AI systems

Since late 2025 Eddie has spent much of his working time building an AI operating stack for Penang and VIBAe. It matters to the brand twice over: it is real differentiation (few agency operators build their own systems), and the systems themselves are proof material he already demonstrates live on sales and advisor calls. This article is a snapshot; the stack moves fast, so treat specifics as dated. directional

Pulse#

An in-house analytics platform ingesting Shopify, Meta, Google, and Klaviyo data per brand: profitability and contribution margin, cohort revenue, funnel conversion by landing page and UTM, email flow performance, creative DNA breakdowns (hook rates, format comparisons, voice type, setting), competitor watchlists, and a "playbook" layer that turns the data into recommended actions. Built with Claude Code in weeks, not quarters. Used internally by the team, shown to VIBAe leadership, and positioned as a client-facing value-add: "you get all the bonus of all this insight, all these tools for free on top" (2026-06-13 advisor-accountant, demoing to his accountant; also demoed in the 2026-03-24 Ruzel pitch). verified as existing; feature set evolves

The always-on agent#

A dedicated always-on machine running an agent Eddie talks to through chat. Its standing jobs, as described on calls (2026-03-31 peer-abhinav): scrape and score prospects into tiers, with cold outreach automated for the lowest tier and research briefs prepared for manual outreach on the highest; draft Upwork proposals; mine every meeting transcript weekly for content-worthy insights and stories; research industry trends and top creators; draft Twitter content in his voice for human approval before posting, with performance fed back in. It also tracks business goals and reports progress and gaps. directional

Status as of the 2026-08-13 interview: the Twitter content platform is built but idle ("nothing's working, and nothing's running right now"); Eddie will revisit it behind three higher priorities, in order: the working session funnel and its ads, Penang Media lead gen, and Instagram content for both handles. verified

Creative AI tooling#

The team's stack in mid-2026: FAL.ai as the model aggregator, Arcads for AI actor ads, image models for asset generation and expansion, with hands-on workshops to spread capability (2026-05-13 team-creative-ai-workshop). A dedicated AI creative systems designer role was opened in June 2026 to own prompts, references, and per-brand systems. Reference-image prompting (showing the model examples rather than describing) is the house technique. directional

Operating principles#

The ones he repeats: match model cost to task ("if I use Opus... for basic shit, it's a waste of money"); read-only API scopes and security paranoia by default ("all it takes is one mistake and everything comes crashing down"); plan expensively before building ("I spend a lot of time in that opening planning stage... ask me all the questions"); and the meta-principle that clarity beats technique: "it's about the clarity of your thinking. You don't have to be technical to do it" (2026-06-13). verified as stated

Content note: this stack is a strong authority signal for the Operator-in-Residence angle, but any public claims about it must pass the claims register rules; no revenue or spend figures from these systems are publishable without fact-bank approval.

Related: creative system, positioning, case studies.