Completion, Chat, Agent, Claw
I installed OpenClaw before it was cool. That was unwise. I could see it was a security nightmare: prompt injections from anywhere, connected to all my stuff. But I decided to give…
Tech
Dan Shapiro.
Glowforge CEO on AI-driven software development, technical deflation, and the economics of automation.
Recent essays
15 of 15The Genie and the Monkey’s Paw
Does your AI try to make your dreams come true? Or does it do what you asked for, no matter the cost? Today Anthropic shipped Opus 4.7. From the release notes: Opus…
Putting AI on the Therapy Couch
Today, Anthropic dropped their newest, biggest model. Sort of. They published reams of information about Claude Mythos Preview, their largest and most capable model yet, but declined to actually release it –…
The Overnight Webcam App
I’ve been working with teams on applying Dark Factory principles to build software with AI. There are a few tools to do this, but my favorite is trycycle.ai. It’s just a skill.…
Dark Factories: Rise of the Trycycle
Companies are now producing Dark Factories – engines that turn specs into shipping software. The implementations can be complex and sometimes involve Mad Max metaphors. But they don’t have to be like…
You Don’t Write the Code. You Don’t Read the Code Either.
A few months ago, I walked into Justin McCarthy’s office at StrongDM and noticed something wrong with his colleague Jay’s monitor. He had a Google Spreadsheet open. Columns, rows, formatting – it…
The Five Levels: from Spicy Autocomplete to the Dark Factory
In my last post, I wrote about technical deflation. We’re seeing the cost of code is dropping so fast that we need to change our tech debt payment plans. The smart teams…
This is a Time of Technical Deflation
Day over day, year over year, AI is driving down the cost of writing code. Economists have a word for what happens when stuff keeps getting cheaper: deflation. And you do things…
I made the XKCD impossible app without any words
I’ve been impressed with AI Studio’s Apps for prototyping. https://aistudio.google.com/apps So I decided to give it the ultimate challenge: I pasted in XKCD 1425, and nothing else. I’ll let you be the…
Sora Dresses Me Funny: GenAI As Fashion Consultant
My wife pointed out that most of my shirts predate the pandemic, and it was time to shop for something new. This is not something I enjoy. So, like most things I…
I accidentally ported Steve Yegge’s Beads to Windows
Tuesday, 9:40am, Seattle. Whatsapp buzzed. Harper sent a link – a new project from Steve Yegge that makes AI agents more effective. Worth a try. I opened Codex CLI* in Powershell and…
Slot Machine Development
Something new is possible. Four weeks ago, I braved the gaggle of Waymos nosing around the Presidio to check out Connected Stack. I plopped next to my buddy James Cham, notorious partner…
The 10 Forever Rules of AI
June 2023. ChatGPT was six months old. We’d launched our first AI feature, Magic Canvas, three months before. I was meeting with our friends at Joann Fabric (may they rest in polyester)…
Who have I ever visited in…
Every time I travel to a city, I wrack my brain to try to remember who lives there so I can reach out to visit. And I’m terrible at it. So I…
My new side project at Wharton
(Yes, the day job is still Glowforge and lasers, and I still love it!) I’ve signed on as a research fellow at Wharton’s Generative AI Lab with the incredible Drs Ethan and Lilach Mollick.…