

00:02:48 - Why Opus 4.5 feels like the iPhone moment for vibe coding

00:08:31 - Why designers have a unique advantage with AI

00:14:10 - How Wilkinson built a custom email client with Claude Code

00:18:13 - An AI trained on your relationship that predicts your fights

00:30:40 - Using AI meeting notes to make your life better

00:35:11 - Don't inject your opinion into prompts

00:40:21 - Wilkinson’s Claude Code tips and workflows

00:47:59 - Your personal stylist is a prompt away

00:53:17 - How AI is changing the way Wilkinson invests in software


Links to resources mentioned in the episode:


Andrew Wilkinson: Andrew Wilkinson (@awilkinson)

The book Wilkinson references in his prompts, when writing copy with AI: Made to Stick

Every’s compound engineering plugin: https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugi

Jaksot(101)

How Union Square Ventures Built an AI Brain for Venture Capital - Ep. 36 with Matt Cynamon

How Union Square Ventures Built an AI Brain for Venture Capital - Ep. 36 with Matt Cynamon

Union Square Ventures is building an AI operating system to support their investment team.  But it’s not what you think: It’s a constellation of AI tools that captures and synthesizes the firm's colle...

30 Loka 20241h 9min

Building AI That Builds Itself - Ep. 35 with Yohei Nakajima

Building AI That Builds Itself - Ep. 35 with Yohei Nakajima

Yohei Nakajima leads a double life.  By day, he’s a general partner of a small venture firm, Untapped Capital.  By night, he’s one of the most prolific internet tinkerers in AI. (He also sometimes wor...

23 Loka 202458min

How to Use AI to Become a Learning Machine - Ep. 34 with Simon Eskildsen

How to Use AI to Become a Learning Machine - Ep. 34 with Simon Eskildsen

This episode is sponsored by Reflect. It’s the ultra-fast note-taking app that’s about to change the way you take notes. To boost your productivity with advanced features like custom prompts and voice...

11 Syys 20241h 13min

How to Supercharge Your Writing With AI Tools - Ep. 33 with Evan Armstrong

How to Supercharge Your Writing With AI Tools - Ep. 33 with Evan Armstrong

How do two professional writers use AI to do the best work of their lives? In today’s show, Every’s lead writer Evan Armstrong and I conduct an expert workshop on how we use ChatGPT, Claude, AI-powere...

4 Syys 20241h 35min

The Browser Company Is Building a Brand That Drives Viral Growth - Ep. 32 with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua

The Browser Company Is Building a Brand That Drives Viral Growth - Ep. 32 with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua

The Browser Company isn’t just building a browser, they’re building a formidable brand—and they’re doing it with AI.  I sat down with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua, the head of storytelling at The Browser Comp...

28 Elo 20241h 9min

Building an AI Media and Software Empire - Ep. 31 with Brandon Gell

Building an AI Media and Software Empire - Ep. 31 with Brandon Gell

The journey to a calm, profitable business in the AI age We’re building a mini-AI media and software empire at Every.  Today on AI & I, Brandon Gell joins the show to turn the tables on me and act as ...

23 Elo 20241h 56min

How to Be a Smarter Reader in the Age of AI - Ep. 30 with Alex Wieckowski

How to Be a Smarter Reader in the Age of AI - Ep. 30 with Alex Wieckowski

Alex Wieckowski is on a mission to make you fall in love with reading again—and he thinks AI can help. Alex, who writes a newsletter that captures lessons from books he’s read and tips to become a bet...

14 Elo 20241h 19min

How Packy McCormick Finds His Next Big Idea - Ep. 29

How Packy McCormick Finds His Next Big Idea - Ep. 29

One of the most influential voices in tech explains how AI helps him write and invest.This episode is sponsored by Create. If you want to maximize your gains, both with your body and with ChatGPT, try...

7 Elo 20241h 13min