Not Brothers

About Not Brothers

No Nonsense Business and Tech Talk. Just two business partners who’ve survived nearly two decades of client deadlines, all-nighters, stealing each other’s fries, and somehow still speaking at family events. In 2009 they co-founded Oodle – a digital marketing agency that started with two laptops, zero clients, and an unhealthy amount of confidence. Sixteen years later it’s one of the sharpest independent shops in the country. Along the way they’ve launched other companies, products, and ideas together. Every week they pull a couple of chairs up to a mic and rip open the exact stuff most podcasts polish to death: Which new AI and technology tools are actually shipping vs. which ones are just vaporware The creative calls that made fortunes and the ones that almost ended them The unsexy business decisions that separate “cool startup” from “company that pays its bills” Real-time, zero-filter debates, because when you’ve argued over cap tables with your actual family, you stop pretending to agree Not Brothers. Just two co-founders who’ve been mistaken for siblings so often they made it the title.

Publisher

Mark Hughes, Ryan Hughes

Category

business · technology

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

28 Jan 2026

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

24 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Episode 24 - Everything is AI Slop! Or is it?

   Everything is “AI slop” now—or at least that is what the internet calls any AI-assisted work it does not like. But is AI actually the problem? In Episode 24 of Not Brothers, Mark Hughes and Ryan Hughes unpack what AI slop really is, why the person piloting the tool still owns the result, and how lazy review—not AI alone—turns fast output into bad work. They share a real example from Oodle’s early agent experiments, when an AI-assisted request led to an unnecessary Python server instead of a lightweight solution. The lesson was not to stop using AI. It was to build better guardrails, encode stronger standards, and create review systems that catch bad decisions before they ship. The conversation also explores why agentic workflows do not fit neatly into old sprint plans, how visual progress can hide weak architecture and poor mobile performance, and why compliance requirements such as GDPR, CCPA, COPPA, WCAG, and CAN-SPAM still demand experienced judgment. For agencies and clients, AI creates a new kind of collaboration. Business leaders can prototype ideas more clearly, teams can explore more directions without burning a week of labor, and experts can turn rough concepts into production-ready work. That does not make expertise less valuable—it changes where the value lives. Mark and Ryan also tackle the economics of AI-enabled services, the “good, fast, and cheap” tradeoff, and why the human side of professional services becomes more important as production accelerates. The takeaway: AI is a force multiplier. It can multiply garbage, or it can multiply great work. Either way, there is still a person piloting the ship. Oodle: https://heyoodle.com/ (https://heyoodle.com/) Chapters are below. Subscribe for direct conversations about technology, AI, business, and the systems behind the work. Chapters 00:00 — What counts as AI slop? 01:44 — If you would not put your name on it, it is not finished 03:06 — The rogue Python server and why guardrails matter 04:41 — AI superpowers and “slop grenades” can both be real 05:50 — Defined outcomes, automated review, and responsible shipping 07:42 — When “AI slop” becomes a lazy insult 09:06 — AI did not invent bad process 10:15 — Why old sprint plans break in an agentic workflow 12:33 — Adversarial feedback and the limits of automated code review 14:25 — Fast prototypes can hide production problems 16:05 — Compliance risks an AI agent may never mention 18:04 — In-housing, expertise, and accountability 20:03 — AI as a richer collaboration tool for clients 23:21 — Exploring more ideas without burning the whole budget 25:25 — More value, less effort, and the agency margin question 29:15 — Good, fast, and cheap still has limits 31:08 — Why the human component matters more, not less 32:43 — AI multiplies whatever quality already exists 36:32 — Not everything is AI slop—and kindness still matters

2. 

   5 Oct 2026

   Episode 23 - Open AI Dev Day, Rails World, Omarchy Meet Ups, & More

   Two weeks, three events, and one clear takeaway: the old way of building software is over. Ryan returns from Rails World, OpenAI DevDay, and an Omarchy meetup in San Francisco with a field report on where AI-assisted development is actually heading. He and Mark compare the conversations happening online with what builders are saying in the room. At Rails World, they unpack the changing role of programmers, why AI does not erase hard-earned technical judgment, and how agents make it easier to choose the right language for the job instead of staying trapped in one stack. Then the conversation moves to OpenAI DevDay: proactive assistants, connected agents, new model performance, and ultra-fast inference. If an agent can produce an hour of work in ten minutes, are you paying more—or buying time back? That leads to the next problem. When generation stops being the bottleneck, human review, browser use, APIs, research speed, infrastructure, and access to compute start taking its place. Finally, Ryan shares what it was like attending his first Omarchy meetup at Cloudflare’s San Francisco office, from veteran users to someone installing Omarchy for the first time at the event. Subscribe for long-form conversations about AI, software, business, operations, and building things in public. Not Brothers: https://heyoodle.com/not-brothers/ (https://heyoodle.com/not-brothers/) Oodle: https://heyoodle.com/ (https://heyoodle.com/) Chapters 00:00 — Ryan’s two-week developer event tour 01:43 — Rails World and the reaction to a changing paradigm 06:11 — “Look at all the things I’m not doing” 11:26 — Choosing the right language for the job 15:31 — Ryan’s biggest Rails World takeaway 18:09 — Why agents suddenly feel more capable 22:23 — Small, specialized models and private AI 27:04 — Inside OpenAI DevDay 28:18 — Proactive assistants and connected agents 32:23 — Faster models and ultra-fast inference 35:10 — Creating at the speed of thought 37:45 — Is buying back time worth the price? 39:29 — When the human becomes the bottleneck 44:56 — Compute demand, hardware prices, and supply 49:02 — Ryan’s first Omarchy meetup 50:46 — Final recap

3. 

   18 Sept 2026

   Episode 22 - I tried Omarchy for the first time (unrehearsed)

   What happens when a lifelong Mac and Windows user tries Omarchy for the first time? In Episode 22 of Not Brothers, Mark Hughes installs the Try Omarchy experience on his Mac while Ryan Hughes walks him through the operating system, its keyboard-first workflow, and its tiling window manager. Nothing was rehearsed, so the ARM64 installation gaps and setup surprises stay in the episode. Once Omarchy is running, Mark learns how to move between workspaces, rearrange windows, launch apps, pin a window across desktops, and use the searchable keybinding menu when he gets lost. Then the experiment gets more interesting. Mark asks Claude Code to build a custom switcher that combines applications and browser tabs into a Windows-style Alt+Tab experience. Claude inspects Omarchy’s plugin system, builds the plugin, tests it, and updates the live keybinding. Mark gets a working feature without writing the code himself. Ryan also explains T3 Code and T3 Connect, how he gives AI agents their own development machine, why Omarchy treats the operating system as something users should be able to reshape, and how community plugins are expanding what the system can do. Try Omarchy: https://omarchy.org/ (https://omarchy.org/) Omarchy plugins: https://plugins.omarchy.org/ (https://plugins.omarchy.org/) Learn Omarchy: https://learnomarchy.com/ (https://learnomarchy.com/) Oodle: https://heyoodle.com/ (https://heyoodle.com/) Chapters are below. Subscribe for direct conversations about technology, AI, business, and the systems behind the work. Chapters 00:00 — A Mac user tries Omarchy 02:33 — Starting the Try Omarchy installation 05:40 — Launching the virtual machine 06:52 — Finishing the Omarchy installer 08:48 — First look at Omarchy and searchable keybindings 10:24 — The Omarchy launcher and installing T3 Code 11:43 — Updating Omarchy before installing apps 13:31 — The ARM64 compatibility gap 14:22 — How Omarchy installs AI tools on demand 15:29 — Signing into Claude Code and 1Password 17:58 — Learning tiling window management 21:02 — Omarchy Quattro’s plugin architecture 22:07 — Asking Claude to build a browser-tab switcher 24:12 — How an agent reverse-engineered a mouse plugin 27:07 — T3 Code, T3 Connect, and remote agent sessions 32:04 — Can the plugin access every browser tab? 35:38 — Workspaces, screen sharing, and a live crash 37:24 — Resuming the Claude Code session 39:50 — The first custom plugin works 40:50 — Why Omarchy is more than Arch and dotfiles 43:41 — Browsing and installing community plugins 46:11 — Combining browser tabs and applications 49:05 — Replacing Omarchy’s default Alt+Tab behavior 49:58 — Making computers fun and personal again 52:41 — How easy is it to try Omarchy? 53:05 — Learn Omarchy and interactive onboarding 57:36 — Custom keybindings and the learning curve 59:53 — Floating, resizing, and pinning windows 1:01:22 — Final verdict on Try Omarchy

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