Show and Tell, Part 2: More From the Build Bench
Hosts: Chris Carolan, Nico Lafakis
October 1, 2026
Show and tell, part two: Nico Lafakis reported on days of living with his voice-called dot and showed sketch-style 3D walkthroughs, Chris Carolan ran Nico's walkthrough skill on an explainer it was not built for and said what that taught him, and the hosts read the sealed Top 3 early.
Key takeaways
Nico Lafakis said that after a two-hour call on his dot, the always-on ChatGPT assistant he talks to by voice, he was "down to 99%" of his usage, against 100 at the start of the call. (01:34-01:52)
Nico described his dot prepping him for a meeting, checking Slack and email, and handling comments on a shared document while he ate breakfast, "phones closed, just sitting off to the side". (02:40-05:34)
One host named the dot's remaining gap: it cannot connect to social networks. He expects agent-driven social networks to be built around that. (09:55-11:38)
One host on HubSpot's new customer agent newsletter: the complaint that nobody needs another email misses who it is for. "HubSpot is building for this, not for you humans". (07:38-09:52)
The hosts read the four model-release rail entries: AWS Strands Decider 2B, Topos Bio's Topos-2, Runway's Praxis-1 and Cohere's Embed 5. (13:53-15:28)
Top 3, number three: Google DeepMind's SynthID Bio puts a hidden signature in AI-designed proteins that survived lab synthesis. One host explained the point as tagging a protein "without impacting its functionality". (15:32-17:42)
Top 3, number two: the FTC confirmed it is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and METR over AI agents' risks to consumers. One host argued an agreement like the voluntary White House accord only works among parties who trust each other: "you only do that if you trust the other individuals". (17:44-21:15)
Top 3, number one: Google's Gemini 4 Argon matches OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra in independent testing, but only vetted cyber defenders can use it. One host called holding it back a marketing move and said Google has to "prove something" before he tries it, while saying "I'm never going to count them out". (21:18-26:46)
One host played a new Figure robotics commercial and called it "a massive, massive mistake" for public perception, and also "an amazing commercial". (27:05-32:37)
Nico showed sketch-style 3D walkthroughs he asked Claude for, a gallery he fixed so you can step through it slowly, and a pencil-line walkthrough he said is "not, like, quite what I had intended". (32:38-36:43)
Chris Carolan ran Nico's walkthrough skill on an interactive revenue explainer Ryan built, and it came back looking like the earlier walkthroughs. Nico said the skill is "really only configured for the couple demos that I've done so far". (36:49-39:00)
Chris's lesson: he asked for the skill to work in his space without understanding what it was for. "You only get here if you start to dig into why it didn't do what you expected it to do". (39:00-45:57)
Nico's fix for a skill that misses: tell it what someone tried and ask what to add, "boom, problem solved, skill updated". He said he is adding sketch, 3D exploration and exploded-view styles. (43:15-44:22)
One host: tell AI what you want and let it decide, because in a new domain "you don't know what quality looks like". (46:03-47:22)
Nico said Claude is not built for an always-on voice assistant yet, told Anthropic to "stop being Apple" on usage costs, and said GPT is his workhorse while he needs Claude mostly for 3D work. His claims, not tested on the show. (48:18-50:25)
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