#168 – Multi-Agent Madness: Rebuilding Earshot the Hard Way

Recorded on Father's Day, episode 168 opens with Michael and Damashe wishing each other a happy Father's Day before diving into everything going on in the world of AI, coding agents, Earshot, and more.

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The Big Earshot News: Flutter is Out, SwiftUI is In

Michael reveals he has switched Earshot from Flutter to SwiftUI after a day and a half of intense work. The reason: he wanted to add a feature that lets users customize and reorder their in-app actions. In Flutter, the only reliable way to rebuild that UI was to background the app or force-quit it, and neither of those felt acceptable.

SwiftUI wins because it gives Michael a better path to features like Apple Shortcuts integration and data sync through Apple CloudKit, without requiring users to create an account. Build 113 on TestFlight will be SwiftUI. A phone overheating bug during playback is being fixed before that build ships.

Damashe suggests delaying cross-platform work until the iOS version is solid, and floats using AI to translate SwiftUI to Kotlin for Android down the road. Michael is focused on option B: get it done, get it out, get people testing.

Earshot TestFlight Beta

The public TestFlight link is available. If you found it, you can use it. No need to ask for permission. TestFlight supports up to 10,000 testers, so there's plenty of room. A few early users have already switched from Castro and canceled their subscriptions, and Damashe removed Downcast while giving Earshot a real look.

Upcoming features mentioned: auto-add to queue with options for add-to-end or add-as-next, and an Overcast-style theme for users coming from that app.

The $100 Claude Plan and the Multi-Agent Setup

Michael upgraded to the $100/month Claude plan because he kept hitting usage limits. The reason: he built a full multi-agent system in Claude Code specifically for Earshot development.

Here's how it works:

A planning agent pulls issues from GitHub

It decides which of the other nine specialized agents should handle the work

Agents include: security, accessibility, UI, and others

The planning agent creates a plan, sends it with the issue to the assigned agent

That agent completes the work, then passes results to a test agent

If tests pass, the planning agent opens a pull request

Michael reviews and merges

Agents live as Markdown files in the ~/claude/agents/ folder. You can tag a specific agent directly, like @earshot-security, or run the whole loop through the planning agent. Michael got the idea from watching short-form video about loop-style AI workflows versus single prompts.

He built the agent set by talking to Claude in the web interface, asking it to build out agents one question at a time. Anyone who wants to see what the agent files look like can email the show.

Claude for Chrome: Damashe's Accessibility Workaround Tool

Damashe has been using Claude for Chrome regularly, about a couple times a week. His main use case is getting around inaccessible web elements that VoiceOver can't interact with. Things like broken sliders, forms that throw vague error messages, or pages where he can't find a button to complete a task.

He grants Claude permission to access the page, tells it what he's trying to do, and it figures it out. He noted it works in Helium, a Chromium-based browser, even though Claude officially only supports Google Chrome.

Claude Cowork: One Use So Far

Michael tried Claude Cowork once to order 50 flyers from a major national print chain. He uploaded the flyer file, told Claude to pick the right paper and add 50 copies to the cart. It got to the checkout page, picked glossy paper instead of the matte Mallory wanted, and even suggested adjusting the text color for better contrast. Not perfect, but impressive for a first try.

Damashe plans to try Cowork this week to orde