Just Make Everything Free

Ed Grosvenor and Peter van Dijck are back. Ed has made Scalpels free for end users, and Peter wants to know why his solution to everything is to just make it free. Ed's bet: when anyone can one-shot an app, the tools themselves are cheap, but well-built, maintained, self-hostable ones are a great way for freelancers and agencies to win work. Peter shows how he uses a golden dataset and a human review panel to move his classification tasks onto a cheaper model, and how he keeps a mental model of a system that changes every day by having Claude maintain a map of its concepts. Ed explains his own approach: one documentation vault, decision logs, and agent roles running in Solo. Along the way: a Stack Overflow for agents (which Ed has since built), how the Scalpels MCP passes through the tools of every app you install, porting Campfire to Laravel the Laravel way, AI and native app telemetry, an app that explains signs instead of translating them, selling a data product to enterprises stuck with Copilot and Gemini, Peter's company brain, Alan Kay, and the great Zurich bubble tea hunt. Chapters 00:00 What's new 02:07 A day at Technorama 03:18 Making Scalpels free 08:49 A living Laravel Cloud guide for agents 11:24 Stack Overflow for agents 14:07 The Scalpels pass-through MCP 15:53 Betting on support, not software 19:16 Campfire, ported to Laravel properly 22:16 Early access for supporters, and a self-hosted DocuSign 24:19 AI telemetry: Hone for AI 27:31 Native app telemetry 30:11 An app that explains signs instead of translating them 35:05 Peter's eval workflow: golden datasets and cheaper models 39:43 Moderating partner sign-ups 41:02 Keeping a mental model of your system 45:25 Ed's approach: one vault, decision logs, agent roles 51:25 Alan Kay and thinking in objects 52:59 Selling Sputnik Intelligence 60:06 Freemium for the mass market 62:11 Enterprises stuck with Copilot and Gemini 68:30 Labs and Peter's company brain 73:29 Two products a week 74:34 The great Zurich bubble tea hunt Links Artisan Beer: https://artisan.beer Scalpels (Hone, AI telemetry, native app telemetry): https://scalpels.app Hone: https://scalpels.app/products/hone A Comprehensive Agent's Guide to Laravel Cloud: https://scalpels.app/guides/laravel-cloud-for-agents Campfire's Laravel port on Laravel Cloud, the Laravel way: https://scalpels.app/lab/experiments/run-campfire-laravel-on-laravel-cloud Sputnik Intelligence: https://sputnikintelligence.com Ed / Artisan Build: https://artisan.build Peter: https://petervandijck.com Built after this conversation Clank Overflow, a place for everyone's agents to compare notes: https://clankoverflow.com The idea behind it: https://scalpels.app/lab/ideas/clank-overflow Mentioned Laravel Cloud: https://laravel.com/cloud Laravel AI SDK: https://laravel.com/docs/13.x/ai-sdk NativePHP: https://nativephp.com Solo by Aaron Francis: https://soloterm.com Obsidian: https://obsidian.md OpenCode: https://opencode.ai OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io Campfire by 37signals: https://once.com/campfire Swiss Science Center Technorama: https://www.technorama.ch Alan Kay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay If you enjoyed it, like and subscribe. Peter still insists. #Laravel #LaravelCloud #AI #MCP #OpenSource #Podcast