Fresh examples for the course, and a few trailer cuts
I worked on ChatPRD engineering alongside preparation for my Maven course. Codex compared the course decks with our newer writing and added comments for me to work through. I also had it cut a talk into a few trailer options, then give the words a little more room at the edits.
Update a Gamma course deck from recent writing with Codex
I asked Codex to compare the two decks for my Maven course with the newsletters and articles we had written since the last version. It pulled the latest content repository, read the newer material, and opened the decks in Gamma using Chrome. I pointed it toward a few ideas I wanted to develop: software factories, the changing role of engineers, and giving agents useful company context.
Codex turned those sources into nine comments attached to specific slides. I reviewed the suggestions, approved posting them, and it added the comments in Gamma and checked that they were there. I could work through an edit list inside the deck instead of keeping articles open while hunting for the right place to use each idea.
The useful part was asking for the connection between the writing and the teaching material. “Make this more current” is a vague request. Giving the agent the actual newer work, the current slides, and a few themes produced changes I could evaluate one by one.
# Refresh a course deck
Adapted from my workflow; this is not the original transcript.
Compare the course deck I provide with the newer articles, newsletters, and other source material I identify. Read the sources and inspect the actual slides.
Find specific places where a newer example, clearer explanation, or changed assumption would improve the course. For each suggestion, give the slide title, the proposed change, the source link, and a short explanation of why it belongs there. Do not force every new article into the deck.
Draft the suggestions as concise slide comments. Show me the proposed comments before posting them. After I approve them, add each comment to its corresponding slide in the presentation app and check that it appears in the right place.
Cut a trailer from a long recording with Codex and FFmpeg
I gave Codex long recordings and asked it to find the punchy quotes and funny moments for short trailers. It used local transcription to locate possible cuts and FFmpeg to assemble and export them. The first rounds needed my direction: horizontal video, no overlays, and more cuts between speakers.
On one recording, it made three trailer options, but some edits clipped the beginning or end of a word. I asked it to leave more room around the speech, and it rebuilt the cuts with short buffers. That became part of the next brief: fast pacing still has to leave a complete thought.
For a How I AI episode, Codex used word-level timestamps to choose six moments from a 36-minute recording and assembled a 58-second cut. It kept hard visual cuts and added tiny fades at the audio edges. I supplied the editorial direction; the agent handled the initial search through the recording, the selects, the assembly, and the export.
# Cut a short trailer
Adapted from my workflow; this is not the original transcript.
Use the recording I provide to make an approximately 60-second horizontal trailer. Find punchy quotes, funny moments, and reactions that make sense without the full conversation. Preserve the original framing and sound. Do not add captions, titles, music, or overlays.
Use an existing transcript or create one with word timestamps. Build a short sequence from several parts of the recording, with enough context for each moment to land. Keep the pace quick, but preserve complete thoughts.
Listen around every edit. Leave enough audio before the first word and after the last word that no syllable or final consonant is clipped. Use small audio-edge fades where needed. Do not choose cut boundaries solely to hit an exact runtime.
Export the trailer, check its audio, video, and duration, and save the source time ranges used in the edit. Keep the original recording unchanged.