{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Near Future Podcast","title":"Ep #16: Jonny and Tom: Guest recap, Learning Loops, Leverage and a 3D Labyrinth","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3193,"description":"Tom and Jonny catch up after the summer with a roundup of August’s four guests, from Monzo’s fake app to Poem/1’s self-learning fulfilment agent. They ask whether designers are giving away their leverage to agents, answer a listener who wants the show to branch out, and share what they built, including Labyrinth rebuilt in two hours.\nKey takeaways\nBeing deliberate about what you give away is most of the job now. Every August guest drew the line somewhere different, and every one of them drew it. Jonny’s version: even when it is slower, and even when an AI would do it better, make sure the decisions being made are still yours to make.\nMake one decision with an agent and fifty get made for you. They arrive interlinked, so working out which ones landed and why costs more than piling on another prompt. You end up with work that is technically yours and nothing in your head connecting it.\nA learning loop is an agent that remembers its own mistakes. Matt Webb’s Poem/1 fulfilment agent handled queries from 700 units by turning each new exception into a standing rule. Jonny’s caveat is that the abstract version convinces nobody, which is why “everyone should have agents” lands so flat.\nAgents accumulate cruft, so prune them. Jonny moved his main agent from NanoClaw version one to version two this week and deleted about half the notes it had written to itself over six months. What survived reads as concise instructions instead of six months of contradictions.\nWhen everyone can make the impressive thing, impressive moves. GPT-6 Astra put one-shot 3D and cloned games within reach of anyone with a prompt. Jonny’s yardstick for where the value went: his dad, a vicar, could now get further on a demo video than Jonny could have managed five years ago.\nUnderstand the grain of the medium you are designing against. Randy Hunt’s framing was the old-school graphic designer collaborating with the printer to get intent onto the page. Having an agent write your code is a different...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/8vUveugi5ZjKDI2pGhMY6ZwBcP7SSSqiqKb9hZCqvHM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lOGE1/OTk1MmI3NWJjZTAw/Y2EyMWJjODZkODFj/MjI4MC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}