I spent $20,000 on Devin in a month. Here’s what I learned | Ryan Carson (solo founder)

Ryan Carson, solo founder of Untangle, a B2B SaaS platform for family law firms, said he spent $20,000 on Devin, Cognition's AI coding agent, in one month, managing 15 concurrent agents with a folder system and paper list instead of a dashboard. He detailed his workflow on the Latent Space podcast, including building a 'Watchdog' playbook to replace a customer success team and using a 'LAN PR skill' to close 40 daily pull requests without a QA team, while noting he moved off local agents except for Codex in specific situations.

Ryan Carson is a five-time founder and the current solo founder of Untangle, a B2B SaaS platform for family law firms. Before Untangle, he co-founded Treehouse, an online coding education platform, and has spent the better part of two decades building and leading tech companies. He’s active on X, where he shares his solo founder journey in real time, including what he actually spends on AI tools each month. Listen or watch on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts What you’ll learn: Why Ryan manages 15 concurrent Devin agents with a folder system and a piece of paper, not a dashboard The Watchdog playbook: what he built to replace a customer success team across every law firm account How his LAN PR skill closes the loop on 40 daily PRs without a QA team reviewing a single one Why he moved off local agents almost entirely, and the one situation where he still reaches for Codex The design workflow we’re both using: Claude Design into a Markdown spec, then Codex to build the real thing What he found when he got away from his computer and met a real customer, and why it changed his entire product direction How he’s hiring his first engineer without a single phone screen or interview Why we both think more AI output is actually the wrong goal, and what to optimize for instead Brought to you by: WorkOS —Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more Jira AI SDLC —Get your tokens’ worth with Jira In this episode, we cover: 00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs Introduction to Ryan Carson 02:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=175s Ryan’s update: Untangle, the divorce PMF pivot, and B2B growth 07:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=455s Ryan’s current Devin stack: folders, P0 threads, and the paper list 16:29 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=989s Watchdog playbook: account monitoring across every firm 18:09 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=1089s Managing agent decision fatigue: Ryan’s method vs. Claire’s 20:32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=1232s Producing more output does not make a better product 22:47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=1367s Using cloud agents for ops beyond just code 25:14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=1514s When to use Codex vs. Devin vs. Claude Code 27:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=1635s Merge Mommy recap 28:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=1695s LAN PR skill: review loops, video walkthrough, and auto-merge 30:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=1820s Slack vs. Devin threads for async team communication 35:58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=2158s Claude Design plus Codex for building a technical design system 39:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=2340s EA tools: Polly the OpenClaw vs. Claude Code on a Mac Mini 42:09 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPfxlcVpFgs&t=2529s Quick recap and final thoughts Tools referenced: • Devin Cognition : https://www.cognition.ai/ https://www.cognition.ai/ • Codex OpenAI : https://openai.com/codex https://openai.com/codex • Claude Code/Claude Design Anthropic : https://www.anthropic.com/claude https://www.anthropic.com/claude • OpenClaw Claude-based desktop client : https://openclaw.ai https://openclaw.ai • Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/ https://www.cursor.com/ • BugBot Devin’s built-in PR review : https://cursor.com/bugbot https://cursor.com/bugbot • Sentry error monitoring referenced in Watchdog : https://sentry.io/ https://sentry.io/ • Ugmonk analog to-do system : https://ugmonk.com/ https://ugmonk.com/ Other references: • Devin playbooks/skills documentation: https://docs.cognition.ai/ https://docs.cognition.ai/ • Jack Dorsey/Buzz async-first communication referenced : https://buzz.new/ https://buzz.new/ • Merge Mommy Claire’s Eve agent for PR risk scoring, deployed on Vercel : https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/build-an-ai-code-review-bot-in-30 https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/build-an-ai-code-review-bot-in-30 Where to find Ryan Carson: Untangle: https://untangle.us https://untangle.us Where to find Claire Vo: ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ Production and marketing by https://penname.co/ https://penname.co/ . For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email email protected /cdn-cgi/l/email-protection .