Why We Stopped Paying for Cursor and Switched to Claude Max

Andrew ditched Cursor for Claude Max and the economics made it an easy call.

In this episode they get into the Meta Monster pivot toward content optimization, why Claude hallucinated an entire Wix API, and what the switch to Conductor actually looks like day to day.

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• Margins: http://margins.so/
• Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:

00:00.47
Sean
Cool. Thanks. What's up?

00:03.03
Andrew
Not much. I haven't seen you in like three fucking months.

00:06.58
Sean
Yeah.

00:06.74
Andrew
How are you?

00:08.06
Sean
ah I'm good. Q1 is finally over. RSA is finally over. So now it's time to worry about Black Hat.

00:15.45
Andrew
Jesus.

00:17.14
Sean
um But.

00:19.03
Andrew
Q1 being finally over means we're like even closer to the death day for Metamonster.

00:19.26
Sean
ah

00:25.67
Sean
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

00:27.03
Andrew
Have I told you this, that like Austin and I were like, if if it's not working by the middle of the summer, we're gonna, we need to like pull the plug.

00:34.90
Sean
You have. You have. yeah What would you do if you pulled the plug? Would you start a new thing, or can I finally hire you again?

00:43.25
Andrew
Dude, i I have, I don't know, is the short answer, but I have lots of thoughts. Like part of me wants to to buy a trad business, which is what I've been calling brick and mortar businesses lately.

00:53.78
Andrew
And every time I say it, it makes people cringe, which is why I continue to say it.

00:56.04
Sean
That's horrible. du't That's disgusting. Mexico City is changing you. i can't believe you'd say that.

01:02.13
Andrew
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

01:03.16
Sean
forpin

01:05.14
Andrew
No, that's just me having a stupid sense of humor. You can't blame Mexico City for that.

01:07.90
Sean
No, no, it's good.

01:09.10
Andrew
Mexico City way too beautiful a place to blame for that.

01:09.88
Sean
It's good. Speaking, speaking of trad related things, have you seen the documentary?

01:14.26
Andrew
Oh God, where is this going?

01:18.45
Sean
Have you been, ah have you been, ah did you watch the Manosphere documentary on Netflix with Louis Thoreau?

01:24.79
Andrew
No, but my little sister did and she was like, you have to watch it.

01:28.22
Sean
It's so good.

01:28.28
Andrew
And i I haven't watched it yet. Yeah.

01:30.15
Sean
It's so good. It's all Ben and I could talk about at RSA.

01:34.26
Andrew
Nice.

01:34.32
Sean
Sorry.

01:35.00
Andrew
Have you seen Project Hail Mary yet?

01:37.11
Sean
No, I hear it's good, but i don't know what it's about.

01:38.71
Andrew
I hear it's really good. Yeah. Oh, you didn't read the book?

01:42.21
Sean
No, I don't read.

01:43.86
Andrew
I forgot.

01:44.73
Sean
yeah i think I think if all books were in AI chat bubbles, I would read all of it, but they're not. so that's

01:52.77
Andrew
That's the lamest thing you've ever said to me. It's almost as bad as trad businesses.

01:59.32
Sean
it's It's probably worse.

02:02.68
Sean
um How you been?

02:03.89
Andrew
Dude, I've been good.

02:04.43
Sean
How's life?

02:06.32
Andrew
um We are working on a pivot for Metamonster. i am becoming, I'm embracing the fully AI-pilled by boy life.

02:10.74
Sean
OK.

02:18.71
Sean
OK.

02:18.81
Andrew
um i still love Mexico. Yeah.

02:23.66
Sean
Good.

02:26.68
Andrew
yeah

02:28.11
Sean
OK, can you tell me, can you just tell me what you're pivoting to before I like rip my hair out? Because I really need you to build some features at the moment.

02:35.48
Andrew
So it's I call it a pivot part somewhat facetiously. um

02:39.31
Sean
OK.

02:40.45
Andrew
we're We're not really pivoting, like the tool is still going to work the same way it does now, um but we're going deep on content optimization.

02:46.03
Sean
Cool.

02:51.03
Andrew
So we're building we're building a single page view where you can still update metadata, but we also do SERP analysis and content recommendations for you and help you auto apply them.

03:04.79
Andrew
um And so we're we're going to be adjusting our positioning to more directly take on ClearScope and Surfer. um

03:15.96
Sean
and air ops.

03:16.09
Andrew
So the Yeah, air ops a little bit. I think of air ops as a little bit different. I think of air ops more as content orchestration, um like generate content at scale, whereas we're more content optimization.

03:30.78
Andrew
So like take your existing content or like new pieces of content and help you optimize it. Yeah.

03:38.01
Sean
Sick.

03:39.39
Andrew
Yep.

03:40.43
Sean
Cool.

03:40.44
Andrew
um

03:41.18
Sean
is Is this like a like like an editor that I'm writing in? And then, OK, cool. And then you can publish the web flow.

03:49.05
Andrew
ah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:50.40
Sean
Oh, good, good, good, good.

03:50.74
Andrew
Totally, totally.

03:52.44
Sean
You should do it. You should do it so I can use it. i don't I don't care.

03:55.22
Andrew
Yeah.

03:56.00
Sean
No. What?

03:56.73
Andrew
So, the um I, did you see my LinkedIn post by chance? Dude, I spent like half of last week vibing with Claude on a Wix integration, and then I finally go to test it.

04:13.21
Andrew
it It shouldn't have taken me a a whole week to test it. I just got distracted by like three other things. um And I finally go to test it, and I'm like, huh, it's not working. Why isn't it working?

04:23.70
Andrew
And Claude goes, oh yeah, the Wix API I was using was purely speculative. Like, I just made it up. I was like, motherfucker Are you fucking kidding me? um And it turns out like Wix, like Squarespace does not support us updating SEO metadata for anything except blog posts. So I just scrapped the whole thing and was like, fuck this.

04:48.31
Andrew
um

04:49.72
Sean
Well, but you could do like cloud code browser use types of things to like manually.

04:55.80
Andrew
I could and I did and it took for fucking ever. It took like two hours to update 30 pages. It was painfully slow and eventually ran out of context.

05:04.43
Sean
Gotcha.

05:07.72
Sean
Gotcha.

05:07.77
Andrew
um

05:08.57
Sean
Damn.

05:08.92
Andrew
And I was just like, this is horrible. um So ah yeah, my hope is that like Wix and Squarespace wake the fuck up and realize what century they're living in and build a decent hal...