We thought about a celebrity launch. Margot Robbie in a bathtub explaining agents. But then we realised the same money gives the first 2,000 people free daily credits, every day, until we burn through that $1,000,000.
I barely shipped any code in 2025.
In 2026 I've already shipped more than in any year of the last decade.
CTO time gets eaten in 30-min slices. Hiring, onboarding, PR queue, the same product debate three times. Most weeks the best move was to write zero code and unblock six people.
Then Opus 4.5 landed. Now I parachute into the hard problems. I stay at the architecture layer; the model handles what used to drag me into the weeds for a week. The team unblocks itself on what used to land in my queue.
Once you've got that headroom, internal tools get irresistible. Straight to main, no review. Intent → PR → shipped.
Fewer hours, 10x the output.
@AlexReibman calls this hyperengineering and it feels great.