Prerna Gupta

founder @ hooked, smule. futurist, writer, singer.

[Prerna Gupta @prernagupta]

Find love. Nourish it. Cherish it.

Nothing else matters ❤️

[Kai Lentit (e/xcel) @KaiLentit]

In 2026, AI models expire faster than session cache.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

A few random notes from claude coding quite a bit last few weeks.

Coding workflow. Given the latest lift in LLM coding capability, like many others I rapidly went from about 80% manual+autocomplete coding and 20% agents in November to 80% agent coding and 20% edits+touchups in December. i.e. I really am mostly programming in English now, a bit sheepishly telling the LLM what code to write... in words. It hurts the ego a bit but the power to operate over software in large "code actions" is just too net useful, especially once you adapt to it, configure it, learn to use it, and wrap your head around what it can and cannot do. This is easily the biggest change to my basic coding workflow in ~2 decades of programming and it happened over the course of a few weeks. I'd expect something similar to be happening to well into double digit percent of engineers out there, while the awareness of it in the general population feels well into low single digit percent.

IDEs/agent swarms/fallability. Both the "no need for IDE anymore" hype and the "agent swarm" hype is imo too much for right now. The models definitely still make mistakes and if you have any code you actually care about I would watch them like a hawk, in a nice large IDE on the side. The mistakes have changed a lot - they are not simple syntax errors anymore, they are subtle conceptual errors that a slightly sloppy, hasty junior dev might do. The most common category is that the models make wrong assumptions on your behalf and just run along with them without checking. They also don't manage their confusion, they don't seek clarifications, they don't surface inconsistencies, they don't present tradeoffs, they don't push back when they should, and they are still a little too sycophantic. Things get better in plan mode, but there is some need for a lightweight inline plan mode. They also really like to overcomplicate code and APIs, they bloat abstractions, they don't clean up dead code after themselves, etc. They will implement an inefficient, bloated, brittle construction over 1000 lines of code and it's up to you to be like "umm couldn't you just do this instead?" and they will be like "of course!" and immediately cut it down to 100 lines. They still sometimes change/remove comments and code they don't like or don't sufficiently understand as side effects, even if it is orthogonal to the task at hand. All of this happens despite a few simple attempts to fix it via instructions in CLAUDE . md. Despite all these issues, it is still a net huge improvement and it's very difficult to imagine going back to manual coding. TLDR everyone has their developing flow, my current is a small few CC sessions on the left in ghostty windows/tabs and an IDE on the right for viewing the code + manual edits.

Tenacity. It's so interesting to watch an agent relentlessly work at something. They never get tired, they never get demoralized, they just keep going and trying things where a person would have given up long ago to fight another day. It's a "feel the AGI" moment to watch it struggle with something for a long time just to come out victorious 30 minutes later. You realize that stamina is a core bottleneck to work and that with LLMs in hand it has been dramatically increased.

Speedups. It's not clear how to measure the "speedup" of LLM assistance. Certainly I feel net way faster at what I was going to do, but the main effect is that I do a lot more than I was going to do because 1) I can code up all kinds of things that just wouldn't have been worth coding before and 2) I can approach code that I couldn't work on before because of knowledge/skill issue. So certainly it's speedup, but it's possibly a lot more an expansion.

Leverage. LLMs are exceptionally good at looping until they meet specific goals and this is where most of the "feel the AGI" magic is to be found. Don't tell it what to do, give it success criteria and watch it go. Get it to write tests first and then pass them. Put it in the loop with a browser MCP. Write the naive algorithm that is very likely correct first, then ask it to optimize it while preserving correctness. Change your approach from imperative to declarative to get the agents looping longer and gain leverage.

Fun. I didn't anticipate that with agents programming feels *more* fun because a lot of the fill in the blanks drudgery is removed and what remains is the creative part. I also feel less blocked/stuck (which is not fun) and I experience a lot more courage because there's almost always a way to work hand in hand with it to make some positive progress. I have seen the opposite sentiment from other people too; LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building.

Atrophy. I've already noticed that I am slowly starting to atrophy my ability to write code manually. Generation (writing code) and discrimination (reading code) are different capabilities in the brain. Largely due to all the little mostly syntactic details involved in programming, you can review code just fine even if you struggle to write it.

Slopacolypse. I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media. We're also going to see a lot more AI hype productivity theater (is that even possible?), on the side of actual, real improvements.

Questions. A few of the questions on my mind:
- What happens to the "10X engineer" - the ratio of productivity between the mean and the max engineer? It's quite possible that this grows *a lot*.
- Armed with LLMs, do generalists increasingly outperform specialists? LLMs are a lot better at fill in the blanks (the micro) than grand strategy (the macro).
- What does LLM coding feel like in the future? Is it like playing StarCraft? Playing Factorio? Playing music?
- How much of society is bottlenecked by digital knowledge work?

TLDR Where does this leave us? LLM agent capabilities (Claude & Codex especially) have crossed some kind of threshold of coherence around December 2025 and caused a phase shift in software engineering and closely related. The intelligence part suddenly feels quite a bit ahead of all the rest of it - integrations (tools, knowledge), the necessity for new organizational workflows, processes, diffusion more generally. 2026 is going to be a high energy year as the industry metabolizes the new capability.

[Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉 @DanielLurie]

As your mayor, my top priority every single day is keeping San Francisco safe. With the support of local law enforcement, community leaders, and the appropriate federal law enforcement partners, we’re achieving that goal without compromising our values or our laws. As a result, violent crime has fallen to levels not seen since the 1950s, tent encampments are at record lows, and for the first time in years, San Franciscans believe our city is moving in the right direction.

There is no question we have more work to do. I ran for mayor because I see the impact of fentanyl use on our streets—when I drop my son off at school, when I talk to our business and community leaders, when I walk through the city in between meetings. My administration is working every day to make our city better.

Our local law enforcement already has longstanding partnerships with state and federal law enforcement to shut down open-air drug markets through our Drug Market Agency Coordination Center. To continue getting fentanyl off the street, we would welcome stronger coordination with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to execute targeted operations, arrest drug dealers, and disrupt drug markets and multinational cartels. I trust our police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and district attorney to work together to keep our city safe—and with the right coordinated support from our state and federal partners they will have the tools to advance this critical work.

I am deeply grateful to the members of our military for their service to our country, but the National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers—and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer.

Under my leadership, we will always protect the people and the values that make San Francisco the greatest city in the world. That means welcoming people in our city and standing up for every member of our community and for the longstanding policies that have kept our communities safe. As your mayor, that has been and always will be my north star.

[Prerna Gupta @prernagupta]

crime in SF is at record lows

[Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉 @DanielLurie]

As your mayor, my top priority every single day is keeping San Francisco safe. With the support of local law enforcement, community leaders, and the appropriate federal law enforcement partners, we’re achieving that goal without compromising our values or our laws. As a result, violent crime has fallen to levels not seen since the 1950s, tent encampments are at record lows, and for the first time in years, San Franciscans believe our city is moving in the right direction.

There is no question we have more work to do. I ran for mayor because I see the impact of fentanyl use on our streets—when I drop my son off at school, when I talk to our business and community leaders, when I walk through the city in between meetings. My administration is working every day to make our city better.

Our local law enforcement already has longstanding partnerships with state and federal law enforcement to shut down open-air drug markets through our Drug Market Agency Coordination Center. To continue getting fentanyl off the street, we would welcome stronger coordination with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to execute targeted operations, arrest drug dealers, and disrupt drug markets and multinational cartels. I trust our police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and district attorney to work together to keep our city safe—and with the right coordinated support from our state and federal partners they will have the tools to advance this critical work.

I am deeply grateful to the members of our military for their service to our country, but the National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers—and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer.

Under my leadership, we will always protect the people and the values that make San Francisco the greatest city in the world. That means welcoming people in our city and standing up for every member of our community and for the longstanding policies that have kept our communities safe. As your mayor, that has been and always will be my north star.

[Rafa Nadal @RafaelNadal]

Mil gracias a todos
Many thanks to all
Merci beaucoup à tous
Grazie mille à tutti
谢谢大家
شكرا لكم جميعا
תודה לכולכם
Obrigado a todos
Vielen Dank euch allen
Tack alla
Хвала свима
Gràcies a tots

[Guillaume H. @theGioM]

🌊 TIDEBORNE
An animated short film about a mystical creature caught between sea and shore, struggling to find its place in a world that rejects it.

A journey of change, identity, and the pull of the unknown - created from scratch in just 48 hours for @runwayml #GEN48

Every single visual, voice, music and SFX is AI-generated.
I HIGHLY advise watching it in 4K on Youtube (link in first comment below).

Enjoy :)

[Prerna Gupta @prernagupta]

@iansimon @pcastr @indianmusic haven't heard this perspective before, but now that you mention it, I agree!

[Parag Chordia @indianmusic]

After all, attention is scarce and content is already abundant. There are 186 million tracks on Spotify, with 100K added daily, and 86% with less than 1000 plays.

[Parag Chordia @indianmusic]

The genie is out of the bottle and ultimately whether through bulk licensing, royalties, or free-rein based on transformational use, Music AI is here to stay. History shows that it is much more likely to enrich musical culture than destroy it. 🚀🎶

[Parag Chordia @indianmusic]

"The electric bass is a soulless plank of wood, incapable of the warmth and nuance of the upright bass."

"Real music is played by humans, not programmed by machines."

"Auto-Tune is the death of true artistry in singing.”

[Parag Chordia @indianmusic]

"The electric guitar is an abomination, it will never be accepted in serious music circles." A sentiment expressed by some jazz purists of the time. — Django Reinhardt

[Parag Chordia @indianmusic]

Is Music AI the death of human creativity? 🎵👇

Music AI seems to have touched a nerve. Recently, the great and the good of music, including Stevie Wonder, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, R.E.M., and Katy Perry signed a letter declaring that Music AI’s “... assault on human creativity has to be stopped.”

[Justine Moore @venturetwins]

The best AI show I’ve seen, no notes.

Truly perfection of the format 👌

(from NeuralViz on IG)

[Mike Hoffmann @MikeHoffmann]

I found a guy who goes around the US asking 70 to 100-year-olds their:

• Biggest Regrets
• Biggest Lessons
• Advice to their younger self

Oddly enough, most of their answers are the same…

Here are my top 8:

[Matt Griswold @griswold]

The OpenAI story.

[Prerna Gupta @prernagupta]

@iamsternlicht just emailed you! happy to help

[Prerna Gupta @prernagupta]

@bayareawriter i admire you!

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

17-year-old Notorious B.I.G. freestyling in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

[Greg Brockman @gdb]

Plugins for processing a video clip, no ffmpeg wizardry required. Actual use-case from today's launch.

[Ron Conway @RonConway]

.@svangel and I are proud to join this group of investors supporting SVB for a timely resumption of business