Show Notes
Parker cuts through tool-hopping fatigue with a sharp focus on practical workflows: Microsoft’s Copilot ecosystem, Notebook LM updates, and the potential of generative UI, plus a quick read on Google’s AI mode and Chrome upgrades. Short takeaways to ship faster with AI.
Microsoft Copilot ecosystem and tool API
- Microsoft is consolidating tools to simplify dev workflows and is open-sourcing parts of the stack.
- Language Model Tool API: a function called by the LLM to retrieve data, run calculations, or call online APIs.
- VS Code agent mode: extensions can expose tools that the agent can invoke contextually.
- MCP management: a UI/flow for listing and selecting available “MCP” tools and servers; easy to see and pick tools you want to use.
- Instructions and customization: built-in instructions (GitHub instructions) and changelogs can be wired into requests for consistency and traceability.
- Custom chat behavior: you can tune responses with instruction files to deepen or constrain the agent’s behavior.
Practical workflow notes (idea to PRD+)
- A CLI-based flow to move from idea to PRD to PRD+; use model guidance (e.g., Gemini, 03 for Python tasks, 04 mini for coding tasks) to shape work.
- The goal is to ship more by leaning into the Copilot ecosystem rather than endless tool-hopping.
- Concept: surface a core set of tools (15) and offer the rest as surface-ready capabilities, guided by an API contract and design library. Guardrails keep it sane and surface-appropriate.
Notebook LM, discovery, and generative UI ideas
- Notebook LM updates are strong: use mind maps to drill into topics and then discover resources to fill gaps.
- Discover feature lets you input targeted prompts (e.g., reverse-engineer a private API) and pull relevant resources and demos.
- Real-world example: using Notebook LM to map a FastAPI project and pull through a real-time analytics reference.
- Generative UI is becoming practical thanks to diffusion being faster than Flash. The idea is to surface a focused set of API methods (and surface alternatives) guided by a contract, with guardrails to surface only what’s practical for the current context.
- Vision: developers surface core API capabilities (e.g., 15 methods) and let users opt into additional surface capabilities (the remaining 35) via a governed, design-library-driven process.
Google AI mode, Chrome, and Chrome tooling
- AI mode is positioned as a potential SEO and content-creation lever: consistency beats sporadic excellence.
- Visual search is exploding; diffusion-based approaches are accelerating, even as diffusion models mature.
- Chrome updates: performance optimizations, smoother UI transitions, and new AI-enabled tooling (including tailwind style extraction from pages for rapid wiring into codebases).
- Copilot appears more broadly integrated into the Chrome/DevTools ecosystem; keep an eye on cross-tool AI capabilities.
Takeaways you can apply now
- Start experimenting with VS Code’s language model tool API and agent mode to see what tools you can expose to your LLM workflows.
- Build a simple PRD-to-PRD+ workflow: list the essential tools you actually ship with, and map the rest as optional surface capabilities.
- Use Notebook LM’s Discover to routinely pull in references when researching a new project.
- Lean into Generative UI concepts with guardrails: define an API surface, a design library, and a policy for when to surface additional capabilities.
- Don’t fear AI mode; focus on consistent, high-quality output and shipping outcomes.
Next video tease
- I’ll dive deeper into generative UI packages and prompting strategies for marketing, research, and content automation, plus concrete prompts to drive ICP targeting, Reddit scraping, pricing tiers, and automation workflows.
Links
- VS Code Language Model API - Language Model Tool API docs
- GitHub Copilot extensibility - Copilot extensibility documentation
- Cursor - Agent workflow tooling
- NotebookLM - Documentation and discovery features
- Google AI - AI mode overview
- Chrome Releases - Chrome release notes and AI-related updates