MechanismArticle · 12:10 — 13:40
EJ Lawless's persona-impersonation trick allows Codex to simulate different user perspectives, surfacing friction points the builder cannot see.
A technique where the AI adopts a specific user persona to stress-test a product, revealing blind spots the creator cannot see. ✦ AI generated
Claire Vo · Lenny's Newsletter · 2026-07-22 · original ↗
How my husband EJ Lawless's persona-impersonation trick surfaces friction points I can't see as the builder
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In practice · 2
Browser use and computer use via Codex (ChatGPT desktop app) is a daily driver for both personal and professional workflows, not just a novelty feature.Claire Vo · Lenny's Newsletter · conf 85%Under-prompting frontier models — giving goals rather than detailed step-by-step instructions — produces better results because it forces the model to reason through the problem rather than mechanistically follow a script.Claire Vo · Lenny's Newsletter · conf 85%