My Daily AI Workflow - Innovating with Intelligence

Welcome to Part II of the Innovating with Intelligence series where I attempt to help you navigate the world of AI through my own experiences, failures, and successes as a software developer, entrepreneur and fellow creative.

This week, I want to take you through my tech stack and workflow to show you how I use AI in my day-to-day life and my work to maximize productivity and stay in your “Genius Zone” longer.

My Tech Stack

As a developer, my tech stack is changing all the time. I like to stay up to date on the latest tools available, albeit it’s quite difficult to keep up sometimes.

Although change is inevitable, I do have some staples in my workflow. Here is my primary tech stack for my day-to-day operations:

Notion

Notion is my second brain. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I rave about this piece of software. Notion’s AI prompting helps me build pages quickly, and I’m especially looking forward to their email client with smart tagging features.

JetBrains Suite

I have pretty much moved over to using WebStorm almost full time now for most of my Javascript projects. The intellisense and Jetbrains AI features allow me to write code so much faster and eliminate redundancy.

Arc Browser

It’s like Chrome, but better. Seriously, this is the best web browser. If you’d like to try it, click here to use my invite link (I get cool skins and stuff when you do!)

ChatGPT

Or Chet Gippity as I like to call him. ChatGPT has been a gamechanger in my workflow. From helping me to write copy, shell out business ideas, help me quickly solve problems with code, and so much more, ChatGPT has singlehandedly freed up my workflow significantly.

Bolt.new

As I’ve progressed further into my career, I’ve been feeling kind of burnt out on frontend. Don’t get me wrong — I love great web design, and pride myself on great user experience. But let’s also be real in saying that writing the same boxes and forms can get kind of annoying. That’s where I rely on Bolt.

Bolt generates frontend code based on the prompt that I give it. I usually use this for components within a project. I tell it what framework I’m using, what I want the component to do, and it writes the code and even sets up an integrated dev environment for me to edit in.

Bolt does tout itself on the fact that it can build full-stack apps, but there is quite a bit of tech bias in this app, so I use it more as a junior frontend developer so that I can focus on the fun stuff — programming the application.

Figma

Figma is a brilliant design software that has exponentially risen in popularity over the last few years. It is primarily used by UX Designers and Developers to build fully working prototypes for web apps, websites, and more, but can also be used to design graphics for social media, whiteboarding in FigJam, meeting notes, productivity tools, and so much more. I really enjoy their AI features in the whiteboarding app to get me going quickly when on a call. I can quickly spin up a whiteboard template based on what I need, and can get to brainstorming with my clients faster.

Option + Spacebar: My favorite shortcut.

Remember my boy, Chet? Yes, he has a desktop app. Seamless integration of tools is a top priority for me in my workflow, and having ChatGPT just two keystrokes away is a game-changer for me. As of right now, it looks like it’s available for both Mac/Linux and Windows.

Gotta Keep ‘em Separated.

If you’re a developer, you’ll notice that I did not select Windsurf or Cursor as my IDE of choice. In fact, I hardly use the AI features in WebStorm. My reason for this is simple.

I don’t want AI f[…]king up my code!

Although LLM’s are getting really good at allowing devs to code faster, they still have a serious problem of tech bias and lack of context. Couple this with code injection features like in Cursor or Windsurf, and now I’m spending an extra 30 mins debugging the feature that I asked it to create.

I’d rather take the extra couple of minutes to build it out myself, and use ChatGPT as my copilot & consultant.

Master the Mundane to Capitalize Creativity

A couple of readers responded to last week’s article with some negativity surrounding the creative ethics of AI. Although there are some things that I want to address in a later article in this series, I still see the overall impact of AI on creativity to be positive, and here’s why.

Everyday, I send a ton of email, make documents in my Notion workspace, set up development projects, jump on “quick calls” (lol), make social media posts, and so much more. This is the mundane part of my work, as well as many others.

Even writing code can be mundane at times.

In my Genius Zone, I solve problems with code. If I hand off some or all of this mundane work to AI to either automate or assist me in my craft, I’d argue to say that I’m spending MORE time being creative, because I don’t have to focus on the bullsht.

I believe it was Mark Cuban that used to use the phrase “my most important asset is my time”, and I agree. So if I can 10x my output in less time, with more purpose and precision thanks to being in my Genius Zone, then I’m going to do it.

The tool is only as good as the craftsman using it.

It is important to remember that AI is just another tool, and not a crutch for poor skills. In order to get the most out of it in your daily workflow, it is important to have a foundational understanding of what you’re trying to achieve.

I’m not just going to hand off a code snippet to ChatGPT and say “fix this”. I am going to rather prompt it and tell it “I’m trying to do ‘X’ by making a fetch call to ‘Y’ API, and manipulate the data this way to return output ‘Z’, and then update the state to reflect this new data.”

By using my experience & knowledge of Javascript, I can give the LLM better context to provide a better (and actually useful) response.

The tool is only as good as the craftsman using it. AI cannot replace incompetency, and it is also important to remember that we as humans still have critical thinking skills that we can use. Don’t become a prompt builder. Become a professional at your craft that uses AI to 10x the ROI on your time.

Well, that about wraps up today’s Riffs. Code. Coffee. I highly encourage you to spend some time with any of the aforementioned tools in this article. Who knows, you might get some time back to read some more Riffs. Code. Coffee. content 🤭.

Build Fast. Break Stuff. Have Fun.

Paps.