Last updated September 2026
Product with Attitude
CRITICAL AI LITERACY, LEARNED BY BUILDING
Product with Attitude is an AI newsletter for product builders, developers, founders, creators, and AI practitioners, read by tens of thousands of people across 146 countries. We build critical AI literacy the only way it sticks: through practice.
Product with Attitude is also the only newsletter that combines AI builder community, tools and curated discounts for $9.99/mo instead of inflated enterprise pricing.
Newsletter → Learning → Tools → Community
1. Newsletter: Deep AI Research, Delivered Weekly
Every week, I send deeply researched, rigorously tested, high-quality articles: original experiments, practical AI tutorials, product breakdowns, and lessons from building AI products and building with AI myself.
Original Experiments
Hands-on product research
Testing Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity Computer, and other AI tools in real workflows, as a deep practitioner and product manager: building repeatedly, and turning what works into practical recommendations.
Practitioner-led critical AI literacy research
I focus on cognitive autonomy and epistemic judgment, drawing not only on interdisciplinary research but also on real-world observations of how practitioners use AI.
That work has led to frameworks such AI with Attitude, AI-Assisted Craft, Bring Your Own Opinion (BYOO), and The Builder-Parent Paradox.
Builder Case Studies
Community showcases to study what and how people are building with AI and how that changes over time.
Example: 1 Community, 164 builders, 100 methods, Y Combinator, and OpenAI Build Week 2026.
2. Learning: By Building, Testing & Doing
What you get
A practical path forward: each article helps you build AI proficiency and critical AI literacy through practice.
Things you can use right away: code, workflows, tools, prompts, and frameworks.
Better judgment: sharper product thinking, and a clearer understanding of how AI systems work.
No matter your role, you’ll find a path that starts where you are today and moves you forward.
Readers who stick around here tend to become
More technical by building and experimenting, not by waiting to feel ready.
More likely to ship work they’d put their name on.
More comfortable replacing imposter syndrome with learning in public.
Learning paths tailored to your specific goals
These curated paths help evolve your AI muscle and shift you from “trying tools” to owning systems.
You don’t need to read everything at once.
Find the goal that sounds like yours:
3. Tools
What you get
Tools I Build
Premium members get access to every tool I’ve built, plus everything I’ll build next. That includes:
LinkSwap: Trust-based backlink swaps with other writers.
Vault: AI workflows, coding prompts, automation templates shared by the community members.
StackShelf: List your own products, alongside other builders in the community.
Discounts I secure
Product with Attitude is also the only newsletter that combines AI builder tools, community‑made tools, and curated discounts for $9.99/mo instead of inflated enterprise pricing.
Your PwA subscription pays for itself. Learn more: Discounts for Premium Members.
4. Community
From 0 to 17K in 13 months
We’re one of the fastest-growing communities of AI learners and builders on Substack.
The people, the chat, the collaborations, the events & weekly rituals. This is a space for curious minds who’d rather learn together than scroll alone.
I don’t have an audience. I run a community.
The difference matters more than most people realize.
Joining PwA didn't just give me a community, it gave me traction. Karo has a rare ability to connect the right people at the right moment. Since joining, she's introduced me to an SEO specialist who validated my entire product homepage, and a visual branding expert who helped me build a consistent AI-generated avatar for my personal brand. That kind of curated network is hard to find. PwA accelerated things I would have figured out alone — eventually.
Daniel Rusnok - Solo Founder, Founder of Drippery
Claude Skills
I maintain two tested Claude Skills libraries: one with skills I’ve built myself and one with free community-built skills shared in Attitude Vault by our community members.
I’m a PM who wants my product team to develop AI as a core competency
The Context Pyramid: A PM’s Framework for AI Agent Context Engineering
Why Every Brand and PM Should Monitor Substack for User Insights
Why Building With AI Matters in 2026
Learn to build with AI, not just use it.
That gap is becoming your career advantage.
Critical AI literacy is now the #2 fastest-growing professional skill, while 72% of employers say they struggle to fill roles because the skills gap keeps growing. This community exists to close that gap.
Plenty of people use AI. Far fewer know how to use it well and how to build with it.
Using AI means typing a prompt, getting an answer, and moving on.
Building with AI means designing your own workflows, automating annoying tasks, chaining agents, and creating systems and micro-apps.
Do that often enough, and you develop the judgment to know when AI helps your thinking, when it gets in the way, and how to build the muscle that makes you harder to replace.
What “Build with AI” Means in 2026
Building with AI means using AI to create, improve, or operate a useful workflow, automation, tool, product, assistant, or system.
The final product can be ambitious or tiny. It just has to solve something real.
That might be a social image generator. A benchmarking system for AI agents. A career coaching loop. A Substack email parser. A private self-knowledge layer that follows us across tools.
None of those require the same stack.
They do require the same builder muscles: noticing friction, naming the job, testing with humans, and fixing what breaks.
AI lowers the coding barrier. It doesn’t lower the thinking bar.
The thinking was the valuable part anyway.
About Me
I ship physical AI products at an award-winning company in Europe, build indie products on the side, work close to EU AI Act compliance, parent children growing up with AI, and teach critical AI literacy to tens of thousands of people across 146 countries.
I’m Karo, an AI product manager, builder, and thinker who spends most of her time inside AI systems to understand what they’re built to do.
I write this newsletter to help people build critical AI literacy, stop consuming AI passively, and start building with it on purpose.
In practice:
I write with a builder’s hands and a PM’s brain, so you get practical workflows and deeper product insight.
I test everything and document the failures, not just the wins.
I interview real builders about the judgment calls nobody else asks about.
I share the tools I build, the prompts, the workflows, the code.
Testimonials Wall
FAQ
Q: What is Product With Attitude, in one line?
A: Product With Attitude is a community for people who want to understand AI, build with it, and protect human agency while doing the work.
Q: Why is it called “Product With Attitude”?
For two reasons.
First, for AI users. I don’t want people becoming gullible users of powerful AI tools. I want them to approach these products with attitude.
Second, for AI builders. Building great things with AI requires more than access to AI tools. It requires skill, taste, curiosity, and enough attitude to question the defaults before you become infrastructure for someone else’s automation.
Q: Why does Product With Attitude focus on human agency?
Because using AI should make you more capable, not more replaceable. This publication helps builders, creators, and product people use AI while protecting judgment, ownership, and responsibility. The personal root of that work is in The Builder-Parent Paradox.
Q: How is Product With Attitude different from other product communities?
A: Product With Attitude is built around practice, not status. Members share experiments, prompts, tools, failures, launches, and feedback across disciplines, from PMs and developers to creators, coaches, educators, and writers. Curiosity is the entry ticket. Building is how we learn.
Q: Who can benefit from joining Product With Attitude?
A: Builders, creators, indie hackers, educators, product people, writers, and anyone curious about using AI to create value without outsourcing their judgment.
Q: Do I need a technical background to join?
A: Not at all. Many members come from product, design, education, writing, psychology, and community building. You do not need to be technical. You need curiosity and a willingness to build enough to understand what AI is doing to your work.
Q: What’s included in the Premium Membership?
A: Premium unlocks the full resource library, including guides, prompt packs, automations, templates, early access to tools, private community sessions, and a complimentary Discovery Call to map your next steps. You also get access to the tools I build to help creators showcase their work and grow their reach.
Q: Can I use your prompts commercially?
A: Yes, unless a post states otherwise. Please credit Product With Attitude.
Q: Do you cover AI product launches and frontier model releases?
A: Yes. I analyse AI product launches and frontier model releases without the hype, through the lens of someone who builds AI products for a living: what changed, what the product strategy reveals, and what builders, product people, and creators should do next.
Q: What is vibe coding?
A: Vibe coding means using natural language prompts to prototype, model, and build software with AI assistance. Done well, it still requires product judgment, testing, and ownership.
Q: What is the Builder-Parent Paradox?
It is the uncomfortable position of helping build AI while parenting children who will live with its consequences. I do not have certainty. I do have proximity, responsibility, and a very strong reason to stay awake. Read the full essay: The Builder-Parent Paradox.
As always, feel free to DM me, I’m just a message away! I respond to every message.
WHY SUBSCRIBE ・YOUR BENEFITS・ TOOLS I BUILT・CLAUDE HUB・PERPLEXITY HUB ・VIBE CODING HUB
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