For the first time, this isn’t AI-generated or scripted — it’s a live, unscripted monologue recorded early in the morning, just before heading to work. No plan, no outline. Just me speaking freely, partly for anyone listening, and partly for myself.
I wanted to try this format because the last few weeks have felt intense. The pace of change in AI — especially what many are calling the agentic era — has accelerated in a way that feels qualitatively different from past hype cycles. This time, it feels real. And with that comes both excitement and stress.
One recurring feeling I talk about is how traditional software moats are eroding. Having large codebases, teams of engineers, and long-lived products used to be a clear advantage. Increasingly, those same assets can also become constraints. The more you own, the more you have to maintain — and the slower you can move. There’s a growing case for minimalism: owning less, building faster, and treating software as something that can be created, adapted, and discarded quickly.
Internally, we’ve been pushing agentic coding tools hard, especially Claude Code. I’ve experimented with AI-assisted development for a long time — Cursor, VS Code integrations, Codex, and others — but something clicked recently. Around early December, the combination of Claude Code, Opus 4.5, and effectively unlimited usage changed how productive these tools felt. It finally started working the way it should. That shift has been genuinely mind-altering.
Zooming out, I’m broadly optimistic. The evolution of AI and agentic tools is good for society and the economy, even if the transition will be messy. Uncertainty creates opportunity, and builders who enjoy being at the frontier are likely to thrive. We may even be closer to AGI than many previously thought, which means second-order effects we haven’t anticipated yet — including in areas like healthcare, where people closest to real problems could now build their own solutions at almost no cost.
Of course, most people won’t take advantage of this. Just like with the internet, the tools will empower a minority — but that minority is no longer blocked by access to capital, engineering teams, or specialized skills. Ideas and the will to execute are becoming the main bottlenecks.
This episode is short, informal, and experimental. I’m not yet sure if this format will continue, but it felt worth trying. Sometimes thinking out loud is the best way to understand what’s actually changing.
More to come — maybe.
