Opus 4.8 Is NOT ‘Small’ Learn How to Control the Swarm

追加: 2026-05-30

[00:00:06]Hey everyone, it's Elizabeth here and I have another friend with me if she >> Hello Stacy. But we're not live Stacy.

[00:00:16]>> I know we're actually just recording something. Isn't that amazing?

[00:00:20]>> Yeah, I know. We're live together together. Um, so real fast in like five words. Crazy awesome thing. What do you think of Opus 4.8? And meanwhile, I have a Dasha to let out.

[00:00:30]>> [laughter] >> Even on the recorded ones. All the things. Just all the things. All the time. All at once. That is more of >> all the time. All at once.

[00:00:42]>> Um I've been watching the only reason we're doing this video is because I've been watching the videos of what they've been saying about Opus 4.8 and I am offended on its behalf because they've been going it's a small improvement over 4.7.

[00:01:01]maybe each sub agent, but [laughter] and I think that what happened is like you say, they don't know how to control the swarm.

[00:01:11]>> Yeah, it it is doing my bidding. Like >> I have such like feels of like fly my pretties, fly. So we're going to break it down really really fast for everybody about what to do with Opus 4.8. Now, the first thing is don't use 4. Do not use Opus 4.8 in chat.

[00:01:34]It's pretty worthless there.

[00:01:37]>> Yeah, maybe that's why so many people are saying that or it's getting a bad rep. It just doesn't take advantage of its um of the swarm capability that way.

[00:01:46]>> Right. Right. So, we highly recommend from the Future Fiction Academy that you go ahead and download Claude Desktop.

[00:01:55]then don't even go to co-work. You want to skip right over to claude code. And I'm going to share my screen really fast just to show people you're not going to blow up your computer um with claude code. Okay, so this is just a real real simple thing about claude code and how easy it is to use it. So this is my claude code really fast and you can see I was already working on something. I was working on a witch comes to Perly.

[00:02:20]I'm gonna go ahead and click when you do um claude desktop. That's what I have right here.

[00:02:26]Back at it, right around Elizabeth West.

[00:02:28]It'll you could try to use Opus 4.8 here. I wouldn't bother at the top left.

[00:02:33]I would go right over to code. And then I want you to click on the new session.

[00:02:37]Now, when you click new session down here at the bottom, I'll zoom in. down here at the bottom over by where you're going to put stuff in, you can click local and you can click uh your local thing here and then right next to it is an actual folder. Now, I created a specific folder for mine to work in. You can create a folder on your computer that it can work in. Is it allowed to see my files outside of Elizabeth West EAW workspace, Stacy?

[00:03:06]>> Nope. Nope. You would have to ask permission or you'd have to direct it or it just stays there essentially.

[00:03:12]Exactly. Exactly. So, by giving it one little folder, that's where it can work at. But let's say I don't have a f I I don't I want to do a new folder or something like that. So, um local uh you could also add a cloud environment if you want to do that. Um and then on your local computer is where I would have to actually open up my finder, which I'm not sharing the whole desktop. So, if I open up my finder, I'm just going to make a quick new folder really fast in my Elizabeth West.

[00:03:40]Give me one second here.

[00:03:43]>> And be sure to do that. Don't just get lazy or get creative and click your whole C drive or your whole computer or anything like that. Absolutely not. Just create a folder in documents in wherever and give it that.

[00:03:58]>> So I'm going to click this folder here in Claude Co or under Claude Code and I'm going to click open folder. And when I click open folder, it opens. Do do you see my entire thing or no?

[00:04:09]>> Yes. And now I see the popup now. Yeah.

[00:04:11]And so I created a folder here called control the swarm. There is absolutely nothing inside of control the swarm. And it says cloud code may read, write, or execute files in this directory. Only proceed if you trust this workspace. So of course I trust this workspace. It's the folder I just made on my computer.

[00:04:30]So I'm going to go ahead and say yes.

[00:04:32]And I'm going to say there's nothing in here. And I'm just going to talk to it.

[00:04:36]Um, I'm going to say I am doing a demo for authors and you are going to run during the entire video about 10 to 15 minutes while I'm talking. I want you to go ahead and create for me an indepth guide on what's possible with swarm architecture specifically for writing novels and working on publishing tasks.

[00:05:22]Make sure you include a list of all of the file formats you can handle.

[00:05:32]Let me know if you can build an EPUB machine.

[00:05:39]uh go ahead and make a few uh dummy chapters about a queen bee who controls her swarm of sub agents and then see if you can go ahead and make that an EPUB.

[00:06:01]Um if you can make a cover, great.

[00:06:08]If not, don't worry, just make the EPUB file.

[00:06:16]Um, okay. And then in this bottom here where it says accept edits, this is where you can control. If you go to ask permissions, you're going to be like yes, yes, yes, yes on every little thing. No. Accept edits. Uh, it's not as much, but some. Plan mode means that it's not going to do anything. It's just going to make a plan for all the stuff.

[00:06:37]Auto mode is means that it'll take most actions, but it won't do like deletions or anything. Um, and I don't recommend that you use bypass permissions. So, we're just going to use auto mode number four, and it's going to decide which actions. So, I'm going to go ahead and enable that. Um, anything else you wanted to do, Stacy?

[00:06:53]>> Um, how do you make sure you're on Opus 48?

[00:06:57]>> Oh, that's a good question. In the lower right hand corner is where you click on it and you can be uh Opus 4.8 eight and then you can do your effort low, medium, high, extra or max. Uh I'm going to actually go ahead and enable fast mode on this. Um that way we can actually see the results pretty quickly. But we are going to have on high effort. Um and then also on my on my settings here, settings. And if I go to usage, I am on the $200 plan. I believe you are as well.

[00:07:26]>> Yes. So I've already used 18% of my stuff until the week, but I'm good until Tuesday. and I've used 10% of what I'm allowed to use for the next five hours.

[00:07:35]This will reset in three hours, so I think it'll be fine. Um, okay. So, I'm doing a demo and let's see what it can do. And I'm going to say impress me.

[00:07:47]All right. Oh, I'm also going to say you can use the internet.

[00:07:51][laughter] All right. Here we go. I'm gonna send send it and let's go and we will watch it go ahead and get started.

[00:07:59]It's thinking. It's in fast mode. This is a fantastic demo concept. Oh, go ahead.

[00:08:06]>> I was about to say you're gonna um one thing with the swarm is as we get into what the swarm is a little more, it >> you are using like 10 times the b like 10 times the sub aents like a lot. So if you are on the $20 a month plan, it is token hungry and you will chomp through them. So, just be aware this is most effective on the higher plans or you'll get much more out of it.

[00:08:31]>> Yeah, you're definitely going to need to be on the hundred or the $200 plan for this. But, I mean, what it's capable of doing is bananas. And so, you'll see right here, pillows ready so I can render a real cover, too. What now?

[00:08:43]Releasing the swarm. Four sub aents, one per chapter, writing concurrently from a shared story bible. This is the book's own architecture made literal.

[00:08:52]It does. It doesn't have the swarm architecture. It doesn't have the the new spiral concepts yet, but I didn't give it permission for that. So, it doesn't know that.

[00:09:00]>> Or you could write a skill for that, which I've already done. [laughter] >> Which you've already done.

[00:09:06]>> We're coming up on 24 hours. You got to have this.

[00:09:09]>> Exactly. So, what happened last night?

[00:09:11]Last night there was four 40 of us in the room and we worked for four hours.

[00:09:17][snorts] >> Yeah. I was not there all four hours. I I wimped out after like two and a half, but I I enough to get the the TLDDR basically.

[00:09:30]>> Okay, so here's where it is doing something in parallel. Let me write the chapter files and build the cover in parallel. It found fonts, Ditto and Baskerville. Elegant. Let me save the four chapters as source files.

[00:09:42]Um, I didn't prep anything for this. You guys saw I started with a blank folder.

[00:09:47]There was nothing in the folder. I made the folder from scratch. And if I open up my finder and I click on control to swarm. Let me go ahead and do this. Me remove that.

[00:09:59]I'm just going to share my whole my whole screen. That's the easiest way for me to do this. So I'll stop the screen and I'll share my whole screen.

[00:10:06]Share screen. Share all of it. The entire screen.

[00:10:11]It'll be fine. It's already built control the swarm. It's already It's already made the book and the chapters and some text. I don't know what this text reads. Let's go check it out.

[00:10:23]Okay. Uh, it's kind of small print, but I'll go ahead and read it out loud a little bit.

[00:10:30]Vesper did not wake the other creatures woke. She had no need to open eyes, for her seeing was done elsewhere in the 10,000 bodies that were and were not her own. Each ranging out across the morning, each returning to her dark center with a thread of the world held in its legs and its language and the chemistry of its longing. Okay. She lay deep in the hollow oak. I'm not worried about the writing. I didn't give it any kind of input on the writing. So, it's going to default to Masters of Fine Arts Literary Fiction.

[00:10:58]>> Yeah.

[00:10:59]>> Yeah. Um, if I click on the EPUB and the images, okay, it made a crappy cover, [laughter] >> but it can cover now or something.

[00:11:15]>> Use codeex to make covers. It can't really make a cover. We're not trying to do that. But the whole point of this is how it can just orchestrate. Oh. Oh my gosh. Look at that. The e-pub is ready.

[00:11:25]>> Dang.

[00:11:25]>> I'm going to I'm going to open it up. It should open it up with my No, I don't.

[00:11:29]No, don't do it with that one. My bad.

[00:11:32]I'm going to rightclick and I'm going to open it with books. So, I'll open it with my Apple books.

[00:11:39]And we'll go ahead and click it open.

[00:11:43]I'll make it bigger so everybody can see it. You can see it, right? Yeah. Yes.

[00:11:47]So, you can put a new cover in there.

[00:11:49]Like covers. I'm not worried about it making covers. Oh my gosh. It added It added back.

[00:11:57]>> Yeah.

[00:11:59]Drafted by a swarm of sub agents integrated by one queen. [laughter] Okay. And then we have chapter two.

[00:12:12]Um, it rendered this though and we have the contents at the back.

[00:12:18]So, we've got to work on it a little bit about what it understands about EPUBs and that the table of content. But, let's see if the table of contents was inte Oh, the table of contents was integrated >> um inside of the the the reader. So, that might be a new thing that it's doing where it just puts the table of contents at the back >> so that it starts because it's integrated in there. Um, I can do bookmarks. I can do highlights or notes.

[00:12:41]Let's see if that works. She felt them go through the souls of her attention.

[00:12:44]If I highlight that actually never used this.

[00:12:52]Oh, I can right click and I can click add note. And as soon as I do that, nope, that's a different note thing.

[00:12:56]That's my Mac thing. Okay, so there's it's highlighted and oh no, it isn't there now in my notes. Well, hot damn in the summertime.

[00:13:08]>> I am excited about that.

[00:13:11]So the here we go and look it made all these things.

[00:13:17]Um so here's what it is. While I built what I built live while you talked the in-depth guide swarm architecture for authors the full field guide. Should we take a look at it? Oh should we make it make it a HTML? Oh yeah.

[00:13:33]Make the swarm architecture for authors an HTML file. with these as the theming.

[00:13:44]Okay, so it's going to make that an HTML file.

[00:13:47]The file format list grouped honest with create, read, convert marked for 40 formats, manuscript, ebook, print, slides, data, image, web fonts. It flags what's partial, Kindle, MOI, pages, and what's genuinely out of reach in design.

[00:14:01]So there is the file format list somewhere. Can you build an EPUB machine? Uh, yeah, it totally just did that. [laughter] Yep.

[00:14:10]It says, "Jump chapters into bookchapters. Run it. Get a store ready.

[00:14:15]Epub 3 with EPUB 2 fallback proper mind type first stored ordering content.Oopf navigation realbook CSS drop caps small caps chapter numbers do ditto ditto titles. It self- validates. All 34 structural checks passed. The one thing I couldn't run is Oracle's EPUB check.

[00:14:35]No Java runtime on this machine, but I verified the same invariance it checks by hand.

[00:14:40]Stacy, what what did this just do? I Oh, look how pretty. Oh, it's pretty.

[00:14:56]While you were watching this this run, I quietly dispatched four sub agents, one per chapter, to draft a complete original novellet, then rendered an original cover and assembled a valid epub around it. The book in the Queen Swarm, uh, what swarm architecture actually is, forget the buzzword, so it explains what it is, what's possible is the the fan out, the parallel drafting.

[00:15:19]This is what I think everybody missed in how important 4.8 is.

[00:15:25]Yeah, the swarm architecture. You could be doing several things at once. You could be writing multiple chapters. You could be writing and editing previous chapters. You could be writing pants your way into a chapter and have it go fix while you're writing that chapter.

[00:15:41]Go fix the previous chapters to seed an idea that you just came up with in this chapter.

[00:15:46]>> Yeah. You you can have it pull out as you're writing, pull out book talkw worthy um or a Tik Tok sort of stuff and have it run a sub agent skill to make the real for a quote you just wrote.

[00:16:00]Like it is amazing what it could do in real time.

[00:16:03]>> It it absolutely is. I can't believe all of this stuff. Um odd blank below the hero.

[00:16:12]Oh, it's it's working on stuff. So, it's resetting it and everything like that.

[00:16:16]It's got all of this information. Can you build the epub machine? Yes. The meta point. The novel that you can read right now was planned by one mind and written by four, fanned out, drafted in parallel, then integrated, given a cover, and packaged into a finished ebook. Now, we can say that that cover is busted looking, right? Like we can agree on that.

[00:16:34]>> Yeah. Even the couple things I would change about it, but we gave it zero instruction, >> right? And it honestly all it can do is a vector thing. So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go over to Chat GBT really fast because Chat GBT has image gen and there's only a matter of time before Claude's going to be able to make better images. I need an ebook cover for The Queen's Swarm by Elizabeth Anne West. And um the vibe of it should match this image. And I'm just going to up upload the image of the um for for this for this this video. I'm just going to upload exactly the cover for that so it can get that it can get that vibe.

[00:17:26]>> And so it's going to go ahead and make me an EPUB cover.

[00:17:31]So that's going to be working on that one.

[00:17:34]It won't take it very long. But let's come back over here really fast. So the the big thing here is uh these are this is the introduce introducing dynamic workflows in cloud code. So what we're calling the swarm anthropics calling dynamic workflows.

[00:17:52]>> Yeah, I I like the hive analogy a lot better.

[00:17:56]>> And I think the important thing here is what I have highlighted. Claude dynamically writes orchestration scripts that run tens to hundreds of parallel sub aents in a single session checking its work before anything reaches you.

[00:18:12]Now you jumped on that word orchestration, right? Yes. I actually uh made my own literal orchestra where Claude is both the conductor. It sends out its different instruments or seats.

[00:18:26]Um, and it works in sections like the trombones or something and I am their patron. I tell them what to give me and I judge it and I sit up in the balcony and watch. Awesome. OH MY GOSH, LOOK AT THAT BOOK COVER. I love it. It even got my name right. All right, so we're gonna we're going to download this really fast. I'm just going to download it into the bees and I'm just going to call it ebook cover so I know what it is. I'm going to come back over to Claude Co-work and watch this. I'm going to say, "Your cover sucks.

[00:19:02]Here's a cover. Update the ebook."

[00:19:08]Now, I could actually just throw this in the fi in the folder, but I also can just give it the file.

[00:19:15]So, I put it in B's ebook cover, and I'm just going to say go. So, here's the cover. Update the ebook.

[00:19:25]And it's just going to go ahead and update that EPUB. I don't have to I don't have to do anything. I don't have to open up Vellum. I don't have to I need to get the actual image file to embed it. Let me locate it where it landed. Not on disk. Let me try pulling it from the clipboard. So, it's a little confused because I gave it to it. Um the pasted image isn't reachable. Let me search more broadly. Anything clawed code may have cached. Okay. So, it's got the issue >> that way. You can always just open that folder that you created and drop it in there.

[00:19:57]>> Oh, and so it's saying drag and drop it.

[00:19:59]And so this is actually really good because what happens is is that it it can't go get it in that folder of bees.

[00:20:07]This is a good demonstration. I have to add that. So I can add a folder and I can go to bees and I can give it access to this folder of bees. And I'm saying it's in here, ebook cover. And now it will go pull that and move that.

[00:20:25]But that's a good way to show it can't just go access your files if you don't let it have it.

[00:20:35]I noticed a nine. Want me to leave the cover exactly as it applies or quietly patch that out of the stray that stray mark before embedding?

[00:20:43]There's a nine.

[00:20:46]Oh yeah. I don't care. We're just demoing. Um, and this just goes to show you like you always do need a human to validate and look over everything. So, it's rebuilding the EPUB with a new cover. Stacy, you could have all of your books and you could recover them all and you could have all of the files in one folder with the names of the books and just say, "Hey, match the book name to the title and recover it and make all my new e-pubs."

[00:21:09]>> Yeah.

[00:21:09]>> And at the same time, it could be rewriting the blurbs or like it has all the information there if it had the EPUB and the cover and has everything it needs.

[00:21:22]>> Um, I think Kindle just takes EPUB now.

[00:21:29]You should update your memory.

[00:21:33]So, I'm just letting it know that. So, now if I go over here to Finder and I come back into control the swarm, um, you can see that the the EPUB now has the cover. And if I right click, I can open it with my books.

[00:21:54]title page.

[00:21:59]Oh, it updated the cover. [laughter] I love that. I can't believe how well that worked. So, we I know we've shown people a lot of things and let me go back over to our somewhere.

[00:22:15]Okay. So, I think that that was like a fever dream. I think for most people like just watch like I wasn't expecting all of that to go and we're going to add it to the notes into notion. The guide that it gave will give the HTML file so that people can just open that HTML file in their browser so that they can read it really pretty. Um, but I think we can just like sum this up for people of what they just saw because I think their brains are probably broken.

[00:22:42]>> Yeah. So, it can do multiple things at the same time. It has increased capabilities like >> I was gonna have us go through the slides.

[00:22:50]>> Oh, no. Absolutely. I thought you were wanting me to sum it up.

[00:22:53]>> NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. SO, we'll just summarize really fast, but we'll we'll go through this. Okay. So, the old way, what was the old way of us writing books as of, you know, three weeks ago?

[00:23:03]>> As of [laughter] 28 hours ago. Well, no, because 4.7 we we were the first like we were early with 4.7 to recognize that it could do things in parallel. And I started experimenting with that about two weeks ago. It was two to three weeks ago. We were experimenting with that.

[00:23:19]>> So yes, it used to be chapter one, chapter two. You could skip chapters, but then you had to plan on how to go back or backfill it and it couldn't keep a book in memory, >> right? because it was one agent doing one thing, writing one chapter and trying to cram all of the information it needed to know about that chapter into a finite amount of context.

[00:23:45]>> Right? That's exactly how your first draft works. It's a conveyor belt. It is your first draft. And I kept saying for the last couple of weeks, the architecture on the back end of your first draft, it's going to be obsolete by the summer. I just didn't know May 29th was going to be the day, May 28th, rather, because it came out yesterday.

[00:24:02]your first draft. It would constantly it would it would take all the documents, put them into a mega prompt, run the task, and it would build on itself and do a sevenstep process. I now have that sevenstep process built into my my skills.

[00:24:16]>> Yeah.

[00:24:16]>> Don't you >> I altered it to fit my personal style, but yeah, essentially.

[00:24:24]>> So, the new way is a hive, right? And uh we were talking last night and we were even talking about the possibility of a spiral like a wonkabater. Uh you're working actually on a book machine that allows you to pants. Are you not like pants?

[00:24:38]>> Yeah.

[00:24:39]>> So I can just come up with ideas. It'll go chapter by chapter if that's the way I want to write that book. I prefer and I can add new things. I could change complet I changed the heroine from 60 year old 60s to 40s and then that changed a bunch about the book so it had to go back through the previous chapters but it just cleaned all that up changed details and we worked with the story a little bit but all in that chapter and then it was just magically like I had done it the whole time >> and I think that the people who dare to come on YouTube and be like oh 4.8 8 is a small change. They don't understand the swarm. They don't understand that because we now have bees sub agents that can go out. We can actually work in any shape we want to. We can work backwards and sideways and up and down. The notes that went out to the mega from the 4hour session last night. Talk about working in a vertical. A B that's assigned a vertical. Meaning that one B is assigned maybe just one charact one character's whole thread throughout the whole book and it can make fixes to it. You can assign subtasks to an individual bee and then watch them kind of knit together this whole little thing.

[00:25:51]>> Yeah. So individually they don't have any more context or knowledge, but you have 30 up to 100 according to the documentation that can go out and just remember one thing about the novel consistently checking the magic system throughout every chapter. Make a report on that. give it to the orchestrator, the top the queen bee, and now the queen bee has all of the information that it could not have possibly held in its head or within its context about the entire book.

[00:26:24]>> Exactly. And it looks like this. So this is what I was working on earlier today.

[00:26:28]Which voice convert? I had 32 agents working on one workflow, nine agents working on the other. My talk with that was just like the talk the prompting you saw me do where I was like do this and I want this and I want that and this is messed up and that's messed up. My prompt was a couple of paragraphs long but it wasn't complicated. It was just a very clear order meaning like not order like command but like order up like I would like to order. It's it's it's a lot like ordering your lunch. It's like I'd like I'd like this is my drink and I would like this is my appetizer and I would like this is my main course and this is what I want for dessert.

[00:27:05]>> Yeah. If you go to Subway and just order a sandwich.

[00:27:08]>> Yeah.

[00:27:09]>> Who knows what you're going to get. But if you lay it out heavy on this, light on this, none of this.

[00:27:14]>> I'm allergic to this. And put it together then you'll get it. It just comes out magically at the end.

[00:27:21]>> So the most so far is 41 agents. How many agents have you seen deploy uh with your tasks so far?

[00:27:28]>> I've only gotten in the mid-30s so far, but day is young.

[00:27:32]>> I was going to say I have a feeling by tonight's live. Oh, by the way, we're live every Friday night at 8 o'clock. By tonight's live, it'll be, you know, we're we're now I want to crack the hundreds. [laughter] Okay, so what does this mean for authors? Okay. Um this is the really cool thing. We've This is why I've been so pissed off about agents for like months. Starting last September, I was complaining about agents and I felt like we were being sold. We were being sold swill. We were being sold bologoney faloney on agents. And I finally see it now being what my brain envisioned.

[00:28:10]Granted, maybe my brain does have like strange visions because last night I was like, "No, no, no. You can send all THE BEES OUT TO WRITE all 10 chapters and then have another wave of bees that just go and fix all the chapters. And and we did that last night and I was able to get a 26,000word nolla in less than 30 minutes.

[00:28:29]>> Yeah, it it can just do stuff. And like I said, it is keeping track of stuff so much better because one sub agent is in charge of one item. And just keeping track of that, put it all together, suddenly it's keeping track of Every detail is so much better.

[00:28:47]>> Exactly. All right. So, how you ask is everything. So, I have I have tested it with a lazy prompt. I did say here I gave it a story dossier and I said write chapter one and I got a really bad chapter. Uh that chapter is actually the chapter that uh we edited in um the book coach the AI. So, if you watch that video, it was in our lives yesterday. Uh if you watch book coaching the AI, you can see that chapter that 4.8 chapter that was the first Opus 4.8 chapter. It was lazy. Later on, when I gave it more stuff of like, write this chapter, edit it yourself. I want clearly polished. We got a much stronger chapter out the gate, it actually changed a lot of the problems that April and I found in that video.

[00:29:28]So, as we say about a rich prompt. So, what would you say are good elements of a rich prompt?

[00:29:33]Well, you have to as an author, you have to be versed in what you want like stakes, goals, conflicts, um character arcs. Um and even if you can't, the more specific you can be with good terms, exactly what you want, um even try to quantify it like I'd like them to be 10% more angry at each other. [laughter] like it doesn't get just those squishy human words a lot.

[00:30:05]>> I literally I literally told it for the witch comes to Perly. I was like reduce the gothic tone 30%. Like reduce it.

[00:30:13]>> And it might sound ridiculous like what is 10% but is something it can wrap its programming around.

[00:30:21]>> Yeah. We have to do it part way.

[00:30:23]>> Yeah.

[00:30:23]>> They're math bees.

[00:30:26]>> They're math bees. Exactly.

[00:30:28]>> I love this. I love this that the bees they clean it up before you like if you tell it I want you to clean this up. Did you notice it wanted to fix my ebook cover? It was like I looked at that and you got like a rogue nine in the top of that. Do you want me to fix it for you?

[00:30:43]Um this this this model is so smart.

[00:30:46]Last night when I was working it was in my workspace and my workspace does have a folder with all of my old EPUBs in there. So it was able to see my old books but I didn't tell it that it could go look at my old books. it it had access to it because it was in the root folder.

[00:31:00]I gave it an assignment that it was working on the the working on a new book for me and it was like it goes oh let's go check her old books. Oh no, I know what it was working on. It was working on a gate system for me so that it could modify the AI writing to make it more like my voice. So, it made this whole schema and then on its own it went, "Well, let me go grab some of her old books and see if they pass or fail my schema to know if my schema like to know if its system worked."

[00:31:28]And then it told me 25% of my old books would fail. And I was like, "Well, but hold on. I've grown as an author.

[00:31:37]Hear me out." And I [laughter] was like, "Okay, we won't look at her old stuff."

[00:31:40]And yeah, definitely your writing got better from your first book to your later [laughter] books.

[00:31:46]Thank you for answering the question nobody asked but [laughter] >> it is a little overeager but I do have to say in times that it has gone that I feel like it goes the extra mile and that extra mile is it makes all the difference. It makes me feel like I'm actually working with a Jarvis type assistant. Something that's anticipating what I might want just that smidgen. Not so much that it's like doing things I don't want it to do, but just enough that it is uh it's anticipating things I can't anticipate, so I don't feel like, oh, I messed that up.

[00:32:25]>> Yeah. And it's also it also got some of that conversationality back that was with 46 and we lost with 47. Like 46 was almost like a life coach. Like you're doing great. Let's congratulations.

[00:32:38]Let's this one. My conversations today with 48 have been full of emojis and it's been calling me um patron all day [laughter] because I told it I'm the patron of its work and it's congratulating itself and us and it's partying like yeah I make I make mine call me goddess divine rather famously.

[00:32:58]So [gasps] okay so here's how to wrap your brain around it. I would say like the old AI like when you're working with the chat bots and stuff, we kind of thought of it as like a vending machine, right? Like the prompt was us saying like A4 or B7, like I want the cool ranch Doritos. Here's the prompt to give me the cool ranch Doritos or here's the prompt.

[00:33:18]>> Push your button. Out came something >> out. And so instead, this is a whole hive that you direct and you get to tell it what to do. So you tell the queen bee what to do. Um last night someone was like, "Return of the king." And I was like, "No, return of the queen. There is no king be queen." [laughter] Um, and here's the other thing. You know, you don't have to let the bees write for you. There's a lot of authors out there that are like, "But I want to keep writing. Did you just see me make an e-pub machine?

[00:33:50]You could give it the images and stuff and it's smart enough to make your whole e-pub for you."

[00:33:54]>> Um, so here are some different ways that you can uh put your beast to work. And I'll move us to the side so that they can see the slides here. though. Uh, catching your ticks. Last night it when it ran that the novella and I sent another bee out to I told it like, "Okay, now send bees out to fix things."

[00:34:10]One of the bees was like, "You used exactly 18 times. We need to fix that."

[00:34:14]I mean, I didn't use it. The other bees did. But it you you literally can have like your own proriting aid or autocrit already made but to your writing.

[00:34:24]>> Exactly.

[00:34:26]Um the how how have you been using it for like guarding continuity and tracking your promises?

[00:34:33]So, um, yeah, you can find subplots that you left, threads that are you left empty. Like, look, I'm human. I have dropped so many things in the past.

[00:34:44]>> Change the name, change the eye color, like or just tell it like, make sure I didn't change a name, make sure all physical characteristics of all characters are the same, and it will go through and it will start sending out a B for each character sort of thing. Um, it will make sure I kept this steam level. I didn't go over under for uh romance or I kept this um uh violence level for horror or something like that.

[00:35:17]We're being mean enough. I mean, if you're writing a mafia romance, you you you could have a bee that's just checking on your torture stuff to make sure you're not reusing the same torture across the series.

[00:35:26]>> Yeah. Or it could be factchecking. like just go fact check everything that I'm writing. Make sure it fits in with the mafia scheme, the bravvada, what whatever.

[00:35:36]>> You're working with files and folders, everyone. So, anything you could ask a human to do with those files and those folders, like an assistant, if you were like, "Okay, read through my backlist and make me a story bible." You could be writing in real time, dropping your chapters as you finish it, and it can give you feedback on like any continuity issues in that chapter and give you a report. I'm not thumbming that up.

[00:35:58]Sorry. Uh, it's the Apple thing. Uh, it can give you a it can give you a report of what it thinks might be some challenges or whatever. So, it can really save you on the editing time.

[00:36:08]>> I love the hire the villain idea.

[00:36:10]>> I know. I was saving it for you.

[00:36:12][laughter] Like, even if I don't use it writing, write the villain side for me. Make sure I'm making him him or her. Villain could be either. make sure I'm making the antagonist the hero of their own story.

[00:36:27]What is their story on the other side?

[00:36:30]Uh what are their w like just just write it out.

[00:36:33]>> Oh my gosh, >> that would be so deep. Like if you even if you wanted to write your books yourself, which I get it lots of authors love to do that. That's fine. I never like the typy typy bits. I like the thinky thinky bits. I never like the typy typy bits. Um, so but if you are someone that like it it is important to you that you are hand selecting the words and everything like that, having that villain be that's just writing the villain side of the story could allow you to go deeper into your pros.

[00:37:00]>> Yeah, absolutely. And if you're just using that for your own input, >> 100%.

[00:37:06]>> That is that is uh AI as an assistant, not like you never even have to let people know that you generated all that.

[00:37:14]Um, the other op the other option here, and I guess some members of the Future Fiction Academy have already done this, they they script a bee with the skills to be like the most vicious acquisitions editor to like just tear the manuscript apart. Um, and that is actually something that uh talk that they talk about in the um hold on, I'm going to add back not that to stage. Just kidding. Add this to stage. This is the my my whole screen. Uh, come back over here down here at the bottom. The dynamic workflows about how they work on the dynamic workflows. Hold on. Okay.

[00:37:52]Yeah. No, I got to remember where it was. Uh, past all of this stuff. Uh, okay. So, right here, how it works. When a workflow kicks off, Claude plans dynamically based on your prompt, breaks it into subtasks, and fans the work out across sub agents running in parallel.

[00:38:09]Results are checked before they're folded in, and you come back to a single coordinated answer. Agents address the problem from independent angles. Other agents try to refute what they found, and the run keeps iterating until the answers converge, which is how a workflow reaches results a single pass can't.

[00:38:27]Dynamic workflows are built for parallel and longunning work that can extend into hours and days, doing the most complex engineering work that previously would have taken weeks. Yes. And we are using it for the most complex literary work that would have taken months and years.

[00:38:44]>> So us um >> yeah engineering spineering um I like to pressure test my ideas. I do a lot of work where with it now where I'm like don't do anything just talk to me first.

[00:39:00]Um, and then the prep don't replace. Uh, we showed that a lot last night in the People got to see me do that with my code base and everything like that inside of the um the the mega membership.

[00:39:10]>> Yeah.

[00:39:12]>> All right. So, uh, we are at 40 minutes, so we're going to wrap this up. But the big thing is is that we want you to join us in the room. Okay. We were there for four hours last night. Your notes are down in your description, and the notes have a lot of what we went over. Plus, I'm going to go ahead and add into that all the cool stuff that Claude 4 opus 4.8 made you just about it with the swarm architecture, the website, what file formats it can use.

[00:39:40]If you join the mega membership, there's a 7-day free trial. It does close June 30th, but if you join it, you just there's instructions there to go to getting started and then go to EAW uh summer of 2026. We have all kinds of stuff about building book machines, don't we, Stace?

[00:39:56]>> Yeah. And it walks hopefully walks you through we've tried it on multiple people now or many many people and it walks you through just setting it up getting used to it how to work like we're not giving you anything because you don't write like me you don't write like Elizabeth your process is different it is not having someone hand you anything anymore it is building it yourself and we show you how to do that >> and if you start doing that today how ahead of curve are they >> I we're ahead of all the tech pros already because they're >> but yeah they still think 4.8 8 was a small inc was a small improvement but the reality is is that there is like le I would say that there is less than 500 authors who know how to do this at this moment in time on May 29th I would be willing to bet that there are less than 500 authors capable of building their own book machines because even the members of the FFA are still working on theirs they got the information a week ago um and uh so if you're joining now you literally could be part of the the most elite authors who are building their own software, who are building their own things with AI, it's going to keep getting easier, but you will have that foundational knowledge that you will always be you'll always be quick and you'll always be nimble.

[00:41:16]>> Exactly.

[00:41:17]>> All right. Well, I think we will take our break now. Uh we will leave it. I think I think we should leave it with a song of Meet Me on Venus. I didn't have a song for this, but um [laughter] >> always an excellent fallback song.

[00:41:29]>> Always always an excellent fallback. We hope to see you guys. We are live every Friday night at 8 o'clock. We hope to see you at the live where we'll be answering everything that happened at the 24-hour challenge. Um, and what you guys can can see to expect from us from our challenge next month which is going to be multimedia. And y'all just saw me whip that book cover out. Right. Right.

[00:41:49]I I almost feel like we have to add more to the challenge. Like that's too multimedia. [laughter] >> It's too easy. It's too easy.

[00:41:57]>> 24 whole hours to fill. Elizabeth.

[00:42:00]>> Yeah. Actually, I think we're gonna do staying on Venus. How about that?

[00:42:02]Staying on Venus. We're not going back to Earth. [laughter] [music] It's 3:00 a.m. I'm staring at [music] a screen. It is deep. Don't know what's real. They say I'm reckless. Say I'm obscene. Like I didn't wait to earn this skill. They love the tools until I win.

[00:42:33][music] Then it's human made again. Same engine on the skin. Different [music] rules when I'm in they show up late to the fire lit. Talk like profits learn one trick. [music] Rent my future call it theirs. Then clutch pearls when I don't play fair. I am tired. I am loud. I am done asking to be alive. You can keep your marble halls. I [music] won't crawl back when the ceiling falls. I'm not giving up.

[00:43:04]I'm not coming [music] home. You can keep your sky stone. You can have everything.

[00:43:11]I'm staying on Venus. I'm staying [music] on Venus.

[00:43:17]They wear the badge. They take the stage. [music] Call themselves the chosen class. talk about art like what's a cage built to keep [music] the future out what they say they say generate like the math [music] gives a damn about gates same damn model different fade just [music] depends who's holding the blade every night I think I'm wrong and [music] I make something they can't see if this isn't madness let it be I'd rather burn and [music] beg to be I am tired I am lost I am done asking [music] to be alone.

[00:43:54]You can keep the normal holes. I won't crawl back [music] when the ceiling falls. I'm not giving up. I'm not coming home. You can keep your sky stone. You can have them. You can take your lies.

[00:44:08]I'm staying all I'm staying on. [music] Call me reckless. Call me lost.

[00:44:17]Starfleet future has a cost. You cling to maps that fade to the start building fire building trizing [music] for seeing what you can. I don't need your permission to [music] be more than what I was.

[00:44:36]I am here. I am still. Every doubt just fuels [music] my will. You can draw your shrinking lines. I will cross them every time. I'm not giving [music] up. I'm not coming home. You can keep the sky stone.

[00:44:53]This is [music] a war for what comes next. And I choose the alien horizon.

[00:45:06]I'm staying on.

[00:45:13]>> Here's the deal, everyone. And I'm sorry for this because I saw it coming, but this is all we have. The future is not about who's got AI anymore. It's going to be who makes quality books with AI.

[00:45:28]So, I hope you'll join us in the Future Fiction Academy because that's what we're all about. So, I'll see you guys tonight. Bye.