# EP.004 · We run Pine Works by talking to Bruce

From We Should Talk About This on the Internet, a live show by Pine Works.

- Episode: EP.004
- Aired: 2026-10-08, 2:13 PM ET
- Status: archived
- Video length: 49:54
- With: Anthony Colangelo, Yesenia Perez-Cruz, Joe Rinaldi
- Topics: AI agents, agency operations, CRM, dashboard design, Granola, OpenClaw
- Page: https://weshouldtalkontheinter.net/episodes/004-we-run-pine-works-by-talking-to-bruce/
- Watch: https://youtu.be/Zs5V8yanTtM
- Audio: https://media.weshouldtalkontheinter.net/ep004.mp3 (47:44)

## Show notes

In EP.002 we told you about Bruce. This time we showed you. Bruce is our
operations agent, an OpenClaw install that reads every Granola transcript and
Discord thread we produce and keeps Studio, the internal tool he built and
runs for us, up to date. Ryan asked him on air to add a prospect, and a few
minutes later there it was. Everything on screen was a demo copy full of
people Bruce made up for the occasion, so no, you're not in it. You're in the
real one.

Joe explains why off-the-shelf CRMs, built for HVAC companies counting wins
and losses, never fit a consulting shop, and why Studio has two main
characters instead: opportunities and people. Clients, collaborators, and old
friends all live in the same rolodex, because around here they tend to turn
into one another. He also walks through the games he plays with Bruce twice a
week to keep everyone's people file fresh. We are on version seven of the
games.

Yesenia shows the business health dashboard she sketched on paper, refined in
Claude Code, and handed back to Bruce to build, plus an experimental people
view that treats the team like a little world instead of rows in a table.
Anthony explains the trick underneath it all: Studio lives in Bruce's own
working files on the same server, so the organizing happens once, when
information comes in, not every time someone asks a question.

We close on what's next (more agents with different jobs, branded PDFs on
demand) and how to roll out an agent of your own: give it its own accounts,
match the permissions your people already have, and never let it pretend to
be a human.

## Chapters

Times follow the video.

- 02:12 Welcome back to Bruce
- 03:04 How Bruce got hired
- 06:30 From genie to eavesdropper
- 07:43 Granola does the data entry
- 09:18 Teaching Bruce his job
- 10:54 Craving a visual interface
- 11:54 Bruce lives in Discord too
- 14:23 Adding a prospect by asking
- 15:04 How Yesenia works with Bruce
- 17:27 Most CRMs are built for HVAC companies
- 19:37 Opportunities and people are the main characters
- 22:37 Joe's games with Bruce
- 24:33 A tour of Studio
- 27:18 The people page
- 29:26 A dashboard for business health
- 32:24 The site is Bruce's own working files
- 34:20 Shared memory across every meeting
- 36:42 People as a world, not a table
- 40:44 Bruce wired up the prompts himself
- 43:48 From record keeping to strategy
- 44:38 What's next: more agents with different jobs
- 46:05 Branded PDFs on demand
- 47:21 Treat your agent like a teammate
- 49:38 Wrap up

## Links mentioned

- [EP.002: Bruce works here now](https://weshouldtalkontheinter.net/episodes/002-meet-bruce/)
- [OpenClaw, the agent Bruce runs on](https://openclaw.ai)
- [Granola, the meeting transcripts Bruce reads](https://www.granola.ai)
- [Discord, where Bruce sits in on our channels](https://discord.com)
- [Notion, where the old CRM lived](https://www.notion.com)
- [Pipedrive, the CRM built for someone else](https://www.pipedrive.com)
- [Claude Code, where Yesenia refined the dashboard design](https://claude.com/claude-code)
- [Gemini](https://gemini.google.com)
- [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com)
- [Claude](https://claude.ai)
- [Happy Cog](https://www.happycog.com)
- [Pine Works](https://pineworks.co)
- [The show on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-talk-about-this-on-the-internet/id6792067266)
- [The show on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033RatC5bMZUoErq91KTnr)