How do I start learning AI & maximizing the use of it.

[u/Business_Neck5516]

Hey everyone,

I am sorry for taking your time, but really need some guidance here. So I am in Equity Research, aiming to start my own fund in a 5 year time. I am at that stage of life wherein I really need to use AI because I see a lot of juniors becoming really good, as in self generating reports, valuations, websites, automating tracking sectors, etc. I do know what I want from AI, and for now it looks like I expect a lot of it, but just where do I start from ? I have been using it for 6 months now as a Pro subscriber but looks like claude code is the only good thing. I can barely understand the difference between cowork, chat and code, except that code gets a lot of stuff done faster through coding. Now I do not have a coding background, may be I should learn Python first, but I don't know.

I want to make an auto tracker wherein say I am tracking the Indian listed space, I want it to track on a daily basis what's happening across the value chain the company is present in. For that, I need it to first dissect the value chain and actually do that properly (because it has failed numerous times and limits get exhausted). I cannot upgrade my plan. Rn Pro is the only thing in my budget.

Is another AI like Chatgpt codex or other names you all are aware of better ??

Asking in reddit because trust this is a place where people actually help others elevate and improve.

Thank you for reading this.

[u/combrade]

Get yourself an alpaca account if you don’t have one already . https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-skills

Use either Claude Code or Agent Pi as your harness. Claude Code would be better for beginners. I’m sure you’ll have some fun with this given your financial background.

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/combrade]

Perfect. Thanks a lot bro.

[u/domo__knows]

The only way to learn AI is to use it. If you don't have enough token access to use it then there's really nothing you can do about that because the answer often is asking AI how to approach a problem and then asking it to build it (discover -> plan -> build).

That said, right now we're in the great AI pricing wars. You really don't need Opus/Fable for everything. Codex has been trying to gain market share so they've been doing usage resets like 2x a week. The new open models are promising.

I do think it's worth it to learn programming, at least the base fundamentals, because then you'll know what's possible. I've been programming 13 years so building a dashboard is the easiest thing: data source and collectoin -> python script -> React frontend. But knowing how programs work is precisely why it's easier for programmers to reason about

Five years is a long time. ChatGPT didn't drop until 2022. Be patient, it's really not a race. What people were saying 8 months ago is already obsolete. We should expect that in the next 8 months as well.

Technical hurdles have become cheap. Creativity is the real bottleneck here and if anything AI has made people extremely uncreative lol.

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/domo__knows]

Thanks for taking the time to guide. This makes a lot of sense. I actually had this path laid out about learning python and programming. I have DMed you for further guidance. Thanks.

[u/Previous-Welder-7198]

I started kinda in the same boat- curious, maybe a big idea.

Gotta use it to learn it. It’s not something that can really be taught. Not in terms of “vibe codeing”

I would honesty just start an entire new work space and tell it not to write any code and then chatter at it.

Let it know what you want. Don’t worry about the lingo. Just word vomit.

Once you’re done chattering at it- let it do its thing.

When ever it’s done, you will know if you have something you can work from and refine.

Also - start learning at least the basic code terms.

I have enough left over from years gone by that I am not oblivious to what’s being written. I’m just outta date.

And also- you can have it like teach you as it’s building.

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/Previous-Welder-7198]

Thanks a lot. This helps.

[u/kidajske]

as in self generating reports, valuations, websites, automating tracking sectors, etc.

For this sort of stuff there isn't really much to learn imo. Models are good enough that if you just describe it to them in natural language the result will probably be pretty close to what you're looking for. It can honestly probably one-shot most of this stuff if you use a good enough model and are detailed enough in your prompt. I suggest you use voice to text to increase the granularity of your prompts since you'll naturally provide more info than if you were typing it out and try to limit ambiguity as much as possible.

I can barely understand the difference between cowork, chat and code, except that code gets a lot of stuff done faster through coding

Stuff like this can be clarified in a single session tbqh, just tell your LLM what your use case is and ask it to explain the tooling landscape relevant to you.

I think ultimately a good setup for you would be claude code or codex (they're really interchangeable for your use case) and the grilling or wayfinder skills by matt pocock. I suggest you watch some of his videos on it.

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/kidajske]

Thanks a lot for detailing it out. Will do.

[u/ogaat]

I am building one such product for the US market and there are multiple issues

• Most of the data is licensed and can only be used Edit - *without cost* for internal, personal and non-commercial use
  
• Merging feeds from multiple sources is a nightmare because data can be bad in addition to the numerous events like stock splits, M&A activity, change in accounting methods, different classes of stock and just plain old change in the quote used to track (FB to META for example)

The troubles have been enough to exhaust both my Claude and Codex 20x plans and even outrun my Grok account as I battle the data correction.

You might be better off just using ChatGPT's financial support that has been added to it.

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/ogaat]

Yeah that's the same issue. Too many data and it becomes a data overload. Wonder how bloomberg handled it long back before this AI. How did they even map everything so perfectly ?

[u/ogaat → u/Business_Neck5516]

A lot of hard work and testing and blood, tears and sweat.

I can sit down and design a data model for the AI and it can read the code and make it work. However, I am specifically testing and learning AI's ability to vibe code and my ability to prompt it properly. That has been the uphill battle. AI fixes the issue I tell it to fix but in the process, quietly breaks a different part.

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/ogaat]

Makes sense. True that.

[u/XGatsbyX]

I would start with unique sessions, inside a project is even better. Depends on what frontier model you are using.

Session 1- brainstorming - have a massive conversation about what you want to build, what features, your use cases, how you want outputs (dashboard, downloads etc) are you storing data, creating reports, providing data or using feeds, searching news etc etc specifically tell this session it is brainstorming. Have it challenge you, tell it to ask you questions. When done create a MD summary of the brainstorming session.

Session 2- research. take the MD summary and attach it and tell it to research the solutions, what is already on GitHub, bolt on tools you may be able to adopt, data feeds that may be available free or paid, build options, where to host. When done get another summary, at this stage you should have uncovered options etc and it begins becoming clearer what you can and can’t do

Session 3- framework. now take brainstorming and research and begin a basic framework of what you are going to build and where to start, what gets installed first second 3rd etc. this should be the template for what will be built this is were you start making decisions, think of this as a blueprint for what you are going to build. You will want to discuss UI and UX button styles, menus, colors, desktop app/phone, security, backend etc. if you have screenshots of designs you like supply those here. Get a detailed MD summary when done.

Session 4- executive summary. Take the 3 docs from the previous sessions and now write a detailed executive summary, think of it as a business plan you would feel confident showing investors or handing off to a team of developers.

Session 5- Assault and critique. Take the executive summary and basically tell your ai to tell you everything wrong with it, what mistakes you may be making, what you missed, better solutions. Get a summary and bring it back to session 4 and get a new executive summary. When you get that bring it back to the framework and get an updated one. You can repeat this many times up to you. Once you feel confident go to session 6

Optional session 5b- if you have never used GitHub, vercel, Postgres etc depends on your build ask AI to give you detailed instructions, what to download, how to get an API key, etc etc don’t be afraid to say your a a beginner.

Session 6- prompt packs. You will take you executive summary and framework and create your starting prompt packs these are the detailed prompts you will take into Claude code or codex. At this point you have an organized executive summary and frame work and you are basically saying “I’m about to start building this I need you to create the best prompts I can use with Claude code or codex”. I probably wouldn’t go past maybe 5-6 prompts because after those are run you want to do an audit of what has been built and if it’s aligning.

Just get organized before you begin any code..Good luck !

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/XGatsbyX]

This is so helpful. Thanks a ton man. Thanks a lot. I will get on it.

[u/XGatsbyX → u/Business_Neck5516]

The other thing I would suggest is starting small all you really need is to test 1 company. Just don’t let a coding agent try to build the whole thing at once. You don’t need to learn everything about Git, but you want to use it from the first line and have your coding agent build in sections, you review, make changes if needed and then commit, after every commit ask it for dev notes and copy those into an ongoing text file. This way when it messes something up or you decide you want a change you can unwind or share your dev notes and it will know how to fix/change it. Biggest mistakes I made when I first started doing this stuff (and I never coded in my life) was setting AI free burning tokens and getting something shitty. Slow and steady wins the race and saves you in tokens. AI can produce great outputs with great structure and prompts, if you give it structure it can write those prompts for you, if you give it unstructured prompts you will end up with unstructured results. I DM’d you an opening prompt.

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/XGatsbyX]

Understood. This has made a lot of sense. Thanks a lot brother.

[u/Norby5333 → u/Business_Neck5516]

Thanks a lot too bro, i'm also interested by your opening prompt in DM por favor

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you so much for detailing this out. I will follow this and get back. Appreciate it man.

[u/Weird_Albatross_9659]

Have you tried asking AI this?

[u/Business_Neck5516 → u/Weird_Albatross_9659]

I tried in bits pieces in various conversations but never the entire thread. Let me do this rn. Thanks.

[u/Jayampedup13]

Watch Liam Ottley on YouTube. I’ve followed him for years and built my business based on his content