It’s not a surprise that Apple chooses to respect the privacy point, and not the interoperability. This has been Apple’s MO for the full Cook era and obviously serves their short-term business objectives. But the world is moving on and it remains to be seen if Apple’s strategy is correct.¹

Every single line of code² on this site has been written by AI. Mostly with Codex but with Claude as well when I ran out of tokens. The original idea, two years ago, was to test how simple it would be to get a static site up and running. I got it working, but I just didn't use the blog at all and left it rotting on the Internet until a few days ago when I got an itch to do something with it.

While I am somewhat of a heavy user of AI, refactoring the earlier site really made it tangible how much the AI workflow has changed in the last two years. From chat & copy-pasting to building with agents is more than a vibe change, it's the difference between being knee-deep in code blocks and letting an assistant handle the dirty parts while you try to decide and express clearly what you really want³.

Instead of chatting and doing cmd-c/cmd-v between ChatGPT and VS Code, the new way of working is about brainstorming and planning with AI in the terminal⁴, with execution largely hidden. Getting different options and changing anything from layout to publishing workflow is almost too easy. What would a different layout look like? Just command⁵ AI to create four different options and choose one, or discard all of them.

It would be easy to say no one is going to need professionally built software anymore. In fact, after all this I have more respect for professional developers who are able to direct agents to a more robust solution without hours of back-and-forth. Solving those "pesky" little problems like syncing across devices and protecting content integrity is a lot harder than it sounds.

I might feel differently in two more years, but I still mostly want to use apps someone else made. A well-designed and thoughtful app made by someone who cares about it is a joy.

Empowerment doesn't take away respect for professional work.

Peek into how Anthropic Labs works. No documents, only prototypes when building with Claude and small teams doing holistic work without strict role boundaries.

I wonder how much of this is possible due to the nature of products Anthropic does as well as their funding situation, and how much is about the optimal way for working with AI.

When factories converted from steam power to electricity in the 1880s, they swapped out the engines and did nothing else. The floor plan and workflow didn’t change. For three decades, output barely moved. Only when companies redesigned their factories and process around the new technology did they see an increase in output.

While the analogy doesn't fully work (not sure whether replacing steam with electricity doubled the operating costs) but the message is clear: until we redesign the ways of working, we won't see the full benefits. I have been thinking a lot about this especially regarding async coding practices and mainly about decoupling the human time from the coding effect. Then again, Dan Shipper was just arguing for tight coupling agents and humans so maybe the redesign is something else.