🗞️ The Era of Disposable Software💥🚀

If you’re new here, welcome! If you’ve been reading for a while, thank you for sticking around as we navigate this wild AI shaped shift happening across eCommerce. Each week I share what I’m experimenting with, what’s actually moving the needle, and the trends that deserve your attention before they hit your competitors’ playbooks.

A quick heads up. I’ve organized all previous editions into one searchable hub. If you want the full journey, it’s all here.

The Era of Disposable Software

For decades, we built digital monuments. Overbuilt platforms designed to last years but slow to adapt and costly to change.

But when the cost of code trends toward zero, the value of durability starts to disappear. In this new paradigm, what matters is effectiveness today, not perfection over time.

This is Vibe Coding, an approach where you don't need to identify as a developer. You just need to know what's possible. And now you can DIY your way into apps that improve productivity, create images, videos, market your products, write email, the list goes on..

One message rang loud and clear at BDSS 13. The power to build AI software at scale has shifted from engineers to visionaries.

What was once the domain of backend teams, architecture reviews, and multi-month sprints can now be executed by a single person with a clear idea and an AI co-pilot. And that shift is about more than just convenience. It's about rethinking the very nature of software itself.

We have entered The Era of Disposable Software.

From Vision to Execution in Minutes

In my talk at BDSS 13, I shared how this shift is playing out in my own business.

Here are some examples of Vibe Coded software:

• I recently replaced the Hubspot Sales CRM with a custom-built Google Sheets app powered by Claude and deployed with CLASP. Did you know that you can easily build software apps and add them as Menu items to any Google Sheet so that can manipulate your business data?

• I recently replaced Wix, redesigned the ppcninja.com site from the ground up using Claude Code. The site files live in an AWS S3 bucket and CloudFront points to that bucket. This cut my hosting and editing costs from $1,000 per year to $10 per year.

• At PPC Ninja we have built over 40 AI-powered tools without writing traditional code. One of them even does Bid + Placement optimization for us weekly. Crazy times we live in!

Vibe Coding is not about being a hacker or having deep technical knowledge. It's about seeing what's possible and being willing to build, test, and discard quickly.

🗑️ Software Built to Be Deleted

In this new era, the best tools are:

• Fast to build

• Inexpensive or free

• Easy to throw away without regret

Code is now just a napkin sketch. You capture an idea, test it quickly, and ship it. If it works, great. If not, move on.

And this is where Git becomes so important. It acts as your undo button for reality, giving you the freedom to experiment without risking your core business.

📁 Files Are the New Memory

One of the most important ideas I shared is this: AI forgets. Files remember.

Your chat history does not hold context, but your local project files do. Markdown files like:

• CLAUDE.md

• STYLEGUIDE.md

• BUSINESS_LOGIC.md

act as persistent memory for your AI assistant. They provide structure, continuity, and business logic across every project.

⚙️ AI as Interface Instead of Engineer

You do not need to learn the command line or the nitty gritties of how to deploy code. That belongs to an older era. In this new world, AI is your interface. It translates your intent into commands using tools like:

• AWS CLI for hosting

• FFMPEG for media manipulation

• CLASP for Google Apps scripting

You describe what you want, and the AI gets it done.

PPC Ninja is helping brands future proof their listings for AI, helping you build RUFUS enabled, stunning images and videos with AI. Hit reply on this to chat with us. Explore how we can scale your content production across Social media, Amazon ads, Amazon Posts efficiently and affordably.

Claude Cowork (The Agent in Your Machine)

Ok, everyone is talking about Claude Cowork. The tool that was built by Claude Code in 10 days and released. Wow!

We are moving from AI that talks to AI that does. Claude Cowork is the first mainstream attempt at an "agent", an AI that can remote control your desktop, click buttons, and execute complex plans. It doesn't just write code; it runs it. It doesn't just suggest organization; it moves the files.

After a week of testing, the results are interesting: it is brilliant at local file manipulation and maybe not so great yet at navigating the open web or Google Drive. Here is exactly what it can do for you right now, and where it fails.

The Wins (What You Can Do Today):

• The "Downloads" Detox: Point it at your chaotic Downloads folder. Cowork can analyze thousands of files, create a taxonomy (e.g., "Invoices," "Installers," "Personal"), and physically move them into new folders. WORD OF CAUTION (Read my full story below…)

• Visual File Renaming: This is the killer feature. You can ask it to "Rename all these screenshots based on what they show." It uses vision capabilities to see the image and rename Screenshot_29.png to AI_News_Anchor_Collage.png.

I asked Cowork to clean up the last 2 months of screenshots by reading the images and giving it appropriate names. I also allowed it to create sub-folders for better organization.

To do this you will first need to point it at a local drive folder.

Point to the folder and grant it permissions to “clean it up”. MAKE SURE YOU RESTRICT HOW FAR BACK TO GO. I asked it to only go back 2 months.

Here’s the “safe prompt I used”

Cowork acknowledged the instruction and proceeded to rename and reorganize my folders.

I thought it took a bit long (almost like 10 minutes, which for us these days is looooong)

Here are some other things you can do with Claude Cowork:

• Format Alchemy: It excels at transforming data types. You can dump a folder of disparate benchmark screenshots and ask for a unified Excel spreadsheet. It can read a PDF and generate a video outline, then convert that outline back into a PDF.

• Local Media Operations: It can run code locally (like FFmpeg). You can ask it to find a specific video clip ("Find the video with the yellow leaves") and then convert that clip into a GIF.

• The "Meta" Report: If a task fails (and it will), you can ask it to generate a report on why it failed. It will analyze its own error logs and produce a polished Google Doc explaining the process.

The Fails (Where to Hold Off):

• Web Navigation: It struggles with the "human" internet. In tests, asking it to upload files to Google Drive failed because it couldn't physically click the right buttons due to browser restrictions.

• The "Continue" Button: It is not fully autonomous. On long tasks (like renaming 1,000 images), it gets stuck and requires you to nudge it by typing "continue" repeatedly.

The Actionable Strategy:

To get value out of Cowork, you must change your workflow. Do not ask it to "browse the web and do X." Instead, use the "Container Strategy."

1. Curate the Input: Manually gather the messy files (transcripts, screenshots, PDFs) and put them into a single folder.

2. Grant Access: Give Cowork access to that specific folder only.

3. Prompt for Synthesis: Ask it to perform the work inside that folder. "Read these 5 transcripts and write a summary report," or "Turn these research notes into a slide deck."

The Verdict:

Claude Cowork removes the friction between "messy data" and "structured asset." It is not a replacement for a human assistant yet, but for digital janitorial work and data synthesis, it is the best tool on the market.

But I haven’t finished my horror story yet, proceed to the next section…

How to Avoid the Horrors of Losing all your Data!

As a next step I thought, well, Claude Cowork did well, I may as well have asked Claude Code to do the folder reorganization. Perhaps it will be bit faster and more intelligent than Cowork.

So I pointed it at the same folder and asked it to do the same thing - reorganize my files from 2 months ago, which were now all sitting in the Recent (Nov-Jan 2026) folder.

Claude Code was moving fast, and I was like wow, it’s doing it! It even told me how it was renaming all my files based on a better understanding of what each screenshot was. Nice.

And that’s when things suddenly went wrong! Claude Code accidentally deleted all those files that it just finished renaming.

You see, Claude used the rm -rf command to bypass the Trash folder. Ha, the story that others on the internet were talking about and I thought I’d be immune to!!! Thankfully the damage was very minimal, since this was just a subfolder in my Screenshots folder.

After a bit of digging I found that there is a way to prevent Claude from ever removing file permanently (i.e. bypassing the Trash folder)

For all my nerdy peeps, this is what you’ve got to do right away:
Edit your Global Claude settings ~/.claude/settings.local.json

"deny": [
      "Bash(rm *)",
      "Bash(*&& rm *)",
      "Bash(*; rm *)",
      "Bash(*| rm *)"
      "Bash(rm -rf *)",
      "Bash(rm -fr *)",
      "Bash(rm -r *)",
      "Bash(rm -Rf *)",
      "Bash(*&& rm -rf *)",
      "Bash(*&& rm -r *)",
      "Bash(*; rm -rf *)",
      "Bash(*; rm -r *)"
    ]

The -rf argument is a skip without asking operation and by adding it to the Deny list you can prevent accidental deletion of entire folders while still allowing normal single-file deletion.

How to set up this Deny list? Give the above to Claude and ask it to do it for you. Stay safe!

ChatGPT is Getting a Shopping Cart!

You’ve probably heard it already, but shoppers will be able to purchase products directly from ChatGPT. OpenAI is rumored to charge 4% of the sale price.

As Max Sinclair points out, “If your product can’t be purchased natively, it will be skipped altogether. Now’s the time to:

• Adopt the agentic commerce protocol

• Make sure your product data is clean and structured in accordance with OpenAI's specs

• Apply for instant checkout via OpenAI or enable it directly through Shopify

Jan 27th is the last Tuesday of the month. Time to tune in to the Go with the Flow Podcast where Danny McMillan and I dive into AI topics. Listen here!

Join me for this incredible Hack Contest on Jan 28th organized by Smart Scout and Nick Penev. 17 hacks in 90 minutes!! RSVP here.

Super excited to be speaking at the ECOM Mastery AI featuring Billion Dollar Sellers Summit in Nashville. When: April 8-12, Nashville. Get your tickets here.

We hope you liked this edition of the AI for E-Commerce Newsletter! Hit reply and let us know what you think! Thank you for being a subscriber! Know anyone who might be interested to receive this newsletter? Share it with them and they will thank you for it! 😃 Ritu