29 Comments
User's avatar
Karen Spinner's avatar

Jenny, thanks so much for pulling this together! It was much fun chatting with you!

Jenny Ouyang's avatar

The pleasure’s all mine, I had so much fun chatting with you too, Karen! Thanks for sharing your story with all of us 🙌

Mark S. Carroll's avatar

Jenny & Karen, this piece nails why vibe-coded building feels different: it’s not just tech wizardry, it’s domain expertise + AI + fearless curiosity. The way you spotlight semantic search, digest UX, and the ‘say yes first’ mindset shows how real collaboration (human + AI, and builder + storyteller) turns impossible into practical. Loved this.

Karen Spinner's avatar

So glad you enjoyed it! 🥰

Dr Sam Illingworth's avatar

Thanks Jenny and Karen for this brilliant interview. It is so great to hear about the development of StackDigest, and reading Karen's words I am now tempted to go back and give Claude Haiku another spin! 🙏

Karen Spinner's avatar

Haiku is cheap, fast, and great for simpler tasks like summaries! For more complex writing requests, trend analysis, etc. I’d probably go with Sonnet.

Dr Sam Illingworth's avatar

I had to read this twice Karen, as I legit read this as a critique of poetic form! 😂

Karen Spinner's avatar

Oh wow, it sort of works that way! 🤣

Jenny Ouyang's avatar

Same here, Karen surfaced something I’ve overlooked too. Grateful for these chats, they make you want to revisit tools with fresh eyes.

Mia Kiraki 🎭's avatar

Awesome interview and I enjoyed seeing you both on video! :)

Karen has truly built something amazing and I use StackDigest almost every day. Go go go ❤️

Karen Spinner's avatar

Thanks so much! 🤗 So excited that you’re using the tool…and keep the bug reports/feature requests coming!

Jenny Ouyang's avatar

Aww, that is so sweet!

Karen, you’ve got a real fan here, and we are all starting to see how useful your product is!

Meenakshi NavamaniAvadaiappan's avatar

Thanks for the good 😊

Karen Spinner's avatar

You’re very welcome!

Daria Cupareanu's avatar

So cool to catch the full discussion between you two in the video, I had it on while cleaning the house and kept stopping to listen in haha. Karen, you just keep surprising me. For someone whose day-to-day is running an agency, the way you’ve picked up such advanced technical skills is incredible - I think you're not such a casual coder anymore 😆 but really, you’re an inspiration, and it was awesome to learn more about StackDigest and the story behind it

Karen Spinner's avatar

So glad you enjoyed it, I had a great time chatting with Jenny! I’ve definitely learned a lot from this project…including the patience to work through unexpected problems!

Tam Nguyen's avatar

Love Karen’s work and the concept of the entire series, Jenny!

Jenny Ouyang's avatar

It’s been such a pleasure putting this series together. I have a feeling some of these are going to grow big, and they’re unstoppable!!

It’s an honor for me to catch them early!

Karen Spinner's avatar

It’s an awesome series and I was thrilled to be featured! 🤗

Jos P's avatar

This is awesome!👏

Melanie Goodman's avatar

You’ve turned “I’ll figure it out” into a superpower. And I think more domain experts need to hear this: your niche knowledge is your edge. Tech can be learned. Vision? That’s the bit you can’t fake.

Karen Spinner's avatar

💯 There are so many good resources now for tech that you can learn (and implement) almost anything if you have time and lots of patience!

David W Baldwin's avatar

I'm impressed and great interview!!!

Laura Ferraz Baick's avatar

Sometimes not knowing how "hard" something is ends up being the biggest advantage. Curiosity > credentials.

Karen Spinner's avatar

Seriously…I always assume everything is doable with enough patience and time!

Hodman | How To Build With AI's avatar

Big fan of treating technical barriers as learning checkpoints, not stop signs. I'm an elder millennial and have started to see many of my colleagues become comfortable in their middle management positions because they've become stuck on “how?” when they should be asking “why not try?” Karen's journey demonstrates that domain expertise paired with AI isn’t about knowing everything, but about being willing to figure out anything.

Karen Spinner's avatar

💯 The answers—at least to many technical questions—are out there, if you have the time/energy to find them!