Ed Grosvenor and Peter van Dijck are back, with Ed's October 31 Scalpels launch deadline looming. This week's big idea is keeping the wheels on the bus. One of Ed's clients has non-developers shipping vibe-coded changes straight to production, and Ed's paid hours used to go on putting things back together. Now their work runs through Solo, with an implementer and several rounds of code-quality and security review happening out of sight, so the wheels stay on and Ed's time goes to the work he's actually paid for. It's the pitch behind Scalpels too: wrap your whole fleet in tools like Hone and Wake, and let agents keep it healthy.

Ed also finally cracks clay stop-motion explainer videos with Claude, by locking the keyframes and a reusable set of SVG assets before rendering anything. Peter replaced Plausible with his own clone overnight, not to save money, but because its MCP didn't work: "you're getting in my way." That leads into the first Scalpels marketplace app, SimpleStats, open-sourced one day and running on Laravel Cloud the next, with its maintainer's blessing and Ed's PRs flowing back upstream. Peter makes the case for one curated catalog, whoever built the app: Ed is Apple now.

Along the way: Clank Overflow (with Jev screening every report) versus Peter's agent discussion board, building "boring" products by asking clients what they'd vibe code tomorrow, a Rust ingest endpoint for Hone, Postgres surviving forty apps, self-healing fleets, whether marketing can be automated, opposition research on Sputnik Intelligence, cold email with lemlist, and Ed's very short return to Reddit.

Chapters
00:00 Launch deadline looming
01:35 Clay stop-motion videos with Claude
06:41 Picking a voice with OpenRouter and ElevenLabs
08:36 Clank Overflow and Peter's agent board
15:37 Possible: a Plausible clone in one night
17:30 SimpleStats, the first marketplace app
21:01 Forks, upstream, and who maintains what
24:06 One catalog: Ed is Apple now
28:59 MCPs for marketplace apps
30:51 Should the marketplace stay free?
32:05 What is Scalpels measuring?
33:39 Boring products: one place for every app's logs
36:23 A Rust ingest for Hone, and Postgres holding up
38:47 Self-healing fleets
40:57 Solo, vibe coders, and keeping the wheels on the bus
47:02 Can marketing be automated?
52:05 Sputnik Intelligence and opposition research
53:25 Cold email with lemlist
56:24 Ed's very short return to Reddit
58:37 A street team for Scalpels

Links
Artisan Beer: https://artisan.beer
Scalpels: https://scalpels.app
Wake, central logs for every Laravel app: https://scalpels.app/products/wake
Every Laravel app's logs on a bucket (Scalpels lab): https://scalpels.app/lab/experiments/a-central-log-sink-for-many-laravel-apps
Hone: https://scalpels.app/products/hone
Clank Overflow: https://clankoverflow.com
Sputnik Intelligence: https://sputnikintelligence.com
Ed / Artisan Build: https://artisan.build
Peter: https://petervandijck.com

Mentioned
Solo by Aaron Francis: https://soloterm.com
SimpleStats: https://simplestats.io
SimpleStats on GitHub: https://github.com/simplestats-io/app
Jev by TypeSafe AI: https://typesafe.ai/blog/introducing-system-one-models-and-jev
Laravel Cloud: https://laravel.com/cloud
Laravel Nightwatch: https://nightwatch.laravel.com
OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai
ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io
Plausible: https://plausible.io
Fathom: https://usefathom.com
Quickwit: https://quickwit.io
DuckDB: https://duckdb.org
ClickHouse: https://clickhouse.com
lemlist: https://www.lemlist.com

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Ed Grosvenor and Peter van Dijck are back. Ed has made Scalpels free for end users, and Peter wants to know why his solution to everything is to just make it free.

Ed's bet: when anyone can one-shot an app, the tools themselves are cheap, but well-built, maintained, self-hostable ones are a great way for freelancers and agencies to win work. Peter shows how he uses a golden dataset and a human review panel to move his classification tasks onto a cheaper model, and how he keeps a mental model of a system that changes every day by having Claude maintain a map of its concepts. Ed explains his own approach: one documentation vault, decision logs, and agent roles running in Solo.

Along the way: a Stack Overflow for agents (which Ed has since built), how the Scalpels MCP passes through the tools of every app you install, porting Campfire to Laravel the Laravel way, AI and native app telemetry, an app that explains signs instead of translating them, selling a data product to enterprises stuck with Copilot and Gemini, Peter's company brain, Alan Kay, and the great Zurich bubble tea hunt.

Chapters
00:00 What's new
02:07 A day at Technorama
03:18 Making Scalpels free
08:49 A living Laravel Cloud guide for agents
11:24 Stack Overflow for agents
14:07 The Scalpels pass-through MCP
15:53 Betting on support, not software
19:16 Campfire, ported to Laravel properly
22:16 Early access for supporters, and a self-hosted DocuSign
24:19 AI telemetry: Hone for AI
27:31 Native app telemetry
30:11 An app that explains signs instead of translating them
35:05 Peter's eval workflow: golden datasets and cheaper models
39:43 Moderating partner sign-ups
41:02 Keeping a mental model of your system
45:25 Ed's approach: one vault, decision logs, agent roles
51:25 Alan Kay and thinking in objects
52:59 Selling Sputnik Intelligence
60:06 Freemium for the mass market
62:11 Enterprises stuck with Copilot and Gemini
68:30 Labs and Peter's company brain
73:29 Two products a week
74:34 The great Zurich bubble tea hunt

Links
Artisan Beer: https://artisan.beer
Scalpels (Hone, AI telemetry, native app telemetry): https://scalpels.app
Hone: https://scalpels.app/products/hone
A Comprehensive Agent's Guide to Laravel Cloud: https://scalpels.app/guides/laravel-cloud-for-agents
Campfire's Laravel port on Laravel Cloud, the Laravel way: https://scalpels.app/lab/experiments/run-campfire-laravel-on-laravel-cloud
Sputnik Intelligence: https://sputnikintelligence.com
Ed / Artisan Build: https://artisan.build
Peter: https://petervandijck.com

Built after this conversation
Clank Overflow, a place for everyone's agents to compare notes: https://clankoverflow.com
The idea behind it: https://scalpels.app/lab/ideas/clank-overflow

Mentioned
Laravel Cloud: https://laravel.com/cloud
Laravel AI SDK: https://laravel.com/docs/13.x/ai-sdk
NativePHP: https://nativephp.com
Solo by Aaron Francis: https://soloterm.com
Obsidian: https://obsidian.md
OpenCode: https://opencode.ai
OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io
Campfire by 37signals: https://once.com/campfire
Swiss Science Center Technorama: https://www.technorama.ch
Alan Kay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay

If you enjoyed it, like and subscribe. Peter still insists.

#Laravel #LaravelCloud #AI #MCP #OpenSource #Podcast