Francois Lanthier Nadeau

founder @SaaSpasse. SaaS, startups, stories. ex-CEO @snipcart (acquired by Duda)

[Lucas Crespo @lucas__crespo]

A few unexpected cool use-cases unlocked by ChatGPT's new intelligent UI

1. You can customize how responses look like

[jason @jxnlco]

i lacked the spells and incantations

these past couple of days, i’ve been trying to do a little more cad design, making things i eventually want to 3d print.

i didn’t lack the ambition. i didn’t lack the desire to make something and will it into existence. i just didn’t have the spells and incantations i needed to make it at the level i wanted to.

i lacked the vocabulary.

and for the first time in a while, i really had to learn.

i had to learn about what makes 3d printing possible, how to make parts more efficient and durable, and how to think about the real world. i had to develop the words to describe curvature and shape, and what i wanted those things to feel like.

it’s made me appreciate things so much more. i’m starting to understand why the curves on apple devices are so beautiful, and how much work has gone into them. i appreciate the physical space around me more, and what it takes to build the things in it.

i keep coming back to this idea that ai really is magic. we’re all magicians and mages now, but we still have to learn the spells and incantations.

the more i work with it, the less i believe that the advent of ai will cause us to stop learning. for me, it’s been the opposite. having the ability to make something has made me want to understand it more deeply.

language isn’t unique to humanity, of course. but i think our ability to find the words for what we want is going to carry us further now.

if you have the courage and the ambition to want something, you can start learning the spells and the incantation to bring it into the world.

[nectarios @nectarios]

Excited to partner with the one & only @frankhellend & @SaaSpasse on an event / Nov 4th
3 moonshot startups will pitch
- Bachar from @Reactiondyn
- Justin from Volta Space
- Arad from @gx_space_

@fredbastien will then do a live pod with Frank. Top top it off, it's taking place in an old church which is pretty badass

https://t.co/nzbxwDewUm

[Bucky @bucky_build]

Thanks @SaaSpasse for having us pitch! QC tech is booming & proud to be a part of it.
------
🚀Merci pour l'invitation! La tech QC est en pleine effervescence, fiers d'en faire partie avec le pape du SaaS @frankhellend.

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

@biilmann @SaaSpasse the chaos energy is real

i should not have dressed as a pope

lolll

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

let’s goo, @biilmann meeting the Quebec SaaSpope !

you’re a real chief for making the trip up north to have a convo on the pod man! proud to have you as the headliner of our second @saaspasse conf 🙇‍♂️

[Matt Biilmann @biilmann]

Trying to remember at least some of my French to figure out what’s going on at @SaaSpasse and if @frankhellend is about to get anyone married, buried or consecrated?!

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

@nectarios @SaaSpasse thanks for coming dude!!

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

@remi @SaaSpasse let’s go mon gars

[Rémi Prévost @remi]

En direct du « pit » à la @SaaSpasse Conf 🤘 @frankhellend

[Matt Biilmann @biilmann]

At Netlify we’re very confident that our work to build a better web carries way less than 10% risk of exterminating humanity.

So if you like helping more people build better software on the web and you’re not really into killing all human beings - come build with us!

[Brian Lovin @brian_lovin]

Random thoughts that nobody should care about:

- I used Figma a lot in the last couple of weeks without AI and it was good. Great, even! Got into flow, mocked up some pretty pixels, and didn't fall into a hell-loop of fighting the horrendous taste of AI models. I predict a (slight) backswing on the "Figma is dead, designers should only prototype in code" discourse.

- I'm juggling Codex, Claude, and Devin for background coding agents. I hadn't used Devin before (the new cloud-only web version) and it's really well executed. I hope they'll ship a simple electron wrapper around it so I can have a proper desktop app soon. Their Fusion model router seems like it's working; at least, I haven't had to waste any energy fiddling with model pickers over there which is a welcome change.

- I recently worked on Notion AI's model picker and boy howdy, let me tell you, this is one of the The Problems Of All Time. I hope in the future nobody has to waste brain cells thinking about which model and which effort level to use for every task. Unfortunately, that future seems really far away because, it turns out, if you actually know how to wield all these things correctly you can get much better results. So everyone builds for the top of the class and normies are left trying to decipher the matrix of model/effort/speed levels to do basic things.

- Modern AI voice modes make me incredibly depressed about the future. I do not want a companion. I do not want an AI that coddles me and injects "ah, mmhmmm, yeahs" and fake laughs into its responses. I want a god-tier computer that does shit I tell it to do and doesn't pretend to be something it is not.

- No matter how hard I try, AI writing output is just horrendous. If you use AI to write things at work and share them without careful review/editing: everyone can tell.

- I still enjoy using AI to brainstorm and help me draft outlines or draw diagrams and stuff like that. Using AI to help me think through problems + draft an outline seems all good. It's the final output that is always just so incomprehensibly dumb and uncanny-valley that it's actively making me want to use AI less.

- At the same time, I have to be *extremely* careful with how I prompt; if I indicate in any minor way that I like something, or think something is a good idea, the model will go into full human-reinforcement mode and bend over backwards to make itself agree with my point of view.

- I'm pretty sure that all the skills I wrote over the course of the last year are making the latest generation of models do dumb stuff or work too hard. I'm planning to delete every skill/contextmd file and start from scratch to see what happens.

- Related: this is why I'm generally bearish on auto-generated memories. I know memory is a hard problem that every lab is trying to solve, but it just doesn't feel like we've made any meaningful progress in the last year. Every time one of my AI agents references a past memory it feels forced and out of context, like it's trying to prove to me it remembers things for the sake of remembering things, not because it's actually useful in that particular context.

- Being able to ask models to search through chat history is good, though.

- It's way more fun to use coding agents on backend tasks than it is on the front end. The gap between what I know is good and what AI is capable of making on its first pass is still surprisingly wide. And I despise prompting my way through visual polish. Every coding tool is abandoning the IDE, assuming that nobody will ever read or touch code again. That's probably long-term right but short-term frustrating for people who care about getting the details right.

Thank you for coming to my talk.

[░ perfectloop ░ @PERFECTL00P]

𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚏𝚒 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚘𝚗 🦖🔥☄️🛜

[Matt Biilmann @biilmann]

9 of the URLs on the front-page of @hackernews yesterday, were hosted on Netlify

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

@kaleighf https://t.co/bE9BAVlPdl

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

🎯

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

cool read by @lauraentis from @every: over-engineering your agent skills may lead to the (newer/better) model underperforming

The Case Against Skills https://t.co/hpx1Q9f3RY

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

@danshipper @CoraComputer @usemonologue hey Dan, are there multiplayer possibilities live or upcoming with Cora you think? i’ve wanted to use it so much since it came out it but we’re collaborating on Missive for emails and it’s a paradigm hard to shift away from once you’ve had it

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

@remi it’s on my list of things to look into! i’ve tried Dorothy which orchestrates multi agents from different providers, but am wondering if OpenCode or Pi are too technical and overkill for me..

[Francois Lanthier Nadeau @frankhellend]

so i tried Codex for real after many months of Claude Code

compliments to the chefs at OpenAI these guys can cook

ngl tho, the inner battle between stability and curiosity has been taking bit of a toll

there are two wolves inside of me, and they’re both exhausted lolll

[Spooky Brian Graham 🦬🎃 @iroasmas]

me as i read 40% of what claude wrote back and type in “continue”