It started off as a typical morning: coffee, morning meetings, and checking in with CofounderGPT.
Then, Slobodan sends a link in the Vacation Tracker Slack to Replaced By Clawd.
I checked it out right away and was really inspired by the idea. Partially because they're using similar branding and colors that we're using on the CofounderGPT website.
After running my LinkedIn profile through the website, I found out I'm quite replaceable by Clawd:
That got me thinking: could CofounderGPT and I build something similar for Vacation Tracker?
I had to run the end-of-March numbers for the company. But can I guide CofounderGPT to build this little marketing tool while I work?
Let's see.
Step 1: Figuring Out What to Build
The first step was to take a look at how Replaced By Clawd actually works. I usually work with Claude to do analysis and planning of these kinds of tasks first. I find this workflow is much better than trying to do everything with CofounderGPT directly. This combined with using Trello to manage tasks has drastically improved my collaboration with our AI cofounder.
Anyway, Claude and I first analyzed how Replaced By Clawd actually works, then brainstormed ways to turn a LinkedIn link into something fun tied to PTO.
Of course, the first batch of ideas was pretty basic. So as I always do, I pushed the AI to keep going. And then we landed on this idea of Your LinkedIn on PTO.
We briefly explored an idea of "How much PTO do you deserve", but I didn't want to waste a lot of time with this. After all, I had actual work to do as well. So I asked how long it would take to build Your LinkedIn on PTO. Claude said 12 hours. I knew this was a gross overestimation so I said "Ok, let's do it."
Next, we came up with the design. Claude designed the landing page and the results page based on what we had been discussing. And of course, the first iteration was pretty shitty.
We had to iterate a bit as usual to get things right. But since I wanted to move quickly, I basically approved the third iteration even though it was not quite there yet.
Then we moved to the specification phase. We had to work through a few things before finalizing the spec, the main one being how we were going to scrape LinkedIn profiles.
I won't bore you with the technical details, but after discussing options with Claude, we settled on BrightData as the provider of LinkedIn profile crawling services. It costs something like $3 per 1,000 profiles, so I thought this was reasonable for a tool like this. I bought $20 worth of BrightData credits to try it out.
Next, Claude put together a comprehensive specification for how to build this which included the mockups we created. It packaged everything for CofounderGPT into one file.
Step 2: Handing It Off to CofounderGPT
I created a Trello card for CofounderGPT where I provided some context on what we were trying to do and why. I said that Claude was the product manager but that CofounderGPT is the architect of this project. So it needed to review all the specifications and mockups and come up with a way to implement this quickly.
I iterated a bit with CofounderGPT and made it work through the specs and design a few times. We basically adapted Claude's specs and design to our workflow. CofounderGPT asked me a few questions and prepared a list of things it will need from me:
And then off it went to build it while I worked on my Vacation Tracker finance tasks.
I don't like CofounderGPT to work for 2 hours without checking in. So I always ask for tasks to be broken up into steps and for there to be a check in with me every couple of steps to make sure we're on the right track.
Step 3: Making It Actually Decent
The first version came together pretty quickly. It was able to pull the profile of the user using BrightData and to create a funny alternative profile. But it was missing something to make it more personalized.
That's when we came up with the idea of using the user's profile image and turning it into a PTO version of their avatar. Essentially adding sunglasses and a Hawaiian t-shirt on top of their existing profile picture.
Back to Claude I went to write up the specs for this. We decided to use Nano Banana Pro 2 to modify the images. CofounderGPT wired it up so that we could pull the profile picture, run it through Nano Banana Pro 2 to add sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, and then display it on their LinkedIn on PTO profile.
The only issue was speed. Generating a profile took 1 to 2 minutes. So we tried to optimize the pipeline. That's where everything broke.
Luckily, I told CofounderGPT to snapshot the working version before making any changes. After an hour of trying to make the pipeline go faster, we brought back the functional version. As a workaround, we added loader copy making fun of the fact that it was slow because it's a vibe-coded app.
A Few Notes on How We Set It Up
- This app is being hosted on a server that CofounderGPT and I use for testing out ideas. So we already had this server, we just had to set up a section on it to host Put your PTO on LinkedIn.
- We already own a bunch of Vacation Tracker domains, so I just picked a random one and pointed it to the server. CofounderGPT set everything up after that.
- CofounderGPT handled the SSL for this on its own using Let's Encrypt.
- CofounderGPT has its own git repositories, so all the different iterations of what we tried are stored in our Github account.
The End Result
Considering that it took us about 4-5 hours all together while I was working on another task, the end result is quite impressive.
I used to run a web and mobile software development agency in a previous life. 10 years ago, a project like this would have taken a small team about a week or so to complete. A part-time project manager, a part-time QA, and a mostly full-time developer would have taken at least 5 business days to do this.
We did it in an afternoon, with the human working part-time and the robot working full-time.
Ladies and gentlemen, we've entered an era where one person plus AI can produce an insane amount of output.
Go PTO your LinkedIn and see what kind of glorious nonsense it comes up with: https://vacationtracker.vip/
