Transcript: 'How to Use Claude Code as a Second Brain'

The transcript of AI & I with Noah Brier is below. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Timestamps

Introduction: 00:01:19
How you can do deep work on your phone: 00:04:28
Why Noah thinks Grok has the best voice AI: 00:06:14
The nuts and bolts of Noah’s Claude Code-Obsidian setup: 00:11:39
Using an agent in Claude Code as a “thinking partner”: 00:23:59
Noah’s Thomas’ English Muffin theory of AI: 00:35:07
The white space still left to explore in AI: 00:44:04
How Noah is preparing his kids for AI: 00:50:41
How he brought his Claude Code setup to mobile: 01:01:54

Transcript

(00:00:00)

Dan Shipper

Noah, welcome to the show.

Noah Brier

Thanks for having me.

Dan Shipper

I'm excited to have you. It's really good to get to chat. This is our first interview in probably five years. For people who don't know, you were one of the first Superorganizers interviewees. That was the newsletter that turned into Every, and I love the way that your brain works. You have this really interesting taste for tools for thought, and back in the day, you were using Evernote in all these really interesting ways. You were the co-founder of a really cool startup called Percolate and then another one called Variance and now you're running Alpehic, which is an AI strategy consultancy.

And I'm just really excited to see how your mind has started to use these AI tools now that they're working so well. And I know you have some pretty cool Claude Code stuff to show us. So yeah, thanks for coming on.

Noah Brier

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm super excited. That was a fun interview all those years back.

Dan Shipper

It was really, really fun. So, I want to just dive right into the thing that I think is so cool about what you're doing. So I know you have a whole vibe coding setup that you've built for yourself. Can you talk us through that?

Noah Brier

Yeah, I'm not sure about actually the vibe coding part of it. I have a sort of fairly heavy duty Claude Code set up but actually mostly not for code. Since those days of Superorganizers, like many people, I've abandoned Evernote and switched over to Obsidian. And one of the big advantages with Obsidian as a note taking platform is that it's a bunch of Markdown files and a bunch of folders. And they can then be synced with Git and you can do lots of other fun kinds of things. And so, actually probably my number one Claude Code use is using it as a tool to interact with my notes. So, I've got a fairly serious Claude Code setup that I use with Obsidian. And my most recent obsession has been standing up a server in my house so that I could also use Claude Code on my phone.

Dan Shipper

This is incredible. I want to go through all of this. So where should we start? Should we do how you use Claude Code as sort of this research assistant notes organizer, note taker thing? Or should we start with how you use it on your phone?

Noah Brier

We can start with just the general part of it. That might be the easiest—the phone is really just an extension of that same thing. I would say, generally, and this is something I feel like not enough people talk about with AI, one of the things I find really extraordinary about it is the ability for me to work really productively on my phone. That's been a huge change because so much of what I do is writing or coding, and the phone is definitely not the best place for that.

You know, even the phone wasn't always the best place for doing research and thinking. I felt like my computer was a better place for it, which is why I've been such a note taker. And I have found whether it's Claude Code and Obsidian or even Claude Code. So the other piece of it is being able to then, if you see something go wrong, sign in on your phone and have Claude Code push a small update to something because you just realize it while you're out.

Dan Shipper

That's amazing.

Noah Brier

But then even I use quite a bit of Grok voice mode, and I find that as an alternative way of working through problems. I have a Tesla, so now it's baked into the Tesla. And obviously all the other ChatGPT and Claude and all these things—just being able to go and do research and really think and explore things in this device that's always been useful, but not useful for deep work. I think most people would agree that the phone has not been the best place to do deep coding and research work. And I feel like it's really changed my ability to do that.

Dan Shipper

Wait, I’ve got to stop you. So you're using Grok voice mode, and is that specifically because it's built into your Tesla or are you using it in situations where you could also use, for example, ChatGPT voice mode?

Noah Brier

No, I'm using it because it's way better than any of the other voice modes, and I will fight anybody who says anything different.

Dan Shipper

Okay, tell me. What do you like about it? Why is it better?

Noah Brier

To be fair, OpenAI launched their real-time API, which may or may not be baked into ChatGPT voice now—it's not totally clear. But the old voice mode was based on 4o and I just found it to be completely unusable. And Gemini's voice mode I just didn't find to be smart enough.

I just found Grok's voice mode to be significantly smarter than anybody else's. I'm using Grok-2, I don't even remember whatever the latest one is. I don't have the most expensive account, I don't have super heavy—but I just find it to be much better. It does tool calling way better than any of the other ones. That's what I found to be a major weakness of the voice models - they don't do great tool calling and research. And Grok seems to have solved that.

So even before it was loaded in my Tesla, I dropped my daughter off at summer camp this summer up in New Hampshire. So I had a five-hour drive on my own and I spent like two hours researching and essentially working through a piece. I did it by just connecting it to Bluetooth and sitting there in the car. And I found it to be by far the best of the voice modes. I hope these other models catch up because I would love more really good voice modes.

I had a mind-blowing session this weekend where I have a conference coming up on September 18, and I'm giving a talk. I sort of have some ideas. I think it's generally going to be about transformers eating the world. So I was sort of catching myself up on self-attention and exactly how it works. I did like an hour session and it really was by far the best explanation I've ever read for it, or ever heard, I guess. So yeah, I've just found it to be a pretty extraordinary product.

Dan Shipper

I do love voice mode for that. It's sort of like a podcast made specifically for you about whatever you're curious about, and that's really cool. I went upstate this weekend and I've been reading the Iliad. So I had it on audiobook and then I had some questions as I was driving. And so I unfortunately used ChatGPT voice mode because I didn't know about Grok's voice mode. I wish we had had this conversation before then, but the thing about ChatGPT voice mode is—yeah, I think when it first came out, it was cool, but it just hasn't gotten as smart as the models are. And they gave it this new personality that I had to get used to where every time you ask it a question, it goes like, oh yeah, uh-huh, well, you know, and it's just this weird Gen Z thing that feels like it has a little bit too much ennui or something—like it doesn't actually care about you. I don't know what that is. So I had to get used to that.

Noah Brier

Grok has a stoner mode, for what it's worth. I will say the car version is very interesting to me. This was in the most recent Tesla release like a couple weeks ago. You know, I had been doing that same thing you did where you just plug your phone in and you put it on Bluetooth and do your best to make it work. And it's very interesting to just have a voice AI button—it syncs back to your regular Grok, but you can't rejoin old chats. So it's just like, hey, it's just like—but you know, I mean these things are significantly better than Siri and all of these other things. And particularly, there's no comparison if you actually have something more than just a single question you want an answer to. If you actually want to have a conversation about the Iliad or about transformers and self-attention—I don't know, it's pretty amazing to just be able to hit this button and use that car time.

I was on my way somewhere last week and I was having it research—I was going back to Walter Benjamin. I have this idea to write a piece about how the reactions to every new technology are essentially elitist critiques of it. It's always like, "Oh no, everybody's gonna be able to do this thing that only we used to be able to do." So I was in the car and I was thinking about this, and I had it go and I was like, okay, you know, it's been years since I read the Walter Benjamin mass production of images one. So yeah, then I'm having a conversation about that and I'm like, who are Walter Benjamin's contemporaries? And then I'm into all these—you know, it's just like, I don't know, it’s amazing.

Dan Shipper

It’s the best. Okay, so you're filling your brain with all these things from voice mode, which I love. But tell us about your second brain setup—or I don't know how you refer to it, whether you think that second brain is appropriate for this—but I want to know how you're using Claude Code to take notes and do research and all that kind of stuff.

(00:10:00)

Noah Brier

Yeah, so I could just open it up. Maybe that's the easiest thing. I'll walk you through it. I'll start on my computer and then we can do the phone. The computer's just way easier to share here.

So alright, this is what I was working on before. But essentially, you know, this is just Claude Code and it's just sitting on top of my Obsidian. So if I jump out here and I just do like—you can see I'm following the PARA method. And I've just got everything organized in here and put in the places that they need to be.

Dan Shipper

Well, let me just stop you. For people who are listening,we're looking at Claude Code. It seems like you have Claude Code running in your Obsidian vault and there's some kind of—it looks like it's adding something to an existing note. Is that what's going on? That's what we're looking at?

Noah Brier

Yeah. So in this particular one, I'm working on this talk, so I'm putting on my conference in two weeks. I'm giving this talk about marketing and AI and what's going on. If we sort of jump back a second, I've been doing these conferences called brxnd.ai, and they're about marketing and AI.

I did one in February in LA, and it was about this—I'm sure you've seen it—it was the Office of Strategic Services, which was the precursor to the CIA, wrote this manual called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. And it was essentially a manual to help citizen saboteurs in Nazi-occupied territories sort of quietly sabotage the Nazi occupation. So it was like there's a whole bunch of stuff for blue-collar workers. It's like if you're a janitor, you should leave a bucket of oily waste around and accidentally drop a cigarette in there so that it will—but then there's this amazing set of recommendations for white-collar workers and they're like, always refer things to committee. Always revisit previously made decisions. Make sure that if somebody is trying to make a decision, you should suggest that they don't act with too much haste, lest they be embarrassed.

And so my talk was about how one hope I have is that AI can kind of sidestep a lot of the bureaucracy that exists inside large organizations because it has this goo-like effect where it can kind of fit into any crevice or crack because it can act as this fuzzy interface and it doesn't really care about the input-output.So the next part of the story is, after the conference, I realized that manual was in the public domain. So I hired a designer and I printed 300 copies and I wrote a new foreword for it. So we're giving this away at the conference. And so my talk is trying to tie all these ideas together. I'm trying to pull from the Sabotage manual, and then I was doing a bunch of research into Wild Bill Donovan, who started the OSS. And the OSS was the precursor to both the CIA and the Special Forces.

So anyway, I'm writing this talk and I've got a project inside my Obsidian, which is the beginning of the research for this project. And I'm pulling in chats and articles and all these things. And then I'm constantly talking to the AI in here and giving it new ideas. So I'm like, oh, I need some conclusions. Here's my first thought on conclusions. And I'm having it note down the conclusions, and then at the end of each day, I have the AI write up the changes that I—sort of like the things I learned that day that are gonna help me push this talk along.

So that's what you're looking at right here—this is all part of this work that I've been doing where I've been feeding it. I was working on what are some of the conclusions I want it to be. And so this is all sitting in my Obsidian inside of a project specifically for that talk.

Dan Shipper

Okay. So let me get a clearer sense of this. This is really interesting. So you have a project—when you have a new thing, you're giving a talk, you make a new folder, and then as you're thinking about stuff, you're working with Claude Code inside of the folder. And you're researching stuff and then saying like, I want you to take notes on it.

In this particular case, you know that a component of your talk is the conclusions section, and so there's one particular markdown file that you're just going back and forth with it and having it add conclusions. But what else is in that folder? So is it like there's a body note and then there's an intro note?

Noah Brier

So one of the big things here is that I'm in thinking mode, not writing mode yet. And so there's some stuff in here where I've specifically told—I think it's in the front matter actually—where I've told Claude Code like, don't help me write anything right now. And I generally find this to be a big thing with all these models is like they immediately jump to wanting to help you with the artifact. And you know, when you're just in thinking mode, you have to be very explicit in like, hey, I just want you to help me think and ask me questions.

So yeah, what you can see here is like, there's a bunch of files in here. I've got “Chats”—that's where I'm literally taking chats I'm having with other things and I'm just using the Obsidian web clipper to pull the whole chat in. I've got “Daily Progress”—that's where I'm having the AI actually look through all the notes that came out that day and help me think through the progress. And then I've got “Research”—that's where I've got a bunch of articles and PDFs and stuff that I've pulled in so far and been reading about. And then there's a bunch of other random notes along here where I've been just using it to help me think.

And so yeah, I was in the midst of—I've got this conclusion note. So I sort of felt like I had blocked out the big themes of the talk, but I was like, “Okay, I need to figure out what am I gonna say at the end?” And you know, essentially what I'm gonna say at the end is about a lot of the stuff I've learned over the last few years of working with these large brands on AI projects. So I was starting to get it to the conclusions. And so yeah, I'm just kind of piecing all this stuff together right now. That's kind of what's happening.

Dan Shipper

And give me a sense of like, when this folder was empty, what did you start with?

Noah Brier

So I think I started with telling it like, I'm in thinking mode. I'm not in writing mode. Here are my past few talks that I've given at Brxnd AI to give you a sense of the sort of style that I have. And here's the kind of general idea and the big points I want to make. I'm giving away this book. So I want to talk about Simple Sabotage Field Manual. And I have this notion—I have this, it's kind of just a title—it's like Transformers are eating the world. It's this idea that one of the very interesting things happening with these models is they're sort of displacing a whole bunch of specialized code in places. And so I sort of want to talk about that, and then I've got these conclusions.

And so the first thing I said was like, hey, just go look through all of the rest of my probably 1,500 things in my Obsidian and go see anything else you can find that might be of value to this talk, of the existing things I have. And so just go kind of pull those into the research folder at the beginning to kind of jumpstart this process.

Dan Shipper

Got it. And are you starting Claude in this folder or are you starting it in your full Obsidian vault so that it can access all that stuff?

Noah Brier

No, I'm starting it in the full Obsidian vault. So like if we—if I step out of here, right—we're in the root directory. All this stuff is in the root directory of my Obsidian.

And my Obsidian setup is also a little more intense, for what it's worth, because I've also realized you can add a package.json to add a bunch of custom code commands to your Obsidian that you can then run. And then you could use those code commands and slash commands and all of these other things. So there are a bunch of other moving pieces in here, but generally it's fairly straightforward. I mean, I'm trying to use PARA and some other bits and pieces.

Dan Shipper

So for people who are listening or watching and are like, we just went through a bunch of stuff really fast—so the basic gist is Obsidian is just a note-taking app that runs all local. And so everything that—all the notes you take—they exist in essentially text files on your computer organized by folder.

And when you're starting Claude Code, one way to do it would be to start Claude Code in the folder for the particular project that you have. But it sounds like what you're doing is instead you're starting it in the root directory where all of your Obsidian notes live. And the advantage of that is Claude Code has some sandboxing things where it's not really supposed to run commands outside of the folder it was started in. It can run commands inside of any subfolder, but it sounds like what you're doing—so it has access to your entire Obsidian and it can do a bunch of stuff. And you've also added a package.json, which lets it run custom software commands, basically. That's really interesting.

And do you find, because I've had this as a twinkle in my eye to have a go find relevant stuff for me—do you find that it's actually relevant and interesting? Because I think sometimes when I've done this kind of thing before with language models, they're like, oh yeah, this random thing is relevant because X, Y, Z. Like, it doesn't feel like—I can understand why it picked it as being relevant, but if it really knew who I am and what I think is interesting, it definitely would not have. Do you find that that's the case or have you figured out a way to make it relevant?

(00:20:00)

Noah Brier

I think by and large, yes, I agree with you. I think in this case relevance is a little simpler since ultimately this talk is sort of—the things I was asking it to look for, I've done a bunch of thinking and research around. So it's like I'm not asking it to make large conceptual leaps to relevance. It's like, go find all this—like I want to talk about the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. It can literally just do a find for all the times, all the articles and things I've got in my Obsidian about that. And so relevance is kind of a loaded term, right? And I agree with what you're saying. I think what I'm asking it to do is much more simple, which is like amongst this set of things, go find all the notes that I've already researched that kind of brought me to be thinking about these things to begin with.

Dan Shipper

Got it. And then once you had it do all that research, did you have it do any sort of summary to sort of stimulate you to be like, okay, here are some jumping off points based on what you've done before? What was your next step?

Noah Brier

So my next step is I actually have an agent in here, so if we go to—I'll continue for now.

Dan Shipper

So for people who are listening, you're just starting up Claude, you're using the continue flag. So you're starting Claude by continuing the last session that you were in, and now you've got—and Claude Code gives us the ability to do subagents. So those are like little mini Claudes that you can spawn. And you have a, you have—

Noah Brier