YouSaid · the spoken record

Zevi Arnovitz

lines on the record: 89
first: 2026-01-18
most recent: 2026-01-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I started using cursor and cloud code a few months ago, and I haven't looked back. But at that time, these teams have been moving like crazy. So I don't want to say I wouldn't trust them. I don't know what the current state is. But for me, it was basically the issue of I felt that Bolt was being very opinionated on how I should do things. And I felt like my knowledge has gotten to a point where I can graduate and be more in control. By the way, I think that the main difference between all these tools is basically the harness. So the models are all the same models. You know, I'll run Claude within cursor. I'll run it within Claude Code. And it's also the models that Claude is also the model that is underlying bolt and lovable. But basically bolt and lovable will add a bunch of levels in the middle that will take all kind of guesswork and hard decisions out for the users.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things that are not that complex. So, what we're going to do now is we're going to execute the plan. So now I think we're going to do this with cursor just because Composer is so freaking fast. So what we can do is basically just say execute and then we can tag the file. And Composer is ridiculously fast. So that's it. It's off. It basically understands what the plan is and it's going to go ahead and start writing the code.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These plans are from a template that I found on Twitter. I forgot who it was, but it was just a template that really resonated with me. And it's basically saying based on our exchange, create a markdown file that will be the plan, include clear, minimal, concise steps, track the status. So this basically has status trackers on each task that Claude updates as it's going through. And it will have a TLDR, some critical decisions that we've made, and the plan itself. So Claude's finished writing the plan. So we'll be able to look and see exactly what the plan is so it has a TLDR. It has the critical decisions we've made and the tasks broken down. And this is a perfect plan. And it's also a really good way to write this because a lot of times I'll use different models to execute certain stuff. So cursor has an amazing model called Composer, which is super fast.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It understands the current data model and how it's going to implement. Yeah, so it's ready to create the plan. So basically what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go and do slash create plan Wild Todd's doing this, I'm gonna show really quick what this looks like. So basically,”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think this is the big difference between just vibe coding and going along with the vibes and really building serious apps. I spend a lot, a lot of time going back and forth and understanding also a very cool slash command that I haven't showed yet is learning opportunity, which basically when something is really difficult for me to understand, I'll do slash learning opportunity and then talk about what I want to learn. And this basically primes Claude and says I am a technical PM in the making. I have mid-level engineering knowledge. I understand architecture. And basically I want you to explain what we're currently working on using the 80-20 rule. So this is a great way to learn. I would definitely take this. And every time you kind of see something that you don't fully understand. I would definitely use this to learn. Great. So Claude basically comes back and says how”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What changes need to be happened to the AI system prompt and all kinds of questions about the app. I've prepared answers to all these questions beforehand because I don't think we all want to sit through this. So I'm just going to paste that in and we'll see what Claude says.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, so this is Claude coming back. I have a comprehensive understanding of the code base. I thoroughly analyzed study made live code base and understand the current system, feature quest, and key areas that it's identified. Usually I'd spend a lot of time going over this because this is super, super important, but just for the sake of development right now, we're going to brush through this. Now cloud basically comes back after it's gone through the code base and understood the way it currently works. It's basically telling me what the current understanding is. So it's talking about how the app is set up at the moment, how the data is structured, what it understood from the feature quest, and what it's identified as key areas. And then it asked me some questions. So it's asking about the scope. It's asking about the data model, the UX UI of the feature, how it should be validated, how it should be graded.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's completely different because I'm a company of one. So a lot of the context is within here and there's no need for me to like talk to other teams and understand it's basically very accessible. And also I can easily see when Claude understood something wrong. I don't want to say that I would create linear issues at work like this. But definitely if you're building your own side project, they're pretty quality. And also it just kicks off when I want to start working on it. I wouldn't say it's ready to be built. It's ready to start being explored.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so within the Claude MD, which is basically the system prompt that's loaded within Claude's context in every conversation, I have some basic stuff like this is our workflow, this is how we work within Exploration Phase, I want you to challenge my thinking, all kinds of stuff like that. That can be loaded within the CloudMD file.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because of the way the tools have developed and they've become so good at both exploration and code execution. So now it's just kind of a habit that I call it a CTO, but it's basically all in one. The same agent will both do the exploration and write the plan and end up executing the code.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So it's both for the CTO to deeply understand the problem that we're trying to solve and also understand the current state of the code base, what files need to be affected, and how is the best way to implement this technically. And usually what happens is right now Claude's just basically reading a bunch of files, understanding the basic structure of the code. And then it's going to come back with a bunch of clarifying questions that will decide how we end up implementing this.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What it does is it will take an argument. This is basically a placeholder within the prompt, which allows me to enter something that is extra context for the AI. So I can say here linear STU88, which is referencing the ticket. And now what it's going to do is it's going to go, it's going to fetch the linear ticket.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's see where SQ8A. There it is. Fill in the blank questions with drag and drop interface. So it has a TLDR, it has the current state. It did a little bit of research on the code base, I think, expected outcomes, some context. So yeah, so this is basically ready for me to pick up when I'm interested in building. So now let's say a few days go by, I finished the current project I'm working on. I can pick it up. So when I pick it up, I do slash exploration phase, which is what we said. And then instead of pressing enter, I'll press tab and I'll show you this. So basically, exploration phase.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so at first, when I was doing this with the CTO, I would do it with ChatGPT voice vote. And that was crazy. That was like literally felt like ideating with a person. It would push back, ask questions, and maybe one day, you know, the coding tools will get there too. Great. So created STU 88. So if we open up Linear now, we should be able to see.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's just basically a quick think of how I want this to work. So it's gonna ask me a few questions. Quizzes are 100% multiple choice, question structure, single sentence passive two blanks, and priority. So one and two are correct. And this is not high priority. It's nice to have feature. So now basically what Claude is going to do is it's going to use MCP, which is basically technology that was created by Anthropic, which gives AI the ability to use tools. So this is connected to my linear. So what it's going to do now is it's going to use everything we've said and create an issue within Linear.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Cool. So let's go ahead and start building. So I'm going to use Whisper Flow to dictate. And basically, this starts with slash create issue. So, this basically sends that prompt. And I love this because I usually do this during when I'm building something else. So basically, it tells Claude that I'm mid building something and I don't have a lot of time to waste time on this. So just ask them brief questions so that you have enough to capture within linear. So I want to add, fill in the blank questions to study mate. I want this to be 30% of tests to be generated as fill in the blank questions. I want there to be six potential answers for two blank spots. And of course, there's only going to be two correct answers. So one correct answer and two incorrect answers for each spot. And I want the interface to be drag and drop.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, 100%. Basically, what happened was I formulated the backbone of this with the CTO, and it was basically within the system prompt of the CTO project that I had within GPT. So it said step one, we do this, step two, we do this. And now I'll keep building. And if I see something that happens over and over again, I'll just create a slash command and then it will be automated within the workflow.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is my weekend project. Yeah, this is what I do on weekends Yeah, so you get basically deep explanations into why each question was wrong or each question was right. And at the moment, StudyMate only has multiple choice questions. And I was doing some competitor research over the last weekend. And I saw competitors who had true or false questions and also fill in the blank questions, which I loved. So I think that'd be really cool if we could build that live. I love it.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here we can go to the top. Let's upload a PDF. Can decide what pages we want to be quizzed on. We can decide the number of questions, the difficulty level, and basically what happens behind the scenes is we send the information the user uploaded along with the system prompt and any other augmentations the users decided to Gemini and we create a quiz. These are challenging questions that are meant to assess comprehension. You even have some hints. Once we do a few of these we can submit. I got him right”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Find questions. The next phase after we've done finished exploration phase is we're going to create a plan. So you can see create plan. This basically has a template that I love for creating a plan. And the output of this at the end of the day will be a markdown file with our plan that we can end up building along with code. After creating the plan, we have execute plan. After execution, we have review. And then we have peer review, which is really cool. And we'll get into later on. And at the end, we update the docs. So this is updating documentation and everything so that agents can write better code later on. So I think what we'll do is we're going to build a feature live for my app, which I think is really cool. But first, what I'd like to do is show you the app so you have some context. So this is study mate. It's a platform for students, which allows them to upload study materials and create interactive tests based on their own material.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this injects this prompt into Claude. So says I'm ready to help you to capture this issue. What's on your mind? So basically when I'll do this is if I'm working on a big project and I suddenly come across a bug or have an idea that I don't want to work on right now, but I want to work on later, I'll do this really quick. And Claude's main goal is to quickly capture what I'm thinking about. So quickly to run through my full workflow. So basically it starts with creating an issue. So this is the create issue slash command, which basically tells Claude that I'm mid development and it should quickly capture what I'm thinking about and create an issue within Linear. Then later on, when I want to pick this up, I have the exploration phase. Exploration phase is basically telling Claude, we're going to only explore what we want to solve here. It could either pull from linear or I can just speak freely to it. And what it will do is it will analyze and understand the issue and just ask clarify.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then it basically says this is the format that I want you to capture the linear issue in. And it explains a bunch of things what exactly Claude needs to do to get there. So the way I invoke this is basically I'll do slash create issue.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Awesome. I pulled up cursor. Can you see it? Perfect. So within my code base, what you can see here on the left, these are all my code files. Here on the right is cursor. So this is basically like having AI which has access to all the code. And here in the middle, I have cloud code running. And what you can see here, I'm going to close cursor for a second. What you can see here are all my slash commands. Basically, what slash commands are, they are reusable prompts that I save within the code base that I can run by writing slash and then the name of the file. So here you can see create issue, which is the first command that I'm going to use. And basically what this tells Claude, it says the user is mid development and thought of a bug or a feature and improvement.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think I graduated from each tool when I kind of outgrew it. So Bolt was awesome until I was trying to connect payments to my app. And it kind of started losing it. And then I graduated the cursor. And I've actually fallen in love with Claude. So I'm using Claude Code, but that also runs within Cursor. And I think this is Tal, who told me this. I'm not sure who he's quoting. But Code is just words at the end of the day. So it's just files on your computer. So basically you can be working on the same project and carry it from app to app and especially now I can work on with multiple models and apps on my project. So start slow, but definitely there's a lot of places you can graduate to.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might be excited to start using those, but I would really recommend starting slow with a GPT project, beautiful UI, super simple, then maybe graduate to like a bolt or a lovable, and then go to cursor in light mode, slowly, slowly, gradually ease in until you like open a terminal, you know, go full dark mode, go full dev. So I would really recommend doing this gradually.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so now I'll show my full workflow and I don't involve GPT anymore, but I definitely would recommend, even though the technology has gone. So when I started this, there was no plan mode or ask mode. It was just build on these products, on Unlovable and Bolt. They've progressed a ton. A lot of what I had as workflows have become ingrained in these products, which is really interesting. I would still recommend start with a project, first of all, the reason that I said, and also it kind of puts you in a place where you're in a chat bot and not writing code. So you take the time to converse and to learn, which I think is critical. And the second thing is if you're non-technical like me, code is terrifying. It's the scariest thing in the world to look at. And I look at it as kind of like exposure therapy. I think if you see this where I'm working like in Claude or in Cursor.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, no, no, no. This is terrible. So basically, if regular ChatGPT was a CTO, that would be the CTO who goes along with your dumbest ideas. So creating the project allowed me to mitigate that.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it's such a people pleaser and it's so sycophantic where I mean, just a short story. I had a few weeks ago, I was trying to learn about Bun JavaScript, which was acquired by Anthropic. And I was trying to understand what they do. So I was talking to GPT, and this wasn't within my co-founder CTO project. And I asked it if it's similar to a different framework that I have in my app called Zustand, which nothing to do at all with what Bun JavaScript does. And basically GPT goes, oh yeah, it's exactly the same. And then it started talking about what it meant. And I was like, wait, no, these are not the same at all. And it said like the most terrifying and hilarious thing. He goes, oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were just making this up and I was riffing with you. And I was like.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the coding agent is just like, all right, I got it and just starts writing code, this always results in terrible things, some really gnarly bugs that I had. And to mitigate this, what I did was I created sort of a CTO. So again, I'm not technical. I have been in product for a while, but I know zero stuff about code. So basically what I did was I created a CTO with the custom prompt of it being the complete technical owner of the project. So I told it, I own the problem, I own how we want the users to feel. You're the complete owner of how this is going to be built. I want you to challenge me. I don't want you to be a people pleaser. All these things that kind of mitigate the regular ChatGPTisms, I always think about this where for some reason the easiest way for me to think about AI is to imagine it as people. And I think ChatGPT would probably be the worst.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tracking back to the story I told when we came back from Japan, I started building this app. The first thing I noticed was that these products were built in a way where, and when I say these products, I mean bolt and lovable, were built in a way where they were super eager to write code. So their system prompt was your coding agent. So when you write something, they straight away start coding. So at the beginning of a project, this was super fun and exciting because they just go and start building your app. But later on, when things got more complex, this created much more problems because planning is really important when you're implementing something technical. And let's say you're implementing payments or something that's going to be a change to your database.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought it was interesting, but it really annoyed me because I do a bunch of different things. I'm a terrible runner. I'm PM. I was a student, a psychology student. So I had all these different facets of life. And what happened was the memory feature was mixing stuff up. So like I talked to GPT about running and it would be and it would say, oh, yeah, after this 5K, you're going to crush all your next product reviews. And it's like, I mean, OK, I understand that you have that in your memory, but it's just not relevant. And projects basically allows you to compartmentalize and have things within the right context.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All started where I was a project Yeah, exactly. GBT projects and cloud projects, which are basically a shared folder of chats, which share both custom instructions and shared knowledge base. And I think it was around when GBD started using memory.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bolt opened an account, and for the past year, I've been building. And the last thing I'll say on that is we talked about this a bit before we started recording, but I was prepping with Claude for the episode and I was trying to clarify what my goal is for this episode. And Claude said if people walk away thinking how amazing you are, you failed. And if people walk away and open their computer and start building, you've succeeded. So I really hope that we can inspire some people to do the same.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm very non technical. I have zero technical background, did music in high school. A lot of Israelis do technology units in the army. I was not a tech unit. And basically a year ago, I was traveling with my wife for three months in Asia. And we were in Japan. And that was around when Sonet 3.5 came out. And I remember watching a YouTube video. I think it was either Greg Eisenberg or Riley Brown. And they were basically building apps using, it was either bold or lovable, just using AI. And it was like a crazy moment for me because I was watching this and it basically felt like someone came up to me and said, hey, Zevi, there's this cool new technology you should check out. You should really give it a try. Oh, and by the way, you have superpowers now. And the second I got home from Japan, I didn't even unpack my bags, ran to my computer, opened.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thanks for having me, Lenny. I'm a huge fan of the show and tons of people that I've admired most and learned the most from. I've been on here. So it's a crazy moment for me. I'm really excited for this.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the best time to be a junior, contrary to what a lot of people are saying, how there's no more junior roles out there. Yeah, that's true, but also when else in history could you get out of school and just build a startup on your own?”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very difficult for me to catch mistakes. What I'll do is basically slash review. This tells Claude to start reviewing its own code. But what's even cooler is I have codecs as well as cursor open. I will have each of them review the code.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're non technical like me, code is terrifying, but AI just makes so much possible in the next coming years. I think everyone's gonna become a builder. Titles are going to collapse and responsibilities are going to collapse.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have zero technical background in music in high school when Sonnet 3.5 came out. I remember watching a YouTube video building apps using bold or lovable. It basically felt like someone came up to me and said, you have superpowers now.”
2026-01-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor | Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source