Working with AI is frictionless. One message produces polished landing pages, complete brand guidelines, and working apps. But we are skipping the “productive friction,” says @vanlancker, partner at @terraincap. Learning happens through trial and error: Attempt, fail, dissect, try again. Preserving friction, Willem argues, could make work in the AI age more methodical and meaningful. Read Willem’s Thesis Statement:

AI is getting good at video generation. But the movie industry won’t die. Human actors and screenwriters aren’t going anywhere, because acting and screenwriting are jobs only humans can do well. @NirZicherman, cofounder and CEO of @oboelabs, expects models to streamline financing, casting calls, and logistics—work peripheral to the creative core. Read Nir’s Thesis Statement:

.@kplikethebird on building an AI writing plugin that improves over time. Katie doesn't write in a chat window anymore. Instead of starting fresh in a Claude or ChatGPT project, every piece she writes runs through a system she built in the Claude desktop app—that already knows her voice, her style, and how she wants a draft to come together. That system is Compound Writing. In February, she downloaded @kieranklaassen's Compound Engineering plugin and asked Claude to help her build the same thing, but for writing. She's spent the past six months building on it since, drawing on more than a decade of professional writing experience. In a recent AI & I episode, Katie unpacks how she built the plugin and how she uses it day-to-day. Link to the full episode:

Very little is free in NYC. But if you're an Every subscriber, our afterparty for Thesis: 2027 costs exactly $0. Your agent can work late. You have a party to go to. DJ. Passed bites. Open bar. And more. 🥳 Join us at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. 🪩 November 5, 2026. 6–9 p.m. 🎟️ Tickets are limited. Grab yours today:

CONFIRMED: @Bencera, founder of @polsia, is speaking at Thesis, our inaugural conference on work and AI. Polsia has one founder and zero employees. Its agents research ideas, build products, handle customer support, and market what they make while he sleeps. Then Ben let the agent fundraise. He says he gave Polsia his inbox, every investor question he’d been asked, and a list of 200 investors. The agent ran the process until the final meeting. Thirty days later, he closed a $30 million round. At Thesis, we’ll ask: What is a company when the org chart is one person and a fleet of agents? Join Ben and speakers from @NotionHQ and @OpenAI on Nov. 5 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Apply to attend:

3 prompts to write better with AI: 1. Find stories that matter to your readers. Template adapted from @miyadavid. The reader is [describe your target reader] with [their existing knowledge or experience] in [topic or field]. They [describe relevant circumstances: their work, interests, responsibilities, or community] and care most about [their priorities, questions, or challenges]. 2. Run your manuscript through an AI review. Prompt by @kevinroose. I need you to plan an editing and fact-checking process for this manuscript that goes beyond checking spelling, dates, and other basic details. I want rigorous, well-researched feedback from several agents working chapter by chapter, each with a different area of expertise. I want these notes to reflect deep knowledge—as if written by someone with the entire history of AI stuffed in their head. 3. Give your research a first-pass fact-check. Adapted from @awsamuel. Review this research brief for factual accuracy. Check every claim against its original source, assess each source’s credibility and recency, and flag unsupported assertions. Return a fact-by-fact table with verdicts, citations, and recommended changes, then provide an annotated brief and a corrected version. Find the full prompts in @lauraentis's article:

It’s easier to imagine doomsday than a free Tuesday afternoon, says @paulmillerd. Paul, author of The Pathless Path and Good Work, calls us to take off our job goggles and see that our lives are already full of work. We aren’t paid to change our childkid’s diaper or cook dinner. Read Paul’s Thesis Statement:

The best way to survive a Monday meeting might be to never attend it in the first place. With our @SlackHQ agent, @danshipper catches up on calls he wasn't even in. Want to get your own company agent in Slack? Our beta is open, and our agent is free to install -

.@yoheinakajima has a tool that writes a 20- to 40-page industry report in 30 minutes. It generates faster than he can read. The cofounder and GP of @UntappedVC—and creator of @babyAGI_—can start more than he'll ever finish. Every tool he adds produces more for him to get through, and that's what takes up his day now. Once we get used to these AI tools being an extension of ourselves, it'll feel like we're a carpenter who's been using a hammer their whole life, he writes. Read Yohei’s Thesis Statement:

🍃 Tea Leaves: Bending Spoons is on a discount shopping spree buying SaaS companies at big discounts. A few weeks ago they acquired airtable for a similar gap. SaaS businesses don't seem to be faring too well in the AI boom. We're super bullish on this for them if they then make each app agent native. Big if. This is a huge opportunity for anyone who wants to take advantage of depressed SaaS valuations.

We asked 5 writers how they use AI: @awsamuel uses AI to get past writer’s block. @danshipper lets AI write his sentences but pushes back on its suggestions. @kevinroose uses AI for research, transcription, and fact-checking—but writes the book himself. @Mappletons uses AI to find gaps in her research and connections she’s missed. @miyadavid tests story ideas with an AI version of her target reader. In this piece, @lauraentis interviews 5 writers to learn where AI helps, where it disappoints, and what great writing with AI looks like:

.@kieranklaassen was shipping more than ever with AI. He also felt his understanding slipping. “My mind increasingly felt like a TikTok feed—full of short-lived hits of dopamine that left nothing behind.” Last year, he stopped reading code because AI wrote it so well. Now, he’s looking at diffs—the line-by-line view of what changed—to keep his judgment sharp. Kieran suggests 4 ways to keep training your brain: 1. Reopen code you merged without reading. Ask about unfamiliar choices and keep a list of the gaps in your understanding. 2. Ask the agent to trace how the system works from start to finish. A diff can omit steps you need to understand. 3. Determine why a safeguard exists. What looks needlessly complicated may be a response to a failure you haven’t learned about yet. 4. Have the model quiz you after a session. Let tests decide whether the code can merge. Use missed questions to decide what to learn next.

WebMCP is so in. It's MCP, but the tools live inside the web page. Any agent in your browser can use them, with your login, no server required. We've added WebMCP support to two of our products: @usemonologue and @coracomputer And our website, too.

AI writing can sound robotic. But it doesn’t have to. Enter: Compound Writing. Most people use AI for writing like a vending machine: one prompt in, finished piece out. Then they're disappointed when it doesn't sound like them. @kplikethebird uses AI to write every day, but she doesn’t let it draft a whole piece for her in one shot. Before she drafts, the model interviews her with 15-30 questions to draw out her thinking. Then it outlines, drafts, and reviews with her, one section at a time. When a session teaches her something worth keeping, she saves it to her voice and style files. The next piece gets a head start. She packaged the whole process as a free open-source plugin for Claude Code and Codex, with reviewer personas like /hitchcock (does the reader lean in?) and /sorkin (does it move?). Compound Writing, the ultimate guide:

“How do you level up an entire company to use AI?” This is probably the most burning question execs have for our consultants @NataliaZarina and @hammer_mt. Their answer: Create shared workflows, shared examples, and shared standards. 1,000 employees maintaining 1,000 private prompt folders is a nightmare. You want those workflows to become skills that anyone in the company can use. Read more tips from our AI consulting team:

Anthropic shipped Fable 5.1 and OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Astra days apart, and we've been busy vibe checking both. Tomorrow, we'll show you how we're putting them to work: writing, research, and agents we hand tasks to and walk away from. @danshipper and the team will demo what’s working, help you set it up yourself, and answer your questions. RSVP here: