u/ExtensionDry5132

10 months ago I launched Layoff Today in 48 hours using Lovable.

The first version was basically an MVP:

• Lovable for the prototype and product flow
• Supabase for data
• cron tasks for monitoring
• Preplexity for layoff research
• Vercel for hosting

At the time, the biggest win was speed. I could go from idea to public product in a few days.

But after launch, I realized the real challenge was not building the UI.

The real challenge was operating a media/data product every single day.

So I started adding automation layer by layer.

First, I added Perplexity into my workflow. Every day, scheduled tasks researched new layoff announcements, collected source links, and prepared raw findings.

Then I started rebuilding the product more seriously.

Using Claude Code, I completely redesigned the UI and moved away from the rough MVP look. The goal was to make Layoff Today feel less like a weekend prototype and more like a real media/data product.

The biggest shift was adding AI agents for daily operations.

Today, the workflow looks more like this:

1. Research agent Finds new layoff announcements from different public sources.
2. Classification agent Checks whether the event is actually a layoff, restructuring, closure, hiring freeze, or unrelated news.
3. Deduplication agent This turned out to be the hardest part. Different sources often report the same layoff with slightly different wording, numbers, dates, and company names.
4. Brief generation agent Turns raw findings into a structured internal brief with company, industry, location, number of affected employees, source confidence, and context.
5. Draft generation agent Creates a publishable draft, title, summary, tags, and related metadata.
6. Quality gate agent Checks if the story has enough source support, if the numbers make sense, if it looks duplicated, and if it needs human review before publishing.
7. SMM agents Based on each layoff alert, agents generate post drafts for Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.

So Lovable helped me ship the first version fast.

Claude helped me redesign and improve the product.

Perplexity helped with research.

AI agents now help operate the media workflow daily.

The biggest lesson so far:

Automating writing is not the hard part.

The hard parts are:

• avoiding duplicate stories
• finding reliable data
• classifying messy real-world events
• keeping quality gates before publishing
• building workflows where AI helps, but does not blindly publish everything
• keeping SMM templates consistent

I still keep human review in the loop, especially for sensitive stories. Layoffs affect real people, so I do not want a system that just auto-publishes low-confidence content.

Next I’m thinking about automating:

• internal page linking
• weekly industry reports
• layoff maps
• guides and useful resources for people who lost their jobs

Curious what you would build next.

Also happy to share more details about the agent workflow, deduplication logic, or how I use Lovable together with Claude and other AI tools.