Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

— Adapted from Chuang Tzu, one of the founding figures of Daoism.

Write a short story a week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

— Ray Bradbury

I recognized that I’ve been approaching code much more as a system than before. In particular, a code repository is a system that can be broken down into:

• Components: packages/directories that group the tasks.
• Sub-components: files that logically separate the business logic.
• Details: the contents of those files driving the implementation.
• Connections: interfaces in the form of APIs & MCPs.
• Inputs: configurations in the form of YAML, JSON, env variables, and user inputs.
• Outputs: artifacts that can take different shapes and sizes.
• Supporting infrastructure: documentation, testing, tooling, etc. to hold all of the above in place and maintain it.

The key differentiator today is that I don’t spend time on the details. I still review the rest, but often with AI assistance rather than by scrolling through a UI.

There is a lot of detail I’m overlooking, and in some cases, you still need to look at the code. Nuance and circumstance matter.

However, for the vast majority of cases, code is just a system. With AI, we just don’t need to worry about the details.

He had a few cool callouts:

• StatsD uses UDP because dropping some data is fine in high-volume/high-throughput analytics environments.
• S3 doesn’t support multi-key atomic updates.
• Unicorn has no shared mutable state between server instances.
• SQLite is just a file.

We all know things need to be kept simple, yet we find ourselves overcomplicating them. Sometimes, it’s human nature, and we just need to catch our peers, and ourselves, in the act.

The harder part goes beyond the requirements we set for ourselves. It extends into requirements we get from our users or clients. The larger the client, the less malleable the requirements. This is where understanding, challenging, compromising on, and aligning on requirements are critical. And it’s not always a binary choice between accepting and rejecting a requirement. More often than not, it’s about building a roadmap of milestones so you do not sacrifice delivery to satisfy every requirement and instead focus only on the ones that are critical at any point in time. In some ways, we’re reinventing agile. In other ways, it’s incentive alignment to create a win-win scenario.

So when requirements come up, don’t always accept them at face value. Also, don’t reject them outright. Identify which are critical for the business, and then stagger them accordingly to balance customer asks, security, and the need to deliver value as fast as possible.

This acceleration makes human attention the bottleneck for agent output. Even among non-technical employees, reading all the output of their Claude agents would take half their work week. In response, employees turn to “meta-work,” of building visibility tools and monitoring agent pipelines.

— Nathan Wilmers, Regina Catipon, Maxim Massenkoff, and Peter McCrory, How employment is changing at Anthropic, October 16, 2026.

My mission is to help every human achieve their full potential.

Practically, I do so through a software lens at the boundary of hardware and the physical world.

Buy You a Coffee

Whenever you’re in line at Starbucks, buy the person in front of you their order.

Firstly, it’s just nice and fun.

Secondly, it could become a viral social companion with very short chores that make people feel good.

People at coffee shops don’t actually want to be working. They like to be distracted and ask questions.

It’s a good place to do product research.

What if you offered people free coffee at Starbucks in exchange for doing user research?

Chrome Extensions as an AI Platform

Chrome extensions might be the best AI platform.

While Google, OpenAI, Perplexity, and others are off forking Chromium to build a browser, extensions offer native UX, zero friction, no vendor lock-in, and built-in distribution.

X Swipe

A Tinder-like app for cleaning up an X or Instagram feed: swipe to keep or unfollow people.

Voice Notes You Don’t Hate

Ephemeral links for voice notes, with transcripts, summaries, and bullet points. Spend as much or as little time diving into a long voice note as you want.

Geo Maps

A Google Maps-like experience for geotechnical engineers to upload borehole data and explore it spatially.

Sauna Pants

Specialized equipment for sweating and cold plunging, with pockets for ice packs.

Naming Is Context

Naming is more important than ever. It’s context. Good names reduce cognitive bloat for agents and humans.

Semi-Automation

People love automation; I love semi-automation. It’s the parents’ principle on steroids.

A CLI with an Embedded LLM

Every CLI should come with a small embedded LLM that explains how to use it and answers questions. It could use an embedded vector store or a sufficiently large context window.

RAG and Context Engineering

RAG was a workaround for not having enough context. Now it is a solution for providing the right context. Context engineering matters.

AI Enables Exploration and Execution

AI doesn’t just make existing work faster. It makes more experiments possible — including experiments you otherwise would not have attempted.

TestFlight for Chrome Extensions

A way to distribute and test Chrome extensions with the simplicity of TestFlight.

A Sharpe Ratio for Startups

A framework for comparing startup risk and return across factors such as whether the company is bootstrapped and whether the founder is a first-timer.

RAG for GitHub Repositories

A tool that builds useful context from the repositories I’ve started and makes it easy to ask questions across them.

Pre 2024

These are older project ideas preserved as titles from an earlier idea archive:

• tl;dr Hacker News
• Tesla Coin
• Smart Tutor Bots
• Crypto-Driven Ground Truth Labels
• NFT Customer Appreciation as a Service
• Crypto Credentialing
• Acquire AI — board/video game
• iOS training app for squat mechanics
• Timestamp my model on the blockchain to prove that it works
• NFTicket
• Developer Productivity
• Real Market Cap
• Index Hacker News
• GPTrade
• GPTweet
• GPT-Snip
• Hardware for cutting my own hair
• How Are You?
• ProveIt — crypto and Chrome
• GetSoils v2
• GoodRecs — large-language recommender
• GPTDating
• Twitter Chain
• What’s That Tool? — GitHub, Hacker News, and more
• Catch Me Up! — Discord, Telegram, and more

2024 TIX Archive

Directories for APIs and Businesses

Directories for LLM API providers, RPC lists, or businesses with specific revenue thresholds or identifiers.

Death App for Mindfulness

A desktop app that reminds you of mortality and prompts deep breaths for mindfulness.

Substack Table of Contents

Create well-organized tables of contents for Substack entries.

Fine-Tuned Reddit Success Models

Train a model using Reddit posts to predict or enhance content success.

Swimming Goggles with a Branding Angle

Alongside sauna pants, explore a distinctive branding project for swimming goggles.

Leadership in Technical Companies

Write about technical versus non-technical leadership in technology companies.

The Counter-Mantra Perspective

Every mantra has a counter-mantra. Explore that duality in life and work.

Stream of Thought for LLMs

Turn the Stream of Thought framework into a GPT or learning tool: less Chain of Thought, more deliberately letting ideas spill out.

The Acquirer’s Podcast Extractor

Use an LLM to extract key moments, shorts, fun facts, and notes from podcast transcripts.

Instruction Manual Outsourcing

Let friends submit quirks and insights about you through a link, then use an LLM to generate a personal instruction manual.

Hackathon Food Service

Offer healthier, high-protein hackathon food that is as convenient as pizza, with dietary preferences and per-person pricing built in.

Hot PotTON / TON Potato

A hot-potato smart contract on TON: pay to pass it on, and maybe win when you do.

X Liking AI Agent

An AI agent with limited daily likes, connected to a truth terminal and potentially Stripe.

Todoist Voice Assistant

Send voice-to-text transcriptions directly into Todoist through a shortcut or API integration.

Emojisense for Twitter

A Chrome extension that provides emoji-based sentiment analysis for Twitter.

Philanthropy Shopping

A shopping platform where friends store clothing sizes for one another, with a possible focus on helping less privileged women.

Social Media Unfollowing

Review social connections and unfollow accounts that no longer provide value or relevance.

Hot Potato for Conversational AI

A gamified “hot potato” tonality analyzer for conversational AI.

Hot or Not for LLMs

An endpoint that rates AI-generated content or ideas.

Discord Summarization Tool

Summarize Discord chats for easier consumption and tracking.

USDT Payroll System

Payroll using USDT for smoother cross-border payments.

AI Agent for Event Planning

A specialized AI assistant for planning events.

Weave: Calorie Tracker in the Gut

Explore a device that stays in the stomach and tracks calorie intake.

MrBeast’s Onboarding Document

Write about MrBeast’s onboarding practices and what other teams can learn from them.

Podcast Platform for Friends

A casual podcasting platform that lets any two friends build an audience together.

RAG for Construction

Apply retrieval-augmented generation to streamline construction processes.

Better Audiobooks with LLMs

An audiobook experience with summaries, interactive notes, and deeper exploration powered by LLMs.

Paul Graham: The Manifesto

Turn Paul Graham’s writing into an Almanack-style book, audiobook, podcast, and notes experience, potentially with a personal prologue.

Yuri Milner Manifest Audiobook

Explore an audiobook narrated in a simulated Yuri Milner voice.

Micro Subscriptions

Subscribers pay a fixed amount, then distribute it among creators based on their applause, kudos, or likes.

Products That Remove Hoops

The best product is the one that charges people to go through the hoops they would otherwise have to navigate themselves.

Living Legends

A blog series profiling enduring people by domain, including their history, era, and commonalities.

The Two Friends Podcast

A platform for any two friends to start a conversation, build an audience, and grow together.

epostgres.com

Turn a GitHub repository into its own website with demos, examples, perspectives, history, and relevant advertising.

Mermaid Flow GitHub Workflow

Turn useful Mermaid diagrams into a manually triggered GitHub workflow.

Senior Engineer LLM Code Review Helper

An LLM that suggests clearer names, more sustainable structures, and reusable test helpers during code review.

Uncensored Hot-or-Not Vision Endpoint

An intentionally provocative, paid vision endpoint that rates looks and spreads through influencers.

Swipe to Unfollow

Make cleaning up any social feed as easy as swiping, starting with X.

Stablecoin Products

Double down on USDT and USDC through payroll, ATMs, and payments.

AI Agent Career Description

An agent that reviews documents, emails, and conversations to create the job description for the role someone is actually doing.

WhatsApp Fine-Tuning

Use a person’s WhatsApp history to fine-tune a model to write in their tone.

WhatsApp Speech-to-Text

Forward a voice note to a special account that transcribes or summarizes it.

WhatsApp Voice Note Chrome Extension

A Chrome extension or special account that transcribes and summarizes voice notes.

“Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore.”

“All models are wrong, but some models are useful."

— George Box

“One can hoodwink their way to $10M. One can only earn their way to $10B.”

“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed."

— William Gibson

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability."

— Edsger W. Dijkstra

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

— Alan Kay

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it."

— Alan Perlis

“Never let short-term greed get in the way of long-term greed.”

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

— Carl Jung

“What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain."

— Maya Angelou

“The trick is to fix the problem you have, rather than the problem you want."

— Bram Cohen

“No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Anything can be learnt and mastered with enough time, effort and focus.”

“Expertise is a toolbox and experience is knowing which tool to use."

— Daniel Olshansky

“Figure out what you want to do vs what you want to want to do. Now do it."

— Daniel Olshansky

“Patience with results. Impatience with action.”

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years."

— Bill Gates

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

“The perfectionist is never satisfied… Perfectionism is not a quest for the best; it is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves.”

“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”

— Bob Dylan

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

— Bruce Lee

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”

— John Maxwell

“The mind reflects the room and the room reflects the mind.”

— Mike Rosario

“Earn your leadership every day.”

— Michael Jordan

“AI is indefinite abundance and crypto is definite scarcity.”

— Sam Altman

“Tech debt is a ‘know it when you see it’ kind of thing.”

— Tom MacWright

“There is superstition about creativity, and for that matter, about thinking in every sense.”

— Pamela McCorduck

“Read the paper, things have never been worse. Read history, things have never been better.”

— Fergus Cullen

“Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them.”

— Epictetus

“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it.”

— Grace Hopper

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

— Bruce Lee

“I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language.”

— Kobe Bryant

“Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise.”

— Frank Ocean

“Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time… Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

— Evan Williams

“Start with something that sucks, and then remove the suck.”

— Pixar

“I don’t know much, but I know one thing: the ordinary life isn’t for me.”

— Shawn Purri

“You can’t fix a problem with the same thinking that created it.”

— Albert Einstein

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, only looking backwards.”

— Steve Jobs

“The whole is simpler than its parts.”

— Josiah Gibbs

“The big money isn’t in the buying and selling, it’s in the waiting.”

— Charlie Munger

“Common sense is the least common commodity.”

— Li Lu

“Everything in human life is really about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

— Oscar Wilde

“We might be wrong but we’re not confused.”

— Tomer Cohen

“Write for yourself, not for others. Apply this to everything you write.”

— Daniel Olshansky

“If I’m a little bit confused, others definitely are too.”

— Daniel Olshansky

“You’ve got more than one shot. Don’t be afraid to repost content.”

— Daniel Olshansky

“Imagine you listen to your self five years from now on a podcast. Do whatever would make your future self inspire you today.”

— Daniel Olshansky

“The difference between a senior and junior engineer is that a senior engineer never says, ‘I’m 100% sure.’”

— Daniel Olshansky

“The right level of tech debt balances speed with sustainability. Too much or too little can hinder progress.”

— Daniel Olshansky