I have, like many others, become somewhat obsessed with vibe coding. Im not technical, never have been very capable of building anything, and now, miraculously, I can. It started with Lovable and then Claude Code and now I find myself eagerly fiddling with lots of new tools. It’s not really about utility. It’s somewhat about exploration and understanding what’s out there, and a lot about that rush of “wow, it’s so wild this is possible.” I sometimes call it “work related” but maybe this is what hobbies feel like. I’ve built lots of hodge podge things I never thought I could and shared them with my friends to show off my very mid creations. I’m having fun.

But a nagging truth lingers in my mind even if I don't wan't it there. I don’t really want to build the apps I actually use. I don’t want to have to think about how they look or the perfect prompt or the ideal user flow. I don’t even really want to think about whether or not they use AI in how they deliver me the experiences I desire. Pride in my own creation isn’t worth sub par user experience. Call me lazy but despite the incredible advances in what is possible, I still want the apps that other people build to solve my many problems. I want to speak a dish into the universe and have a platform parse it into its ingredients that then show up on my door. But I dont want to connect claude code to my Instacart and prompt it to do so. I want to describe my dream vacation, have an itinerary appear, and say “lets switch up days 1 and 3, ok, looks good, lets book it.” But I dont want to make the travel planning app—I want it to exist for me and for it to feel perfect.

Much is different about this moment. The ease, the speed, the cost, the scope. But I am not sure this consumer craving to create the software–or the app or module or workflow– is one of those long term things (I feel differently, obviously, on what it does for the prosumer and certainly the enterprise.) It’s awesome to be able to build anything but the problem with the “build anything platforms” is what if I dont know what I want to build, I just know that there are solutions out there that will change how I live? The history of consumer internet value creation revolves around a series of abstractions tightened by constraints. I think that remains as true as ever.

We've been living in the kitchen, watching with amazement at how the dishes come to life, marveling at the newly discovered ease of cooking. But, long term, we want to lean back and feast in the dining room, waiting as we get served courses of delicious products. We have the ingredients but not yet the packaging and the magic for real consumer change.

I feel a bubbling of new AI-driven consumer companies and products about to erupt—new ways for us to connect, games to play, ways to buy, workflows and interfaces that make doing our daily lives easier and more fun. It’s one of the things I’m most excited for this year. But just as with every other technology shift, consumer breakouts won’t make the technology the star of the show but, instead, they’ll highlight the magical consumer moments the technology allows for. We’ve been marveling at the inners but the consumer era will be designed by the scrumptious dishes we get served, made perfectly through lots of little smart choices by chefs that are masters of the craft (with increasingly and wildly easy tools in their hands.) I’m ready to dig in.

I have, like many others, become somewhat obsessed with vibe coding. Im not technical, never have been very capable of building anything, and now, miraculously, I can. It started with Lovable and then Claude Code and now I find myself eagerly fiddling with lots of new tools. It’s not really about utility. It’s somewhat about exploration and understanding what’s out there, and a lot about that rush of “wow, it’s so wild this is possible.” I sometimes call it “work related” but maybe this is what hobbies feel like. I’ve built lots of hodge podge things I never thought I could and shared them with my friends to show off my very mid creations. I’m having fun.

But a nagging truth lingers in my mind even if I don't wan't it there. I don’t really want to build the apps I actually use. I don’t want to have to think about how they look or the perfect prompt or the ideal user flow. I don’t even really want to think about whether or not they use AI in how they deliver me the experiences I desire. Pride in my own creation isn’t worth sub par user experience. Call me lazy but despite the incredible advances in what is possible, I still want the apps that other people build to solve my many problems. I want to speak a dish into the universe and have a platform parse it into its ingredients that then show up on my door. But I dont want to connect claude code to my Instacart and prompt it to do so. I want to describe my dream vacation, have an itinerary appear, and say “lets switch up days 1 and 3, ok, looks good, lets book it.” But I dont want to make the travel planning app—I want it to exist for me and for it to feel perfect.

Much is different about this moment. The ease, the speed, the cost, the scope. But I am not sure this consumer craving to create the software–or the app or module or workflow– is one of those long term things (I feel differently, obviously, on what it does for the prosumer and certainly the enterprise.) It’s awesome to be able to build anything but the problem with the “build anything platforms” is what if I dont know what I want to build, I just know that there are solutions out there that will change how I live? The history of consumer internet value creation revolves around a series of abstractions tightened by constraints. I think that remains as true as ever.

We've been living in the kitchen, watching with amazement at how the dishes come to life, marveling at the newly discovered ease of cooking. But, long term, we want to lean back and feast in the dining room, waiting as we get served courses of delicious products. We have the ingredients but not yet the packaging and the magic for real consumer change.

I feel a bubbling of new AI-driven consumer companies and products about to erupt—new ways for us to connect, games to play, ways to buy, workflows and interfaces that make doing our daily lives easier and more fun. It’s one of the things I’m most excited for this year. But just as with every other technology shift, consumer breakouts won’t make the technology the star of the show but, instead, they’ll highlight the magical consumer moments the technology allows for. We’ve been marveling at the inners but the consumer era will be designed by the scrumptious dishes we get served, made perfectly through lots of little smart choices by chefs that are masters of the craft (with increasingly and wildly easy tools in their hands.) I’m ready to dig in.