Insights
AI Websites Suck
Blunt take: most AI websites suck. Not because they're ugly, because they're all face and no engine. A client sent me a gorgeous ChatGPT site where the contact form went nowhere, the call button dialed a fake 888 number, and the SEO fundamentals didn't exist. Most AI site-builder tools are just a single ChatGPT prompt under the hood. Pretty in a preview and working in production are different universes, and a wireframe won't bring a business a single new customer.
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The Vibe Coder to Software Engineer Pipeline
In 2025 everyone swore AI would replace software engineers. They had it backwards. Remember when Excel was going to kill accountants? It made them more powerful instead. Vibe coding is doing the same thing: teaching people to think like engineers and supercharging the ones who already do. Case in point: this week Claude told me to "prompt harder" to fix a misclassified-expense bug, and my engineering brain hard-coded the actual fix instead. Human in the loop is the hill I'll die on.
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The Only Skill That Matters in 2026 Is Systems Thinking
Controversial take for 2026: the most valuable skill isn't coding, it's systems thinking. AI is an incredible engine, but an engine still needs a driver. Anyone can spin up slop in Claude Code; hardening it, catching the failure modes, and steering it is the actual skill. It's why an AI website builder makes garbage and a real system doesn't, and why the "one-person billion-dollar company" is further off than the hype (see the app that shipped HIPAA data on open URLs). Learn to steer.
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On Decision Fatigue
I used to not get "decision fatigue." I'm a decisive, details-obsessed guy, so what's the problem? Then we started scaling toward 5x, and a thousand tiny decisions a day began crossing my desk. Turns out your brain has a fixed daily budget, and the small stupid decisions drain the tank you need for the big ones. So I automate them, delegate them, package them, and hand them to Joe 3.5. Your offer, and your day, should be clear, not clever.
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