Essays

My agentic engineering workflow (step by step) 32 minutes read — 26 May 2026

My agentic engineering workflow has changed in the recent past. The models are better, and there is much more freedom in choosing the harness, abilities, and actions you provide. - Pre-planning, pre-idea, pre-everything - The first chat with the agents - The first chat on the terminal - Setting up the Opencode environment - Doing light research, deep research - Model choices while working with...

Hammock driven development 5 minutes read — 08 May 2026

You’ve heard of TDD, and more recently also SDD (spec driven development)… but have you heard of HDD — aka Hammock driven development? I recently came across a video gifted to me by the YouTube algorithmic gods with a catchy enough title that sounded more like a “honest bait” than a clickbait, it was titled: “Hammock driven development”, talking about an alternate approach to software...

How I write essays in 2026 7 minutes read — 11 Apr 2026

I’ve updated my writing process and workflow for 2026, and the main reason I am revisiting it is because the process itself has started to change in a meaningful way. Writing is no longer just about producing an essay. It has become a feedback loop where each draft I produce also acts as training data. I’ve naturally been interested in the gap between what AI generates and how I would naturally...

Map is not the territory 4 minutes read — 07 Apr 2026

This is one of my favourite ideas from Shane Parrish Mental Models book which I read recently, and it’s so applicable, that it doesn’t exist to me as this abstract idea which seldom translates to the reality.. it’s very tangible.. The map is never be the territory. In other words, the “description” of the thing, is not the thing in itself. So, the Argentinian writer Luis Borges, in his brilliant...

Hegelian dialectic for structured reasoning with AI agents 13 minutes read — 06 Apr 2026

You have an interesting thought in your head, and you want to get it out there, open, out in the internet. It's spiky, and has all the right characteristics for titillating the audience, hoping to convince the reader of an opinion. When you're in the heat of the moment, and having this word-burst moment, you ask yourself to think twice before you hit publish, and now that you think about, it does...

How I prepare for tough negotiations nowadays 5 minutes read — 03 Apr 2026

Negotiations are hard. And I want to win most of them; whether it has to do with convincing my partner to choose the right destination for a tourist trip, or even convincing the business when it comes to a challenging matter. I want to convince all of them, and win them all, and I can't take no for an answer. I've been adamant, and I want to get through things the way I want. In some people, I...

When should we steelthread something 3 minutes read — 02 Apr 2026

Imagine standing at the edge of a canyon, needing to cross to the opposite cliff. One option is to construct a bridge, starting with logs, ropes, and foundations—carefully assembling each piece until a complete, safe crossing exists. This is similar to how MVPs are often built: you fully develop a core feature or component (like building an engine) before moving on to other parts, ensuring that...

Breadboarding, shaping, slicing, and steelthreading solutions with AI agents 18 minutes read — 21 Mar 2026

I've recently been interested in what the new way of product development, aka "process", would or might look like. I'm highly skeptical about the traditional product design process which looks like a double diamond loop, and don't think that would remain as it is in 2026 and beyond. Everything is breaking apart (or) evolving, and I don't think the double diamond as a gold standard would remain in...

How I started building softwares with AI agents being non technical 16 minutes read — 03 Jan 2026

At the start of the year, the CEO of Anthropic had made a prediction that 90% of code in enterprises would be written by AI by September. Now that we have crossed September, we now know that the prediction turned out to be false. As Ethan Mollick mentions, he only seems to have been off by a couple of months (this was recently posted by Boris, the creator of Claude Code) where he mentions 100% of...

Read raw transcripts 5 minutes read — 03 Jan 2026

I opened up Claude one day, and asked to summarise Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment into one sentence; and it said: A young, impoverished ex-student named Raskolnikov murders an elderly pawnbroker to test his theory that extraordinary people are above moral law, only to be consumed by guilt and psychological torment until he confesses and finds redemption through love and spiritual awakening....

Legible and illegible tasks in organisations 7 minutes read — 15 Nov 2025

I’ve been debating with my tech lead about the role of qualitative methods, continuous discovery, interviews, observational studies, in generating user insight. In his view: if we already collect vast amounts of data, isn’t it more efficient to analyse what we have rather than spend time talking to users? Quantitative data is more measurable, comparable, and easier to use as evidence. After all,...

L2 Fat marker sketches 4 minutes read — 27 Sept 2025

What's the best level of detail one should use to communicate an idea? Let's take the most simplest, benign format: the humble paper napkin sketch. It makes the representation of the idea too crude, but on the flip side, it actually welcomes the audience, offering them a safe space to critique the idea. It suggests them to provide constructive feedback without any hesitance. I would call this as...

Writing as moats for humans 4 minutes read — 24 Aug 2025

Most writing on the internet is AI-writing now. The dark forest theory of internet, a re-hash of a concept popularised by the sci-fi author, Cixin Liu referring to this hostile digital landscape where most content is written by the bots, and to escape from this cybernetic fake-ness, users retreat to hidden, invite-only "private" communities to escape this chaos. We live in this hostile. digital....

Beauty of second degree probes 3 minutes read — 09 Aug 2025

I've been noticing this pattern again and again—just about enough to make this pattern a heuristic for my own understanding. "No lie can overcome a second degree probe" If you probe a lie, just about enough, it reveals itself in due course. At work, I see this all the time. When a statement is just made, in a matter-of-fact way in which it assumes everyone already knows it, and when you ask "why...

Boundary objects as the new prototypes 3 minutes read — 25 Jul 2025

Citing from one of those work situations in the past: Our team had a catchup to discuss the problem statement; but then right after that; the UX jumped the gun and presented a "prototype" to the team for inputs. They didn't co-create the user-journey, nor did any user story mapping, neither were there any wireframing/low fidelity mockups that were sketched. This did upset various other...

One way door decisions 3 minutes read — 28 May 2025

There are moments in life when you hit slow-burn-max mode, when you know a big decision is coming, and you can feel the weight of it. You stop everything else and think deeply about the problem you're about to face. Jeff Bezos calls these “one-way doors.” Most decisions are two-way doors, you can go through, try it out, and walk back if it doesn’t work. But some aren’t like that. They’re...

Finished softwares should exist 2 minutes read — 24 May 2025

Some blockbuster software products should just end the cycle of endless iteration. The conversation around product development needs to take seriously the idea of “finished” software, alongside the more common belief that “software is never perfect and always needs improvement.” These are two different schools of thought and have a lot of friction to coexist with each other. I lean toward the...

How I periodically rank my rough drafts 3 minutes read — 07 May 2025

Ever found yourself with dozens of draft essays in Obsidian but no clear idea which ones need the most editing work? I did, and that's why I built EditNext - an AI-powered plugin that ranks your markdown files based on how much editing they need. The EditNext plugin uses LLMs and linguistic analysis to evaluate your drafts, providing a prioritized list of which documents deserve your attention...

How I build greenfield apps with AI-assisted coding 7 minutes read — 08 Apr 2025

Building apps with AI-assisted coding can be quite tricky if you start with a blank empty space. Previously I used to prompt the LLMs like a rookie by saying "fix this, add this, build this", and so on. And this is usually frowned upon in the developer circles, and it seems to be quite an irresponsible way to do AI-assisted programming. But "vibe coding" has so much more to offer to this world,...

Classify incentive problems into stag hunts, and prisoners dilemmas 4 minutes read — 07 Apr 2025

In some product-related decisions, we deal especially with the problem of incentives. In a more crude way, we can treat incentive problems as either zero-sum games, or positive-sum games. I thought that was a great framing, and went on with my worldview, and my life, and my regular product-work, until I found a better framing, a better explanation! I've dived into game theory more recently, and...

Hyperpersonalised N=1 learning 6 minutes read — 28 Mar 2025

For decades, formal education has resembled a Procrustean bed—a system that stretches or cuts students to fit a rigid mold, regardless of their needs, talents, or pace. Every child is expected to learn the same material in the same way, at the same time, and at the same speed, in lockstep with their peers. Struggle too long with a concept, and you're left behind. Master it too quickly, and you're...

New mediums for humans to complement superintelligence 4 minutes read — 19 Mar 2025

If superintelligence has already been commoditized and neatly packaged into the workforce, what would our renewed "mediums of message" look like? To understand the shape + form of medium 2.0, we might need a quick detour through the history of mediums and 'what has been.' We've experienced revolutions and centuries of evolution in how we communicate — In ancient times, communication was primarily...

Maxims for AI assisted coding 9 minutes read — 15 Mar 2025

AI-assisted coding has this strange phenomenon of making the 10x developer, a 100x one. For the rookie, it's either a hit-or-miss, and you usually end up with a lot more slop and hallucinations. I've been building various tiny apps, scripts, and projects by vibe-coding it, and I seem to have got marginally better at it. I've developed maxims that have proven effective in 'taming the dragon':...

Virtual bookshelves 2 minutes read — 22 Feb 2025

There's something special about the moment when a guest visits your home, browses your bookshelf, and discovers a book you both cherish. That spark of connection often leads to meandering conversations that weave through shared interests and unexpected topics. It's an experience that became harder to recreate after moving between continents and various work locations. This desire to preserve this...

Virtuoso Guide for Personal Memory Systems 12 minutes read — 17 Jan 2025

Forgetting concepts is good for your memory. Forgetting them for a certain duration, and thinking about them again, actually makes the memory more concrete. This could be best illustrated by the repetition curve graph below: Our memory is prone to logarithmic decays as time passes by. But as we keep recalling the ideas/concepts at certain intervals, you can see here from the graph that the slope...

Publish Originally, Syndicate Elsewhere 9 minutes read — 16 Jan 2025

Writing for yourself on your personal website is the purest form of self-expression on the internet. It avoids any trappings from the algorithmic maze. And there are no digital echo chambers. It's just you and your ideas in your own cozy little garden. We're witnessing the renaissance of personal websites. As social platforms become increasingly unstable, more creators are rediscovering the power...

Writing is thinking 8 minutes read — 02 Jan 2025

My blog has had a median of ~2 visitors per day for almost two years (nowadays, it's only a marginal improvement). And I don't care. Writing is thinking. And this blog has served as a public notepad well enough. As Alexey Guzey points out — perhaps the best indicator of your online writing having benefits is when you are not too embarassed to tell people. "Oh, BTW, I wrote about this/collected...

Song of Shapes, Words and Paths 12 minutes read — 01 Jan 2025

Three different kinds of humans exist in this planet. Shape rotators, wordcels and journey-shifters. You are usually a mix of one, two or all of these traits. If you’ve been following nerdish and science fiction oriented Twitter and blogs, you might already be familiar with 'shape rotator' and 'wordcels', often in snarky or oblique contexts. In Roon's famous essay — A Song of Shapes and Words, he...

How do we absorb ideas better? 5 minutes read — 01 Jan 2025

The top 1% smart thinkers I've observed have all been very clear thinkers. They could elucidate complex thoughts as they understanding the basics, at a very fundamental level. Sure, you could memorize all kinds of complicated concepts and stitch them together, but you will only get so far. And I feel that cleaner thinking is an outcome of deeper reflection — both reflection in action, and...

Read writers who operate 6 minutes read — 29 Dec 2024

We have more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds, and books on ornithologists written by birds. Taleb eloquently describes this as the key problem of knowledge, or in other words as epistemic arrogance. Strong corollary can be drawn with various disciplines, including entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs simply spend more time doing entrepreneurship rather...

Brew your ideas lazily 6 minutes read — 28 Dec 2024

Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa achieved through the painstaking application of countless gossamer-thin layers of oil paint over the course of many years, many months. The sfumato technique which Da Vinci popularised, involved applying more than 40 layers of paint, each only 10 to 50 micrometers thick, using fingers to blend the colors and create the depth of illusion. The creation...

Compound Interest of Private Notes 5 minutes read — 11 Dec 2024

Strongly recommend everyone to keep private notes about people. These could even be some random jotted keywords: "served in the navy", "capuccino lover", "biker", "loves going on long walks", and so on. When private notes accumulate over time in the form of a database, they start showing emergent properties. As Derek Sivers rightly points out in his essay: having your own database is one of the...

Conceptual Compression for LLMs 4 minutes read — 07 Dec 2024

Imagine you're building a house. You could break down the act of building into various steps: first comes the foundation, then the framing, then the roofing, and the plumbing, and the wiring, and so on. Or you could try to do it all at once, ordering a jumble of materials and hoping they somehow come together into a structure. When I instructed Claude/Cursor to build an app, I did something...

Beauty of Zettels 4 minutes read — 06 Dec 2024

I've tried various tools and systems for online writing, but nothing beats the power of Zettels. What are they, really? You may ask. They come from the Zettelkasten method, developed by Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist who was incredibly prolific. He wrote around 70 books and 400 peer-reviewed articles in 30 years. That's a lot of writing. How did he do it? He credits his Zettelkasten....

Exploring "smart connections" for note taking 4 minutes read — 02 Dec 2024

Not starting with a blank slate has been a great productivity boost in my writing. I wrote 50K words in 2024. And I can safely say that these 50K words have been written in a well thought manner, instead of an AI generated word salad. All this, because I've been exploring this neat little plugin called as Smart Connections on Obsidian. It is a tool, and I wouldn't be naive enough to say that...

Deploying Home Cooked Apps with Rails 8 minutes read — 24 Nov 2024

As a Rails enthusiast, I've always wanted a better deployment solution to house my hobby projects. It was not that there was no good solution available: We have AWS, Heroku, Hatchbox, Fly, Render.io and various other such PaaS alternatives. AWS has been too complex personally to build side projects. That, and the +500% markup. All these PaaS providers were ultimately wrappers sitting on top of...

Brand treatments, Design Systems, Vibes 4 minutes read — 20 Sept 2024

The usual approach to building a design system often involves compiling a list of font families, typography guidelines, color palettes, patterns, and similar visual elements. Take Gumroad, for example, one of the best open-source design systems out there. It seemingly covers everything a company might need—color schemes, icons, font selections, even sticker packs, and more. When examining...

How to spot human writing on the internet 6 minutes read — 20 Aug 2024

In the classic Turing Test, a computer is considered intelligent if it can convince a human that it’s another human in a conversation. At that time, human-generated content dominated the internet. But that was a decade ago. Today, the landscape has shifted dramatically. AI-generated content now rivals, and in some cases outpaces, human-created material. According to the 'expanding dark forest'...

Can a thought be an algorithm? 11 minutes read — 17 Aug 2024

When you actively hold a question in your mind, you start seeing potential answers and questions related to it pop up in your radar. The question and the answer co-evolve in a gracious dance enriching our understanding of the world and space around us. Questions act as your personal radar. > The textbook definition of a question is a sentence used to seek information. But it feels borderline...

Opportunity Harvesting 26 minutes read — 14 Aug 2024

Intended Audience — For those who are in a transitory phase in their careers, looking for their next big leap of faith. This is a guide to harvest opportunies in a systematic fashion In the past seven months since I'd shifted to London, I've been on the lookout for harvesting opportunities around me. I deliberately avoid using the term 'job hunt' here, as I sought to broaden my scope beyond...

How does AI affect UI? 7 minutes read — 12 Aug 2024

Intended Audience — For conversational UI designers in healthcare industry curious about various UI affordances/design patterns in vogue right now Our online conversations have been increasingly life-like, but yet life-less at the same time. The UI of apps have become more conversational and chat-like in nature. Not just apps, even websites have their own chat-like interfaces on the side. And all...

Everything is a prioritisation problem 3 minutes read — 29 Jul 2024

When it comes to building a product, everything is a prioritisation problem. > We might be building things right, but are we building the right thing? The journey of prioritisation begins way before the actual process of prioritisation starts. I would start by asking these key questions to the product leadership team—What does the future state look like? — Vision. What are we trying to achieve? —...

The Modern Startup Stack 7 minutes read — 23 Jun 2024

Choosing a web framework is like choosing your first pokémon. I didn't want to succumb to the 'new hotness' problem with the myriad of JS frameworks to choose from (Angular, Vue, React, Solid). I wanted something that i can choose and stick to for atleast a decade. So I resorted to a Rails monolith for building apps (but with a slight twist) To start with, I chose Ruby on Rails. It's a...

Design that's so bad it's actually good 3 minutes read — 16 May 2024

Recently, a relative sought my help to tweak a badly designed poster on Microsoft Paint. This was meant to be circulated on Whatsapp as an advertisement for the handyman services his friend was offering in his locale. He wanted to ‘jazz’ it up and asked if I could help. I quickly fired my Figma and started working towards revamping the layout. Before pushing some pixels, I took a brief pause—What...

Obsessing over personal websites 5 minutes read — 07 Apr 2024

I’ve been obsessed with my personal website. It’s not even about the views and impressions which I’m receiving. I have one subscriber on my mailing list from my website, and compared to internet writer standards, I am virtually non existent. Yet, I care deeply about this little corner on the internet. It's a place where I optimise for depth over engagement and audience-building. It’s my resume,...

Dear enterprises, we're tired of your subscriptions 10 minutes read — 23 Jan 2024

When you build a SaaS app, how do you price it? The first option which comes to everyone's mind is a monthly/yearly subscription model While building Clarity notes, I was stuck with a usual question when it comes to building a SaaS—How should I price the app? We settled on the usual monthly/yearly pricing structure. It included a free version to allow users to try out the YouTube note-taking...

Pluginisation of Modern Software 2 minutes read — 22 Jan 2024

Transitioning from Adobe to Figma was a big change for me in my design journey. At that time, the whole design ecosystem was revolving around Adobe. For image manipulation, you had Photoshop, Illustrator for vector graphics, Indesign for reports, XD for website or app prototypes and so on. When Figma first started it was competing to disrupt this ecosystem for UI/UX Design. As the adobe ecosystem...

Let's make every work 'strategic' 5 minutes read — 22 Jan 2024

A 'strategic' wrapper can turn a $100 work into a $10,000 work. Thinking 10,000 ft. above sea level pays more. It's a win-win for both sides. If we take a look at the field of writing, the standard rates in this profession, as well as what writers do, usually the rates border around: Writing content: $200 / article Style guide: $2,000 Content strategy: $20,000 Drafting a content strategy is a...

Methods are lifejackets not straight jackets 3 minutes read — 27 Dec 2023

Design methods are life jackets. Not straight jackets. Structures, whether they're processes, frameworks, or plans, are excellent tools to navigate complicated problems. They bring efficiency, reduce ambiguity, and offer defaults. However, when dealing with fundamentally complex problems, applying structure too early can lock in outdated notions. Because structures tend to ossify. As more team...

How to arrive at on-brand colours? 9 minutes read — 14 Dec 2023

While creating a brand, one of the hardest things to do is to arrive at the right set of colors. Colors are a tricky subject—when done incorrectly, the emotions get mismatched, and in the worst of situations, the brand might just seem all over the place. Think of the last time you went to a fast food joint. What was the color of the brand? Most probably, it might be a combination of red and...

Why I prefer indie softwares 5 minutes read — 01 Dec 2023

The greatest consumer software tools that exist out there are built by hobbyists and indie makers. I now prefer to write my notes on Obsidian. For scheduling tweets, I use Zlappo and Typefully. For creating AI interior renders, I use interior.ai. One thing which is common among all these examples is that they are all built by hobbyists. I would like to call them “indie softwares”. These are...

Design Manifesto 11 minutes read — 10 May 2023

This thought was inspired by the book Design Expertise (Lawson & Dorst, 2009) which includes an interview with the architect Ken Yeang where the author mentions: “I give every new member of staff the practice manual to read when they join. They can not just see past designs but study the principles upon which they’re based”. In other words, what would be the ethos behind your own unique design...

Complex project management for product 4 minutes read — 29 Apr 2023

In complex companies, with non-obvious interdependencies and hard schedule constraints, organizing the process is a huge "full-time" job, and can save weeks of delays if done right. It signifies the role of a project manager, despite the teams having a product manager in their fold. As Ben Kuhn puts it, when done right, it can save weeks of delays and nip problems in their bud even before they...

How might we enable patients and caregivers to overcome preventable health conditions? 17 minutes read — 16 Jun 2022

> Intended Audience—For product leaders and healthcare professionals working in the intersections of behaviour change, digital health and medical support For MCH, a study we conducted in 2021 observed strong evidence that the health messaging service (RES) improved maternal knowledge and infant care. It observed significantly higher rates of breastfeeding, safe infwhyant-feeding practices, and...

Future of Ageing with Mehdi Yacoubi 53 minutes read — 15 Aug 2020

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation...

Future of Tacit knowledge with Celeste Volpi 14 minutes read — 15 Aug 2020

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation...

Future of Rural Innovation with Thabiso Blak Mashaba 40 minutes read — 15 Aug 2020

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation...

Future of Equity with Ludovick Peters 13 minutes read — 15 Aug 2020

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation...

Future of work with Laetitia Vitaud 25 minutes read — 15 Aug 2020

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation...

Future of Mental Health with Kavya Rao 38 minutes read — 15 Aug 2020

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation...

Future of unschooling with Che Vanni 30 minutes read — 15 Aug 2020

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation...

How might we assist deafblind runners to navigate? 5 minutes read — 16 Jun 2019

Equarun is used to help deafblind people (especially those suffering from Usher Syndrome, a progressive disorder affecting more than 400,000 people worldwide) and their guides engage in safe and comfortable long-distance running. This device is capable of transmitting complex instructions on road conditions, striking a good balance between freedom and safety. Equarun being used across running...