Most people underestimate how powerful humor is as a skill. Most of us kind of live similar lives you know. We wake up. Go to work. Commute. Eat. Watch something. Sleep. Repeat Today I randomly found a YouTube channel covering business news…but with comedy. Normally I wouldn’t watch news at all but this had me laughing during my break at work, and honestly, that 10 minutes was the highlight of my day. And it made me realize, humor is leverage just as much as it is entertainment because the moments we actually remember are the ones we laughed a lot. If you can combine humor with valuable content, you get: - Attention - Retention - Shareability - Higher CPM niches - Sponsorship potential - Brand loyalty That’s an insane combination that i would love to have. Now, I’m not a natural at making random strangers on the internet laugh... But what if we can actually make it a trainable skill with a system/workflow involving AI? Not to become a comedian - but to learn how to think more creatively, be quicker, more witty, more engaging for any content we create. I feel the only real way to stand out is by doubling down on what AI can’t replicate well yet — personality, humor, and a recognizable personal brand. Starting to think this is one of those under-the-radar advantages nobody talks about that would be game changing for this community @Jake Van Clief @Kaleb Vanderham @Matthew Creamer

Hey everyone, Curious what the community is running in production or for daily development. Are you mainly using OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source models, or something else? And more importantly why did you choose it? (performance, cost, context window, tooling, etc.) Also curious about your workflow: what IDE are you using with it? VS Code, Cursor, Antigravity, or something else? Would love to hear: • Your main LLM provider • Your IDE / dev setup • One reason you stick with it Always interesting to see what people actually use vs what’s trending.

***** We have removed this start here course in favor of a better structure! Refer to new start here post**** If you just joined or you have been here a while and still feel like you are not sure where everything is, this one is for you. I built a full Start Here course in the Classroom tab that walks you through everything: ✅ How the community works (levels, tiers, what unlocks when) ✅ Every course available to you right now on the free tier ✅ What opens up at Level 2 and how to get there ✅ What Premium and VIP members get access to ✅ A "Pick Your Path" page so you know exactly where to begin based on where you are ✅ A full resource page with every link, tool, and doc you might need This community has grown fast and I know it can feel like a lot when you first land here. This course is meant to fix that. No guessing, no wandering around trying to figure out what goes where. Open it up, go through the lessons, and you will know exactly what is available to you and how to use it. 📚 Go to the Classroom tab → Start Here And if you have not done it yet, your first move after finishing the course is to head to the 📌 pinned intro post in the Community tab and introduce yourself. Over 400 people have already done it. Tell us who you are, what you are working on, and what brought you here. That post is one of the most valuable things in this entire community. If you find anything confusing or think something should be added, let me know in the comments. This course is for you and I want it to actually work. Let's build. 🛠️

Tell us three things: 1. What you do (job, industry, student, career-changer, whatever) 2. What brought you to Clief Notes 3. One thing you're trying to figure out right now related to computing or AI I'll respond to every single one. And read each other's intros too because the person who's stuck on the same problem as you might already be in this thread. I'll go first I am Jake, I have been working in tech for 15 Years, building with Generative AI for 3 Years straight now! Excited to teach and learn! That's it. Simple, scannable, gives you data on who's joining and what they need, and keeps the feed clear for content that retains people past week one.

***A note before you read: this post talks about losing a parent to drug overdose, addiction, and some of the harder parts of growing up through that. If any of this hits close to home, take care of yourself first.*** This is personal, not ai related but feel its important to share. Both @Matthew Creamer and I lost our fathers to drug overdoses. I don't say that for sympathy. I say it because it's the kind of thing that rewires your entire life and I think some of you need to hear that the people building this thing with you know what it feels like to start from somewhere broken. My dad was a good man. I need you to know that before anything else. He was loving, he was present, he was the kind of father who wanted his son to never have to grind through the kind of work he did. He spent his life in construction, the kind that wears your body down year after year, and he always told me he wanted something different for me. He wanted to retire the whole family one day. He wanted to leave a mark on the world and he wanted me to do the same. He just had his demons, and one night when I was 15 they took him from me. A month after my birthday so I was still basically 14 years old and I found him on the couch and that was it. Everything after that moment I had to figure out on my own. I learned how to trim my beard without him standing behind me in the mirror. I learned how to haggle with taxi drivers in countries he never got to see. I broke my heart for the first time and had nobody to call who could tell me what that kind of pain actually means when you're young and don't know who you are yet. I fell into addiction myself somehow escaped after a lot of battles. I joined the Marine Corps and that brought its own tragedies, its own weight. I climbed the tallest mountain in Europe. I walked across the grand sands of the Middle East. I have tasted war and peace, depression and anger, and so much more that I am still learning how to carry.