Matt Dailey

Building previously @figma & @PalantirTech

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

Today, we're announcing @ref_tools open beta. Ref is your team’s shared space to decide what agents build before any code gets written.

We’ve raised $4M from @villageglobal, @Daybreak_Fund, @tmrohan, @RitualVC, @tonigemayel @barrald @wesmckinn and @bentossell.

Every engineering team is battling the same problem. I call it Velocity Sickness. It's the disconcerting feeling that you're moving fast but not having the impact you expect. It's affecting individuals, teams and especially leaders.

It looks like:
- Too many PRs to merge.
- Brainfry and burnout.
- Engineers running in different directions.
- Critical decisions being made by agents.

The last one is the most dangerous.

At its core, software engineering is about two things: (1) what decisions matter for my system? and (2) making those decisions. When you let agents make critical decisions, you lose ownership of your system and product.

You solve these problems with Ref.

Learn more: https://t.co/Af56xxTvTg

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

this is beautiful. i think of these as "level 2" ui

my agents are doing so much complex work and some small fraction of the time i need to visualize that complexity to understand it

but most of the time i want level 1 ui: a button that says "ship this" and i don't see any of this detail

[Phil Pitus @pitus_]

Generative UI #2 - Merge conflicts 🚫 ✨

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@vinvan yes totally! we're embarking on soc2 rn and we're doing a lot of gardening haha

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@pwnies hell yeah! thats rad

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@danlovesproofs 100% i think of this as "buying a ticket to the game"

as a startup rn you have to have one first hit

but that's just your ticket in to play in the next round

from there you gotta keep delivering

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

Ref September Update

You don't need to visit github․com anymore.

👀 Review diffs next to the ref.
✅ Approve a ref and forward that approval to PRs.

Also, bundle size ⬇️ and cache hits ⬆️ so everything is way faster!

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@vinvan @jsngr ✋

although the ref team is in nyc in a few weeks so maybe we can see it then?

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

this is what a ref is

it's the notebook of everything you've done to explore and solve a problem.

it's easy to share with your team

[Thariq @trq212]

it's basically impossible for someone to just "show you their prompt" now, because everything is about references, skills and examples

I often ask my agent to look at 3 other repos I've made first, search the web for references, use other AI APIs, etc.

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@maxmax @adisingh id read this blog post!

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

this is the fundamental ai content problem:

if you spend a lot of time looking at decks, its easy to tell which ones are thoughtless

if you rarely engage with slide decks, the ai generated ones will look amazing with zero thought

the timeline is full of it in every medium (design, slides, games, video etc)

if your audience is at all sophisticated in the medium you're producing, you can't skip thinking

[sarah guo @saranormous]

please stop sending me your ai-generated decks. they smell like total lack of thought

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

I'm changing how i review my teammate's work (code or plan)

it used to be i'd mostly read, react and throw out questions to start discussion and prompt the owner's research. I was a good collaborator by identifying problems or nudging in better direction

now it's the opposite.

If i'm leaving comments and pulling your agents out of flow, the comments deserve more weight. Gone are the days of "did you consider <X> approach?". The barrier to answering that myself is now so low that I owe you better

the goal is still not to gatekeep or take ownership of my teammates work. the bar for a good review is simply higher now that I can research, riff and test with a prompt

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@dexhorthy i got bit

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@GergelyOrosz thank you for re-posting! i missed the first one and would love to participate

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

the designers+machines meetup last night was so good (s/o @ben_issen)

i go to a lot of ai meetups and the vibe was noticeably different than most. it was cheerful and creative and curious

if you're in SF and like design and ai you should try to get in on the next one

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

my personal version of this is the rule of no surprises

An engineer casually shares a demo that blows everyone's mind. the whole company gasps and cheers because the idea is so good, so well executed and it feels effortless. we have to do this! now!

i'm in the audience. excited but also a bit jealous. I want that to be me. I want surprise the team with mind-blowing ideas.

But when I chase that feeling and try to shock the team with my brilliance, I waste time and fall short.

So I have the rule of no surprises:

if I have a big idea, the team should never be surprised by it.

That means workshoping it before it's ready and being embarrassed of the rough edges.

But most of all, it means letting other people in so it becomes their idea too.

[sunil pai @threepointone]

new post: the senior engineer death spiral

https://t.co/xzgU1jVBRh

a friend just started a big job and asked for some advice. so I braindumped a monologue about a super common failure mode I see with engineers and posted it here, hope it helps whoever it can.

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

Dylan is right.

[Dylan Field @zoink]

User interfaces are not going away.

Yes, humans will use computers alongside agents. When working with agents, we will need the ability to audit what agents do in a human-readable way.

Yes, some interfaces (ex: dashboards, in-chat UI for ephemeral tasks, etc) will be generated. Most important interfaces will be intentionally designed. We will want both deterministic and non-deterministic interfaces in different situations. We're thinking a lot about the best ways to help designers shape non-deterministic systems at Figma.

Yes, new input modalities like voice, VR/AR and BCI will change the way we use computers and introduce lots of new interaction paradigms. This is all very exciting :)

Overall, the surface area of design will continue to grow much broader. Design is the new code and the key differentiator for software moving forward. Expect more and more energy to go into design / craft in the years ahead... it will be how you win or lose.

Eric is right about plenty of things, but the market will prove him wrong on this one...

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

@pgillian____ literally everything

[Matt Dailey @reactiverobot]

gemini-flash-2.0 holds a special place in my heart because it hit the perfect cheap+fast+smart-enough tradeoff

the jev insight is that basically every cheap+fast+smart-enough problem is actually a classification problem