Building a Self-Directed PhD With Claude AI
from Pragmatic AI with Matt Stauffer Hosted by Matt Stauffer
The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com. In this episode, Matt Stauffer talks with software engineer and self-described "Renegade Historian" Dave Stanton, who has built an entire AI-driven workflow that lets him program — and write a 400-page history book — almost entirely by voice from his phone. They get into the nuts and bolts: an always-on Mac Mini running stacked Claude Code sessions in tmux, SSH access from anywhere, voice-to-text tools, and a self-designed "PhD" where Sonnet plays research assistant and Opus plays a hypercritical dissertation chair, with every critique tracked as a GitHub issue. Dave explains why the book itself was never really the goal. The conversation widens into the bigger questions — what gets lost when AI handles the rote work, whether to retain human connection on purpose, and Dave's honest 80/20 split between optimism and unease about where all of this is heading. Matt Stauffer on X Dave Stanton’s Website Dave on X Tighten Website Blink for iOS Superwhisper Geography as Destiny on GitHub ngrok Tailscale tmux Solo Please Use AI by Sean Smucker ----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten. Big thanks to the companies that support the show: Mailtrap
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