Keep Working While the AI Works

By Junaid Ahmed

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Some jobs in PodGlue take a minute or two.

Generating a blueprint. Brainstorming episode ideas. Writing the social posts for an episode.

While they ran, PodGlue put a screen in front of you. In a few places, that screen had a little puzzle game on it.

I liked the idea. I did not like being stuck behind it.

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What was wrong

A waiting screen is fine for ten seconds. It's not fine for two minutes.

If I'm in the middle of something, I don't want to play a game. I want to go finish the thing I was doing.

The game was also only in some places. Other jobs had a plain progress bar. So the same app waited three different ways.

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What changed

Every waiting screen now looks the same: a progress bar and a short note about what's happening.

And each one has a button: Continue in background.

Click it, and the screen goes away. The job keeps running. When it finishes, you get a short message letting you know.

If you leave the planner while a brainstorm is running, the ideas are still there when you come back.

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One more thing, in the video editor

The Edit tab lets you cut your video by editing the transcript.

When I opened it, the part you actually work on started three quarters of the way down the screen. Header, cover art, description, banners. Then the transcript.

Now it opens full screen, the same way the pre-show session does. A thin bar across the top, and the transcript and video fill the rest. There's an Exit button if you want the old layout back, and it remembers what you picked.

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What's next

The panels beside the transcript are still a long stack. I want to fold them into one place and put the render button where you can always see it.

If you have ever waited on a screen you could not leave, you know why this matters. Your time should go to the work, not to the waiting.

That's what I'm building PodGlue to do.