🌐 Check out more at http://99foldai.com

☕ Have a virtual coffee with me: https://calendly.com/99foldai/intro-chat
📌 Follow me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mmalishev

Free resources, guides, and walkthroughs by Matt Malishev

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📌 Overview

When Claude Code integrates with external APIs, scraping platforms, or cloud services, the biggest risk often isn’t a crash, it’s a silent failure.

Scenario: Your code continues running, consumes compute, returns success responses, and quietly produces unusable results because it made incorrect assumptions about the data it received.

I wrote a guide below on how to manage this problem for all your Claude Code projects and highlight the warning signs using a case study of a recent Reddit scraping pipeline that silently failed in one of my apps.

Below are the typical errors you might encounter, the system inconsistencies Claude may surface due to incorrect assumptions about an external service, why these bugs are difficult to detect, and how to build permanent safeguards that prevent similar failures across every external app you connect with your Claude Code projects.

🚀 How does this help?

• Eliminate silent failures before they cost hours of debugging and cloud compute.

• Build integrations that stay reliable even as external services evolve.

• Create documentation that allows Claude Code to understand every third-party dependency without guessing.

• Reduce future maintenance by treating external services as verified contracts instead of assumptions.

⚙️ Apps and tools

• [ ] Claude Code

• [ ] Apify (for this case study)

• [ ] Reddit Actor (for this case study)

• [ ] External APIs

• [ ] Scheduled automation workflows

• [ ] Documentation repository

🧱 Main Steps — Build Reliable Integrations With External Services

Never Assume an External Service’s Data Structure

Every external platform has its own output format. Even when two services provide similar information, the field names, nesting and data types can differ completely.

Before writing any processing code:

• Run the external service manually.

• Capture a real output sample.

• Inspect every field your application will consume.

• Build your mapping only after verifying the data.

💡 Pro Tip: Documentation is helpful, but real output is the source of truth. Always validate against live data before writing production code.

Understand How Silent Failures Happen

The Reddit scraper appeared to work perfectly.

• No crashes.

• No exceptions.

• API returned success.

• Scheduled jobs completed.

However, the server can expect fields or data (using the Reddit example) such as:

• score

• upvotes

• num_comments

• stickied

Meanwhile the Apify actor for Reddit actually returned completely different fields, including:

• parsedId

• parsedCommunityName

• username

• dataType

Because those expected fields never existed:

• every value became 0 or undefined

• downstream filters rejected every record

• the dashboard received an empty dataset

Everything looked healthy while silently discarding valid data.

⚠️ Silent failures are often more dangerous than crashes because nothing tells you the system is wrong.

Verify the Raw Data Before Debugging Your Code

The breakthrough came from inspecting the raw datasets stored inside Apify. Instead of trusting the server response, your Claude investigation moved one layer deeper.

In the Reddit case study, this revealed:

• multiple successful scraper runs

• real Reddit posts stored correctly

• thousands of rows of usable data

This is a data interpretation issue.

Whenever a pipeline unexpectedly returns empty results:

• inspect the raw source

• compare expected fields against actual fields

• verify every transformation stage

If your dashboard shows zero records but the provider’s storage contains thousands, the problem is almost always in your mapping layer.

➡️ Chat with me about this system and how you can use it yourself

Build Filters Around Verified Fields

Filtering is often where silent bugs appear. The correct solution in my case was understanding how the actor actually structures its output.

The Reddit actor bundles together:

• posts

• comments

• subreddit metadata

Rather than filtering on a missing field, the pipeline now filters using:

dataType == "post"

This separates posts from every other record type without relying on missing data. The approach is to never build filters using fields you haven’t personally verified in live output.

Monitor Infrastructure, Not Just Data

Claude Code can be intensive and will not always find the most efficient solution, it just wants to get it right. This means expensive token and memory usage.

In my case, the Reddit actor regularly consumed around 95% of its allocated memory.

Although this hadn’t caused the empty datasets, it increased the likelihood of future failures as searches became larger.

The fix was simple:

• increase memory allocation from 512 MB to 1024 MB

Every external service should be monitored for:

• memory usage

• execution time

• rate limits

• retries

• storage limits

• timeout behaviour

Infrastructure issues often become tomorrow’s data problems. Healthy outputs today don’t guarantee healthy outputs as your workload grows.

Learn how to build this system that runs for you while you sleep.

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Create a Permanent Integration Contract

The final improvement wasn’t code but documentation.

Every external integration now has a reference document recording:

• which service is used

• what data it returns

• every available field

• how each field maps into the application

• validation rules

• filtering rules

• infrastructure settings

Claude Code can now understand every external dependency without making assumptions.

Whenever a new integration is added (whether Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube or Substack) the same documentation process is followed before any production code is written.

📚 Treat every external service like a contract. Document the contract once so neither humans nor AI need to guess again.

🚧 The Solution: Build a Permanent Integration Contract for Claude Code

Once you’ve seen how silent failures happen, the next goal is preventing them across every future project. Rather than documenting integrations ad hoc, we’ll create a reusable integration contract that Claude Code can reference whenever it writes, edits or debugs code.

Do this once and every new project starts with the same understanding of your external services.

What is an Integration Contract?

An integration contract is a project document that defines exactly how every external service behaves.

Instead of Claude Code guessing field names, endpoints or data structures, it reads the documented contract and writes code against verified information.

Think of it as documentation that becomes part of your project’s source of truth. Claude should never infer the structure of an external service. It should reference your documented contract instead.

Step 1 — Create an /integration-contracts Folder

Create a dedicated folder in the root of every repository.

For example:

/integration-contracts
    reddit.md
    linkedin.md
    youtube.md
    instagram.md
    stripe.md
    hubspot.md

Each file represents one external dependency. This separates third-party knowledge from application code while giving Claude Code a consistent place to look for documentation.

Step 2 — Document Every Integration

Each document should include:

• service name

• purpose

• authentication method

• API version

• endpoints used

• rate limits

• expected response objects

• field definitions

• enums

• pagination

• retry behaviour

• error responses

• memory or infrastructure requirements

Avoid describing what you think the service returns.

Only document fields that have been verified from real responses.

Step 3 — Save Real Sample Responses

Every integration should contain one or more real payloads.

For example:

Sample Response

{
   ...
}

These become the reference Claude uses when generating mapping logic. Whenever the provider changes its schema, update the samples before changing production code.

Pro Note: Sample payloads are usually more valuable than API documentation because they show the exact data your application receives.

Build real multi agent systems that run your op’s for you. I’ve launched an open community to build, design, and run your own multi-agent taskforce for your business/agency.

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→ Join the AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

Join fellow founders

Step 4 — Document Your Mapping Layer

Don’t stop at documenting the external service.

Also document how your application transforms it.

For example:

External Field Internal Field parsedId id username author parsedCommunityName subreddit createdAt publishedAt

This removes ambiguity for future development.

Step 5 — Record Validation Rules

Every integration should explain:

• required fields

• optional fields

• filtering rules

• transformation logic

• assumptions

• default values

If Claude needs to modify the integration six months later, it should understand why the rules exist, not just what they are.

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Step 6 — Tell Claude Code to Use These Documents First

Add a project instruction (for example in your CLAUDE.md or project guidance file) telling Claude how to work with integrations.

For example:

Before creating or modifying any code that interacts with an external service, first consult the corresponding document in /integration-contracts. Never assume field names, response structures or filtering logic. If the required field is not documented or verified from a real payload, request verification before generating implementation code.

This changes Claude’s workflow from:

Guess → Write Code

to

Read Contract → Verify → Write Code

Step 7 — Treat the Contract as Part of Your Codebase

Whenever an integration changes:

• update the contract first

• verify the live payload

• update sample responses

• update mapping documentation

• then modify application code

The documentation becomes the authoritative source for both developers and Claude Code.

📚 The integration contract is not documentation after the project is complete. It’s part of the project itself. Keep it under version control, review it alongside code changes, and update it whenever an external service changes.

✅ Final Checklist

• [ ] Run every external service manually before writing integration code.

• [ ] Save a real sample of every API or scraper response.

• [ ] Verify every field your code depends on actually exists.

• [ ] Build filters using confirmed fields instead of assumptions.

• [ ] Document every external service, field mapping and infrastructure requirement so future development never relies on guesswork.

🤝 Need more help or have questions?

Here to help and chat if you have questions, want to see more, or set up your own systems for your agency or daily workflows. Ping me anytime.

Ready to see more? Jump on a 15 minute video call with me.

☕ Have a virtual coffee with me: https://calendly.com/99foldai/intro-chat

⬇️ Follow me

Follow me on LinkedIn (I post every day)

Email me: matt@99foldai.com

🚀 Here to make things better for you with automations and AI things

🧠 15+ years crunching data and building software systems

👋 Reach out anytime to say hello

Free resources, guides, and walkthroughs by Matt Malishev

Bulletproof Agent and Automation Systems in Marketing, Branding, and Design at https://99foldai.com

This is a multi part series on creating, building, and deploying production grade web apps and microSaaS with Claude Code, Cursor, Next.js, Github, and Vercel.

Learn the installation steps to host, using Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) to talk to your production pipeline for smart and fast workflows, test and backup your app code and versions with Github, and deploy and host your apps live on your own site.

⬇️ Ping me or comment below if you want to get started now and I’ll fast track you into my new community space to build alongside other founders.

This is a multi part series on creating, building, and deploying production grade web apps and microSaaS

Overview

Set up a consistent Next.js app project environment, install Node.js, Git, GitHub CLI, Vercel, and Cursor, then use a setup script to create new apps. I also show how to auto-commit changes with a quick push command and view your app locally or live on Vercel.

What you’ll achieve here

• [ ] Have all programs and dependencies installed locally e.g. Node.js npm gh

• [ ] Your Github account configured (git config --global user.name and user.email)

• [ ] GitHub CLI (gh) installed and authenticated gh auth login

• [ ] Vercel installed and ready to deploy your app

• [ ] Cursor Desktop installed and auto connected to your GitHub

• [ ] Using a setup script ./setup-nextjs.sh my-new-app "My app description” to always build the same setup files for your app

Requirements

# Check Node.js
node --version
# If not installed: brew install node

# Check Git
git --version
# If not installed: brew install git

# Check GitHub CLI
gh --version
# If not installed: brew install gh
# Then authenticate: gh auth login

# Check npm
npm --version
# Comes with Node.js

For GitHub CLI:

• Authenticate once: gh auth login (follow the prompts)

  • If gh asks for authentication, run gh auth login first (and choose GitHub.com -> SSH option).

Vercel

• Account connected to your Github

Cursor Desktop

• Can also use the browser version but desktop is better for maintaining projects

Create an app setup script

Step 1: In Terminal, create a setup script file for your app template:

cd ~/apps # your folder where you want your future apps live
nano setup-nextjs.sh

Step 2: Paste the below app setup script into the file. This script uses gh (GitHub CLI) and vercel (Vercel CLI). This is a custom script I built to scaffold your web app using Next.js.

• setup-nextjs.sh setup script

#!/bin/bash

# Function to create GitHub repository  
create_github_repo() {
    if [ -z "$1" ]; then
        echo "error: Please provide a repository name"
        echo "usage: ./setup-nextjs.sh <repo-name> [description]"
        exit 1
    fi
    
    local REPO_NAME="$1"
    local DESCRIPTION="${2:-A new Next.js application}"
    
    echo "Creating directory: $REPO_NAME"
    mkdir -p "$REPO_NAME"
    cd "$REPO_NAME"
    
    echo "initialising git
    git init
    
    # create a minimal .gitkeep instead of README
    # next.js will create its own README
    touch .gitkeep
    
    git add .gitkeep
    git commit -m "Initial commit"
    
    if command -v gh &> /dev/null; then
        echo "creating GitHub repository"
        gh repo create "$REPO_NAME" --public --source=. --remote=origin --push
        echo "repository created and pushed to GitHub"
    else
        echo "GitHub CLI not installed."
        echo "Install with: brew install gh"
        echo "Then run: gh auth login"
        exit 1
    fi
    
    echo ""
    echo "GitHub repo complete"
    echo "Location: $(pwd)"
}

# Function to create Next.js app
create_nextjs_app() {
    echo ""
    echo "Creating Next.js app"
    
    # Remove .gitkeep since we're adding real files now
    rm -f .gitkeep
    
    npx create-next-app@latest . \
        --typescript \
        --tailwind \
        --eslint \
        --app \
        --src-dir \
        --import-alias "@/*" \
        --use-npm \
        --no-git \
        --yes
    
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "Next.js app created successfully"
        
        # Update README with project info
        local REPO_NAME=$(basename "$(pwd)")
        cat > README.md << EOF
# $REPO_NAME

This is a [Next.js](<https://nextjs.org>) project bootstrapped with [\`create-next-app\`](<https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/cli/create-next-app>).

## Getting started

First, run the development server:

\`\`\`bash
npm run dev
\`\`\`

Open <http://localhost:3000> with your browser to see the result.

## Deploy on Vercel

The easiest way to deploy your Next.js app is to use the [Vercel Platform](<https://vercel.com/new>).

Check out the [Next.js deployment documentation](<https://nextjs.org/docs/app/building-your-application/deploying>) for more details.
EOF
        
        echo ""
        echo "Committing Next.js app to git"
        git add .
        git commit -m "Add Next.js application"
        git push origin main
        
        echo ""
        echo "Setup complete!"
        echo ""
        echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
        echo "Your Next.js app is ready."
        echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
        echo ""
        echo "Next steps:"
        echo "  1. cursor .          # Open in Cursor"
        echo "  2. npm run dev       # Start dev server"
        echo "  3. Visit: <http://localhost:3000>"
        echo ""
        echo "To deploy to Vercel:"
        echo "  • Go to <https://vercel.com/new>"
        echo "  • Import from GitHub: $REPO_NAME"
        echo "  • Click Deploy"
        echo ""
    else
        echo "Failed to create Next.js app"
        exit 1
    fi
}

# Main execution
main() {
    if [ -z "$1" ]; then
        echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
        echo "Next.js Project Setup Script"
        echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
        echo ""
        echo "Usage: ./setup-nextjs.sh <repo-name> [description]"
        echo ""
        echo "Example:"
        echo "  ./setup-nextjs.sh my-app 'My awesome app'"
        echo ""
        exit 1
    fi
    
    # Check prerequisites
    echo "🔍 Checking prerequisites..."
    
    if ! command -v node &> /dev/null; then
        echo "Node.js is not installed."
        echo "  Install with: brew install node"
        exit 1
    fi
    echo "  ✅ Node.js $(node --version)"
    
    if ! command -v git &> /dev/null; then
        echo "Git is not installed."
        echo "   Install with: brew install git"
        exit 1
    fi
    echo "  ✅ Git $(git --version | cut -d' ' -f3)"
    
    if ! command -v gh &> /dev/null; then
        echo "GitHub CLI is not installed."
        echo "   Install with: brew install gh"
        echo "   Then authenticate: gh auth login"
        exit 1
    fi
    echo "GitHub CLI $(gh --version | head -n1 | cut -d' ' -f3)"
    
    # Check if already authenticated with GitHub
    if ! gh auth status &> /dev/null; then
        echo ""
        echo "Not authenticated with GitHub."
        echo "   Run: gh auth login"
        exit 1
    fi
    echo "GitHub authenticated"
    
    echo ""
    create_github_repo "$1" "$2"
    create_nextjs_app "$1"
}

# Run main function with all arguments
main "$@"

Step 3: Save and exit:

• Press Ctrl+X , Y to confirm, then Enter .

Step 4: Make it executable

chmod +x setup-nextjs.sh

Then run the script. You will use this for every new project

• my-nextjs-app = the name of your new app

• “My new app” = description of your new app

./setup-nextjs.sh my-nextjs-app "My new app"

☝🏻 What’s happening here:

• npx create-next-app@latest creates the Next.js app template. The script uses some modern flags, which you can change to match styling and build preferences (TypeScript, Tailwind, etc.). These allow more customisation and creating specific app templates to different uses cases, e.g. waitlist page, searchbar landing page, etc.

• gh repo create is from GitHub CLI and can create a repo, add remote, and push automatically. If you don’t want gh, you can create a repo on github.com and add origin manually.

Want to get started now? Join fellow founders building real systems and apps.

Join the new AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

(🚀 8 spots left in the Founders Cohort)

An open community to build, design, and run your own multi-agent taskforce for your business/agency. For serious founders and B2B owners. If this sounds like you, join us below.

→ Join the AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

Get access now

Subdomain setup

Set up your new app to host on your site as a subdomain. You’ll use Vercel to set up the hosting credentials and link these to your site provider e.g. Cloudflare.

Step 1. Add the app to your site domain

• In your Vercel dashboard, go to Domains > Connect to an environment > Production.

• View DNS records add your subdomain (e.g. app.example.com). Vercel will present DNS records, usually for a subdomain it wants a CNAME pointing to its verification target. Add that CNAME in your domain host service (Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.) as a DNS record.

• Add the associated Nameserver records to your site DNS settings e.g. ns1.vercel-dns.com. There may be multiple records and add these separately.

• Wait for verification and refresh your Vercel dashboard to confirm the site goes live.

➡️ Want to see more?

Saving changes to your app

After this setup, build and edit your app in Cursor. Follow the prompts from the above ./setup-nextjs.sh execution steps.

In your project dir, open the project in Cursor using Cursor CLI

cursor .

Build, edit, and modify your app in Cursor. After each change, you want to commit these to Github automatically to create a running commentary of your app builds with version control.

Step 1: Create a quick push function that automatically commits and pushes all your changes to your app in its linked Github repo.

Create a git push script to auto update your changes

nano ~/.zshrc

Step 2: Add the below script to your .zshrc file and save and exit (Ctrl+X , Y to confirm, and Enter )

• .zshrc git script

# Quick git push
qpush() {
    local MESSAGE="${1:-Update project}"
    git add . && git commit -m "$MESSAGE" && git push
    [ $? -eq 0 ] && echo "push success" || echo "push fail"
}

# Git push with confirmation
gpush() {
    local MESSAGE="${1:-Update project}"
    local BRANCH=$(git branch --show-current)
    
    echo "Branch: $BRANCH"
    git status --short
    read -p "Commit and push? (y/n) " -n 1 -r
    echo ""
    
    [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]] && git add . && git commit -m "$MESSAGE" && git push origin "$BRANCH"
}

# Quick status
gst() {
    git status --short
}

Step 3: After making changes in your app, navigate to the terminal in Cursor.

1. Load and run the commit script

source ~/.zshrc

Then run the qpush command and add you comment for the commit

# Quick push (no confirmation)
qpush "added new header design"

# Check git status
gst

You can now go to your Github page and check the commit has been pushed successfully.

Viewing live app updates

Locally

After each update, launch the app locally to view the changes.

In Cursor Terminal

npm run dev # Start dev server

View the live app locally at

http://localhost:3000

Live

In Vercel, go to Projects, then select your app, then go to Visit for live link.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

“gh: command not found”

brew install gh
gh auth login

“npx: command not found”

brew install node

Port 3000 already in use

# Kill the process
lsof -ti:3000 | xargs kill -9
# Or use a different port
npm run dev -- -p 3001

Cursor won’t open

• Make sure Cursor is installed from cursor.sh

• Try opening manually by dragging folder to Cursor icon

Vercel deployment fails

• Check your Node.js version: node --version (should be 18+)

• Check build logs in Vercel dashboard

• Make sure package.json has correct scripts

Final Checklist

• [ ] Node.js & npm installed

• [ ] Git configured (git config --global user.name and user.email)

• [ ] GitHub CLI (gh) installed and authenticated gh auth login

• [ ] Vercel CLI installed and vercel login (optional)

• [ ] Cursor Desktop installed and logged into GitHub

• [ ] run ./setup-nextjs.sh my-nextjs-app "My new app"

🤝 Need more help or have questions?

Here to help and chat if you have questions, want to see more, or set up your own systems for your agency or daily workflows. Ping me anytime.

Ready to see more? Jump on a 15 min video call with me.

☕ Have a virtual coffee with me

⬇️ Follow me

Follow me on LinkedIn (I post every day)

Email me: matt@99foldai.com

</aside>

🚀 Here to make things better for you with automations and AI things

🧠 15+ years in crunching data and building cool software tools

👋 Reach out anytime to say hey

Free resources, guides, and walkthroughs by Matt Malishev
Bulletproof Agent and Automation Systems in Marketing, Branding, and Design at 99foldai.com

Want to build real agent systems for your business?

Join the new AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

(🚀 8 spots left in the Founders Cohort)

An open community to build, design, and run your own multi-agent taskforce for your business/agency.

→ Join the AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

Get access now

This is a multi part series on creating, building, and deploying production grade web apps and microSaaS with Claude Code, Cursor, Next.js, Github, and Vercel.

Learn the installation steps to host, using Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) to talk to your production pipeline for smart and fast workflows, test and backup your app code and versions with Github, and deploy and host your apps live on your own site.

⬇️ Ping me or comment below if you want to get started now and I’ll fast track you into my new community space to build alongside other founders.

⚙️ Initialisation and setup – Deploying Web Apps

Set up a consistent Next.js app project environment, install Node.js, Git, GitHub CLI, Vercel, and Cursor, then use a setup script to create new apps. I also show how to auto-commit changes with a quick push command and view your app locally or live on Vercel.

Want to get started now? Join fellow founders building real systems and apps.

Join the new AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

(🚀 8 spots left in the Founders Cohort)

An open community to build, design, and run your own multi-agent taskforce for your business/agency.

Share product ideas, find solutions fast, and build real systems with essential how-to guides, troubleshooting, and community Q&A’s.

For serious founders and B2B owners. If this sounds like you, join us below.

→ Join the AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

Get access now

🔨 Part 1 – Setup with Next.js, Vercel, and a PostgreSQL database

Build and deploy production-ready apps with automated deployments and a live PostgreSQL database. Create the project, deploy via Vercel, connect a custom subdomain, configure Neon PostgreSQL, set up Prisma, test locally, and push updates to trigger seamless redeployments.

🔨 Part 2 – Adding Authentication with Clerk

Integrate user authentication into a deployed Next.js app using Clerk. Setting up Clerk, connecting Google sign-in through OAuth, verifying domain records, and adding API credentials to the production environment.

🔨 Part 3 – Sending Emails with Resend

Launch an email sending service into using Resend. Creating an API key, verifying a domain, adding DNS records, configuring environment variables, and testing the email workflow in both development and production. Allows the app to send confirmation emails automatically after user sign-up or other key actions.

Want to get started now? Join fellow founders building real systems and apps.

Join the new AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

(🚀 8 spots left in the Founders Cohort)

Get access now

That’s it for now. Excited to share what I’ve built, real apps and digital products using this system, and show everything I know to turn services into products you can start
selling.

If you’re ready and and don’t want to wait for this series, you can DM me or comment below and I’ll send you the starting material now.

Keep building,

Matt

🤝 Need more help or have questions?

Here to help and chat if you have questions, want to see more, or set up your own systems for your agency or daily workflows. Ping me anytime.

Ready to see more? Jump on a 15 min video call with me.

☕ Have a virtual coffee with me

⬇️ Follow me

Follow me on LinkedIn (I post every day)

Email me: matt@99foldai.com

🚀 Here to make things better for you with automations and AI things

🧠 15+ years in crunching data and building cool software tools

👋 Reach out anytime to say hey

Free resources, guides, and walkthroughs by Matt Malishev
Bulletproof Agent and Automation Systems in Marketing, Branding, and Design at 99foldai.com

Join the new AI Systems Infrastructure Hub

(🚀 8 spots left in the Founders Cohort)

An open community to build, design, and run your own multi-agent taskforce for your business/agency.

For serious founders and B2B owners. If this sounds like you, join us below.

Get access now

Citrini Research recently published a polarising article called The 2028 Global Intelligence Exercise. A thought experiment on what our relationship with AI will serve in our future. You can access the full article here:

Citrini Research

THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS

Preface…

Read more

6 months ago · 7174 likes · 88 comments · Citrini and Alap Shah

My main takeaway?

AI agents are becoming infrastructure, not optional tools.

So what happens when your clients automate faster than you do?

Before we get into it, here are my main summary points relevant to founders/business owners and the state of market competition in an AI world.

• Right now we’re in the thick of agentic coding tools making a huge leap. A single competent developer using AI can build the core functionality of a market SaaS product in weeks (maybe a weekend).

• Companies suddenly have proof their own engineers can prototype alternatives to expensive competitors. And do it themselves.

• Market differentiation has collapsed. Competitive edge from individual players means large companies like Monday.com, and Asana face sharper pressure to stay competitive against open source alternatives.

• False safety. Everyone expected smaller tools to suffer. They weren’t prepared for AI to turn ‘build a product’ from theory into a credible threat

Share Matt Malishev | Automations, Agents, Systems

The problem is not that you have too much to do.

The real crisis is that most of your to do’s are deliberate choices to stay busy instead of building systems that delegate by default.

Here, you stop running a business and you start running a resource and time strained machine that pays a manual work tax every day.

Every proposal tweak, every client follow up, every app switch is a micro withdrawal from your future earnings.

It feels like work, but it’s really compounding fatigue and stripping away your margins as surely as interest on a bad loan.

Manual work feels like hustle. Until you do the math.

The Productivity Illusion and the Real Demand Crunch

When you automate status updates or lead follow ups, you think you are just shaving minutes.

In reality, you are protecting your revenue against a world where cheap intelligence can do every admin task for nothing.

If your business banks on squeezing more out of your people hours, you’re building on sand.

The hard truth: a 10% drop in high income household demand can sink an entire B2B service niche.

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Because that’s the competitive space we’re now entering.

The US Bureau of Labour Statistics shows that nearly 40% of jobs are at risk of being automated by the early 2030s.

That is not just code for higher margins. It’s a signal that your entire customer base is threatened with shrinking pay checks, reduced spending, and tightening credit.

So your efficiency playbook is eating itself.

Sound familiar?

Your margins swell, then contract just as fast when your clients vanish because AI killed their own revenue lines.

The online marketing agency that cut half its account managers and replaced them with smart reporting tools saw margins rise, but a year later, their B2B SaaS clients began churning as layoffs destroyed their own user bases.

It’;s not just about direct costs.

It’s the hidden knock-on effects that catch all of us.

Why Waiting to Automate Is B2B Suicide

You think you can wait to automate until you feel the pain.

That is exactly why you stay stuck while others leap ahead.

Because automation is no longer about buying more tools, it’s about eliminating the drag factor of manual work before it destroys your cost structure.

While you debate, other founders are deploying integrated agent systems that actually do the boring work so humans can focus on value.

A Zapier study found that 90% of knowledge workers spend over 25% of their week on repetitive admin tasks.

That’s over 10 hours a week per person lost to work computers can do in seconds.

If you earn $175 an hour, you are burning $42,000 a year doing admin instead of hiring systems.

Here is how this deflation flywheel kills you.

You cut one role, invest in AI, then the better AI lets you cut two more.

Your competitors do the same.

But as more workers get displaced and spending drops, your own customer pool shrinks.

If you run an agency or consulting service, you may have already seen service platforms like Fiverr and Upwork use algorithmic agents to undercut hourly rates, making one-off gigs the norm and slashing stable fees.

The old world let you charge a premium for speed, quality, and stickiness.

Agentic systems and tools change the economics completely.

Every segment that can be optimised will get optimised, and the only survivors are the ones who built their margins on unbreakable systems, not high touch manual time.

Waiting means paying an involuntary tax until your infrastructure collapses.

The End of Loyalty, Margins, and Human Bottlenecks

If you built your business on being the helpful human between your client and their objective, your moat has already dried up.

Modern AI agents do price comparison, answer support tickets, renew contracts, book travel, and optimise insurance. Literally in seconds.

A TravelPerk case study shows how AI-based concierge bots eliminated between $15 and $30 per booking in staff labour for each managed trip, while instantly surfacing better rates than what manual agents could find.

They didn’t just boost productivity. they vaporised entire teams and made loyalty a commodity.

When your own client can get an instant answer or a perfect itinerary from an agent, what are they supposed to be loyal to?

Your agency’s sticky client list can evaporate when procurement deploys an AI that negotiates and shops every contract renewal every cycle.

You bend over backwards to keep your files, sales, and proposals in order, but every minute you personally intervene you are teaching your customers a valuable modern tech lesson:

How to find an alternative that never sleeps, never forgets, and never has to feel busy.

Manual work is a tax you choose to pay. Just like clinging to the imagination that relationships alone will outlast the march of your agent focused competition.

Every hour spent updating CRMs, chasing signatures, or copying client emails is a dollar you don’t get back.

Multiply that by your highest hourly rate, and you will see why your best year looks flat next to a founder who is taking the time to learn systems and integrate them.

Automation Layers Are Your Future Infrastructure as a Founder

Tools are not the answer because tools don’t delegate.

But systems do.

If you don’t build the infrastructure that lets agents execute routine work in the background, you will always be the chaser, never the owner.

Think about it like this: systems are built to recapture the margin needed to survive in a market where every competitor is starting to invest in smarter systems whether their revenue grows or not.

So you get to pick. Keep paying the manual tax until you get spun out? Or build agent infrastructure that returns your leverage before the demand base disappears for good.

Nothing else changes the outcome.

What To Do Right Now

1. Map every repetitive workflow that touches your time daily. Status updates, onboarding, file handoffs, follow ups.

2. Plug these into your fav LLM and ask it to find the manual steps that need auditing. I have a free ROI calculator here that can also help you do this -

   https://roi-calc.lovable.app/

3. Implement a simple automation this week using platform native tools like Airtable automations. Notion is also great for this as automation pathways are natively integrated.

4. Delegate at least one of the highest waste admin processes and aim for end to end execution.

5. Map two contingency workflows (get Claude to help you do this) to start building the workflows for a system with real triggers and alerts for your apps.

The Next Steps

1. Build Your First Smart Agent System (FREE)

Start reclaiming time with my 100 Hour Playbook. It’s the exact toolkit I use to start automating ~80% of my low value and repetitive tasks.

Get it free here

1. Work With Me 1:1.

DM me ‘systems’ or reply via email if you want to regain 50+ hours a month with one system and run your project work on autopilot.

Jump in here

1. Automate Client Onboarding.

Tired of manually onboarding your projects? Steal my blueprint for the Client Onboarding Smart System that auto handles client and project onboarding. It’s the same system I use.

👉 Get the system here

1. How to Leverage Multi-Agent Infrastructure

If you’re a founder ready to build multi-agent infrastructure that returns $100K+ per year, reach out to me directly

👉 Email: matt@99foldai.com

👉 Hub: 99foldai.com

Late last year, Open AI and Perplexity released their browsers Atlas and Comet, respectively.

They’re aiming to redefine a market where giants like Google have enjoyed fertile and largely uncontested digital real estate for decades.

AI browsers have three immediate advantages.

• They embed AI natively in the browsing experience: sidebars, page summaries, context awareness.

• Agent modes that lets the browser perform tasks on behalf of the user.

• Some ‘memory’ of browsing and context so it can personalise what you see and do.

But browsers will soon be dead.

In the realm of AI, the graphical user interface (GUI) of a browser is ancient.

It’s 50 year old tech built for human interaction.

Which means it has human limitations.

Buttons, menus, dashboards. All designed because humans need visual cues to navigate complexity.

But agents don’t have these constraints.

They don’t require buttons and menus.

They speak their own language and communicate it through pathways and protocols.

So if we’re moving toward fully autonomous and agentic systems, why would agents (and by extension, we) need a browser?

If we can skip the browser experience completely, then we’re already on the wave that we’re designing AI to carve.

And this next wave of AI tools isn’t browsers and apps, it’s neural agent software.

Browsers Become Relics of Productivity

We’re in a world where agents solve problems by analysing and coding directly, buttons, menus, and traditional UI layers are becoming relics.

And web interfaces you’re so used to are becoming a tax on productivity.

Soon we’ll dissolve these interfaces and rely on agent systems to handle not only our tasks but our ‘browsing’ experience.

Think about this for a minute: how has your internet searching experience changed in the last two years?

If you’re still using Google to flick through pages, you’re sitting in this 50 year old tech stack.

Clearly LLMs have forged a new way of interacting with content, pages, and searches.

The new method of search optimisation called Large Language Model Optimisation (LLMO) is breaking the traditional model of SEO. I wrote about this here – How LLM seeding is disrupting marketing and your brand’s online visibility

And this will shift once again and this time we’ll see browsers as we know them being replaced.

With prompt interfaces where we command an agentic system to run series of online and search tasks for us.

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But right now, every time you do this, you’re incurring a small cost.

When you switch apps unnecessarily or dig for files buried in outdated systems.

You’ll notice it if you pay attention.

Each click is a hidden cost that compounds over time.

Let’s put this in perspective.

Manual work, such as chasing lost work and approvals, eats up about 30 minutes every day.

That’s 100+ hours per year, costing ~$20K+ annually if you’re a founder running your own agency.

Even worse, you’re burning up precious mental resources while you remain tethered to screens.

This doesn’t even account for the inefficiencies of switching between different applications.

Agents Are Already Here

Agent systems are already here. Look at OpenCLaw (formerly Clawdbot and Moltbot).

I have another channel here in Substack called the with . If you’re ready to learn how to use this new tool, subscribe to get all the guides and tips on using and learning OpenClaw.

Check out the OpenClaw Builders Club

These systems don’t just save you time, they fundamentally change how you operate.

They eliminate wasted hours by solving problems in the background.

Once configured, they become an invisible force working for you, eliminating the need for constant oversight.

And more importantly, unnecessary manual labour that we can already delegate, manage, and eliminate with agents.

Agents follow up on tasks instantly, without touching browser tabs. They generate reports and write code without intervention.

By clinging onto tools designed to drain focus, we’re sitting in an app network and tech stack designated to eventually fade. So the question is …

What To Do Right Now

1. Evaluate your current processes.

List every repetitive task that can be delegated to a system so you don’t handle it. Your goal here is to oversee the process, not do the task itself.

2. Research and Test available agents that tackle your specific context.

Try them to see the immediate benefits. Each app you use already has these set up. Notion, Airtable, Asana, Monday, Clickup, Salesforce, Hubspot, Figma. They’ve already all adopted this shift.

3. Integrate these agents into your workflows.

Turn repetitive tasks into smart workflows that handle things for you.

Then, not only will you start to see how your current task taxes accumulate throughout your week, you’ll suddenly start to find more time.

For the important things like actual work. Or worse, taking a holiday.

I don’t know when browsers will see their final day, but it’s coming.

But for now, stay ahead by using the AI tools available to you now.

Because this space moves at lightning speed. And it’s not slowing.

So if you’re atop of it now, you’ll be ready when we suddenly shift to a new way of browsing online.

And maybe a new way of reading these posts.

The Next Steps

1. Build Your First Smart Agent System (FREE)

Start reclaiming time with my 100 Hour Playbook. It’s the exact toolkit I use to start automating ~80% of my low value and repetitive tasks.

Get it free here

1. Work With Me 1:1.

DM me ‘systems’ or reply via email if you want to regain 50+ hours a month with one system and run your project work on autopilot.

Jump in here

1. Automate Client Onboarding.

Tired of manually onboarding your projects? Steal my blueprint for the Client Onboarding Smart System that auto handles client and project onboarding. It’s the same system I use.

👉 Get the system here

1. How to Leverage Multi-Agent Infrastructure

If you’re a founder ready to build multi-agent infrastructure that returns $100K+ per year, reach out to me directly

👉 Email: matt@99foldai.com

👉 Hub: 99foldai.com

You switch among your apps at work 1,200 times a day.

And no, that’s not a typo.

Research from Harvard Business Review found that the average digital worker toggles between apps and websites nearly 1,200 times per day.

Every time you jump from Slack to email to your project management tool and back again, you think you’re multitasking.

But actually, you’re paying a tax.

A tiny one.

And this tiny tax (that I’m calling the Repeat Task Tax) implants tiny inefficiencies throughout your day. These inefficiencies then compound into larger losses when you multiply them across your week, month, and year.

Throughout your year, that’s 100’s of hours across your working days in paying task tax.

And these taxes are actually optional.

Let’s do the math nobody does before they burn out

If you’re a founder spending 1 hour per day switching between Slack, email, and PM tools, that’s 220 hours annually.

At a $175 per hour rate, that’s $38,500 per year.

That’s not revenue lost to bad strategy.

That’s revenue lost to the mechanical act of simply clicking among tools.

And the worst part isn’t the time. It’s what happens to your brain every single time you switch.

A University of California Irvine study found it takes an average of 23 min to fully regain focus after a significant interruption.

You’re not just losing the 30 seconds it takes to toggle from your Slack to Asana.

You’re losing the 23 minutes it takes your brain to reload the context you just abandoned.

If you look at this from an operational lens, it’s not a productivity problem. It’s a structural revenue leak.

Here’s what actually happens during your workday

You’re writing a client proposal.

Slack pings, you check it. It’s not urgent but you respond anyway.

You click back to your proposal. You’ve lost the thread of your argument.

You spend 5 minutes rereading what you just wrote to figure out where you were going.

Then you start writing again.

Suddenly, an email notification. You check it.

It’s a question about a project timeline.

You open your PM tool to check the date.

While you’re there, you see three other tasks that need attention.

You update one, you make a note to handle the other two later.

You click back to your email.

You’ve forgotten the original question.

You reread the email. You respond.

Then you click back to your proposal.

Twenty minutes have passed and you’ve written zero words.

Sound familiar?

And this isn’t you and your failure in discipline.

It’s the inevitable outcome of all of us working in a fragmented tool environment.

Your tools are designed to interrupt you

We switch among nine apps per day and more than half of us feel we have to respond to notifications immediately.

Your tools are designed to interrupt you.

And your brain is designed to follow the interruption.

The combination is bankrupting capable and smart workers one context or app switch at a time.

But there’s a way out of it.

Instead of manually checking three different tools for project updates, you delegate your tasks.

Delegate to systems that aggregate everything into a single workflow.

Instead of manually responding to every Slack ping, use available tools to triage messages and surface only what actually needs human attention.

It’s a systems way of thinking and operating.

Systems that are AI-native integrated with triggers and connected workflows to sync things in the background for you.

The gap isn’t talent, it’s infrastructure

The reason you don’t normally work like this is because you’re operating in a manual tool environment that forces constant context switching.

It’s simply how product availability and market competition has forged our professional digital landscape.

The alternative? Infrastructure that eliminates the switching entirely.

While you’re burning 220 hours a year clicking between apps, those hours could be redirected to work that compounds.

Productive time like strategy sessions, client relationship building (or actual client work), work that pulls the revenue lever.

What To Do Right Now

Here’s the strategy you can use right now to start eliminating these taxes.

1. Track every app switch for one full day and calculate your actual annual cost using your hourly rate.

2. Identify the three most frequent switches in your workflow and map where they happen.

3. Set up one automated integration this week that eliminates your highest frequency switch (DM me on how to do this).

Remember, the gap isn’t talent, it’s infrastructure.

Every time you tell yourself you’ll get organised later, you’re choosing to pay the optional Repeat Task Tax.

Every time you think systems and automated workflows are for companies bigger than yours, you’re choosing to pay the tax.

The math is simple and the solution is available.

The only question is how much longer you’re willing to succumb to tiny inefficiencies that stopped being inevitable the moment integration technology became accessible to all of us.

The Next Steps

1. Build Your First Smart Agent System (FREE)

Start reclaiming time with my 100 Hour Playbook. It’s the exact toolkit I use to start automating ~80% of my low value and repetitive tasks.

Get it FREE here

2. Work With Me 1:1.

DM me ‘systems’ or reply via email if you want to regain 50+ hours a month with one system and run your project work on autopilot.

Jump in here

3. Automate Client Onboarding.

Tired of manually onboarding your projects? Steal my blueprint for the Client Onboarding Smart System that auto handles client and project onboarding. It’s the same system I use.

👉 Get the system here

4. How to Leverage Multi-Agent Infrastructure

If you’re a founder ready to build multi-agent infrastructure that returns $100K+ per year, reach out to me directly

👉 Email: matt@99foldai.com

👉 Hub: 99foldai.com

I created a walkthrough on connecting Cursor with the n8n MCP.

You're turning Cursor into an agent and automation building workhorse to build custom AI workflows for you.

Ask it what you want and it'll build it for you.

What this does:

↳ You control build commands using natural language

↳ You create a system for building templated solutions to everyday problems

↳ You're setting yourself up with systems for what's to come next.

Why you would need this:

* Quick workflows across tools without manual copy-paste

* Real time data and insights pulled from multiple apps

* Consistent comms by sharing context among platforms

* Quicker reporting with automated data connections

* Less errors and more focus on biz strategies

Learn this now and you'll be ready for the new way of getting shit done this year.

Here's the full walkthrough. Ping me with your qu's anytime. https://lnkd.in/dP7saHyy

🎯 Never miss the hacks and tricks to improve your AI game → FREE AI resource bank in my bio.

--- 🚀 Here to make things better for you with automations and AI things 🧠 15+ years in crunching data and building cool software tools 👋 DM me to say hey

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