11 Comments
User's avatar
Cristian Echeverria's avatar

How to build products now in agentic era without losing IQ?

Marcus Plutowski's avatar

I really like this newsletter, but it does feel like "joy and curiosity" has been somewhat of a misnomer for the last few months. I don't disagree with you about the impact of AI, I use it myself, but to see almost every inbox message start with some stark reminder of how our lives are going to be disrupted -- well, today I noticed an instinctual flinch, which is not the reaction I used to have.

I don't mean to chastise. It's your newsletter, I just read it.

Thorsten Ball's avatar

Valid point! I guess it's this: the series started 78+ weeks ago. A lot has changed in this 78 weeks. That's reflected in my thoughts at the start and in the selection of links. But the name Joy & Curiosity comes mainly from the links which I still select based on whether they fit into these categories.

That being said: the intro does reflect my curiosity at the moment. Maybe a better title would be "Joy || Curiosity"?

Marcus Plutowski's avatar

Haha, I think that'd be a fun amendment!

Marcelo's avatar

What cool software written using agents that have appeared in the last two years do you use and would recommend? Besides Amp of course.

Thorsten Ball's avatar

Ghostty is great and has been written using agents. I imagine that Raycast uses agents too. I also have a lot of small, tiny programs/scripts/helpers that were written by agents.

Marcelo's avatar

I think it would be fair to say that both Ghostty and Raycast are products that gained popularity before agents. I am curious about the new wave of software that was unlocked by agents.

Thorsten Ball's avatar

Not sure! Do people put that in the READMEs? I don't usually try out new software and in our business context we've been buying/using _less_ software from vendors, more home-built stuff. But I do think Cloudflare's stuff that I've been working with has been built with agents, eh?

Justin's avatar

New here. Thought the title was for this particular piece (which I've seen as a trend recently) but glad it is the ongoing thread!

Thorsten Ball's avatar

Yep. I think I need to update how I explain the newsletter. But basically: I collect links of things I find interesting, sometimes I add some commentary at the start, other times a little bit less, and then, very rarely, I send out other standalone pieces without any links :)

Justin's avatar

Classic linked list of the OGs like Kottke/Gruber/Popova. Thank you again!