How I run autonomous coding agents from my phone with OpenAI Symphony + Linear | Alessio Fanelli (Kernel Labs)
How I AI
Jul 06
How I run autonomous coding agents from my phone with OpenAI Symphony + Linear | Alessio Fanelli (Kernel Labs)
How I run autonomous coding agents from my phone with OpenAI Symphony + Linear | Alessio Fanelli (Kernel Labs)

How I AI
Jul 06
Shownote
Shownote
Alessio Fanelli, founder of Kernel Labs and co-host of Latent Space podcast,
walks us through two very different AI workflows: (1) a fully autonomous coding
setup using OpenAI Symphony + Linear, where Linear acts as a state machine and
Symphony manages agents through the whole dev lifecycle with zero babysitting;
(2) Codex with browser access searching eBay for underpriced Pokémon
cards—autonomously browsing, extracting PSA certificate numbers, and flagging
deals on $10K–$20K cards for his San Carlos card shop, Merlin Games.
What you’ll learn:
1. Why “agent manager” is a better mental model than “agent prompter”
2. Why local Mac Minis don’t scale, and what a cloud VPS unlocks
3. How to wire Symphony and Linear together as an agent state machine
4. How to track token costs per task (and what 221 million tokens buys you)
5. What Glimpse does, and why better agent senses extend autonomous runs
6. Why your CLAUDE.md probably needs a full purge, not more instructions
7. How Codex scouts underpriced $10K Pokémon cards on eBay at scale
8. The new category of small business that AI just made possible
—
Brought to you by:
Firecrawl
[https://firecrawl.dev/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=how_i_ai]—Power
AI agents with clean web data
Jira Product Discovery [https://atlassian.com/howiai]—Prioritize with insights,
build with confidence
—
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Intro
(02:24) Prompter vs. agent manager
(04:31) Live demo: Symphony + Linear
(09:31) Setting up Symphony
(14:15) Purging your skills files
(18:06) The benefits of this system
(19:10) Demo: Using Codex to hunt for Pokémon cards
(24:17) The benefit of AI for small businesses
(28:23) Lightning round
—
Tools referenced:
• OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codex [https://openai.com/codex]
• OpenAI Symphony (open-source framework): https://github.com/openai/symphony
[https://github.com/openai/symphony]
• Linear (project management/agent state machine): https://linear.app
[https://linear.app/]
• PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) grading: https://www.psacard.com
[https://www.psacard.com/]
• TCGplayer (card pricing): https://www.tcgplayer.com
[https://www.tcgplayer.com/]
• eBay (used for card price scouting): https://www.ebay.com
[https://www.ebay.com/]
—
Other references:
• Meta Ray-Ban glasses: https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses
[https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses]
• The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar:
https://www.amazon.com/Monk-Riddle-Creating-Making-Living/dp/1578516447/ref=sr_1_1
[https://www.amazon.com/Monk-Riddle-Creating-Making-Living/dp/1578516447/ref=sr_1_1]
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0451208633
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0451208633]
• AS Roma (football club Alessio and Claire are both fans of):
https://www.asroma.com/en [https://www.asroma.com/en]
—
Where to find Alessio Fanelli:
X: https://x.com/FanaHOVA [https://x.com/FanaHOVA]
Latent Space podcast: https://www.latent.space/ [https://www.latent.space/]
—
Where to find Claire Vo:
ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ [https://www.chatprd.ai/]
Website: https://clairevo.com/ [https://clairevo.com/]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/]
X: https://x.com/clairevo [https://x.com/clairevo]
—
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/ [https://penname.co/]. For
inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co.
Highlights
Highlights
Alessio Fanelli, founder of Kernel Labs, shares his hands-on experience building two distinct AI workflows: one for autonomous coding and another for e-commerce scouting. He explains the practical shift from manually prompting agents to managing them as a system, using cloud infrastructure and project management tools to enable longer, more complex autonomous runs.
Chapters
Chapters
Intro
00:00Prompter vs. agent manager
02:24Live demo: Symphony + Linear
04:31Setting up Symphony
09:31Purging your skills files
14:15The benefits of this system
18:06Demo: Using Codex to hunt for Pokémon cards
19:10The benefit of AI for small businesses
24:17Lightning round
28:23Transcript
Transcript
Claire Vo: This is my favorite positive outcome of AI, which is small business creation. Just the ability to like, intersect the human world in a way that has been historically very inefficient has been a quality of life improvement for me.
Alessio Fanell...
