Markham Nolan ☘️

So much of what we love lies within the margin of error

Imagine if we learned our lessons

Your AI Agent shouldn’t feel like it’s operating in a black box. Big reveal in Paris on new tools to help observe & control your Fin agent.

Hiring someone new always comes with a question: will they actually do great work? With Agents, that same “black box” problem applies. Teams want more visibility & control over what their Agents are actually doing and how well they're doing it. On March 24th, we’re unveiling new updates to @Fin_ai that deliver just that. Join us live in Paris or online from anywhere. Register at the link in the comments.

How we build software @intercom is unrecognisable vs 12 months ago. We're fully Claude Code pilled and seeing enormous productivity gains. Excellent thread here from Brian on some things we're doing.

The Metaverse was never going to be a thing. But honourable mention to @ballmatthew who managed to wring a very worthwhile & readable book out of the concept and sell >125,000 copies

@PGATOUR @McIlroyRory @TheMasters Blueprint for a great @OffMenuOfficial

Rory McIlroy explains why he made each selection for his 2026 Masters Champions Dinner menu: 𝗣𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 & 𝗥𝗶𝗰𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗮 𝗙𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 “I wanted to try to bring a little bit of the local ingredients in. So I'm doing a Georgia peach and ricotta flatbread with hot honey. So hopefully that will go down well with the drinks.” 𝗥𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝗦𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗽 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗮 “I think everyone likes rock shrimp tempura, so sort of a crowd pleaser with that one.” 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗼𝗻-𝗪𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 “My mum does these really, really nice dates stuffed with goat cheese, wrapped in bacon … Thanks to Rosie for that one.” 𝗚𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝗹𝗸 𝗦𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 “In the buildup to the Masters last year, I was eating a lot of elk ... I didn't want elk to be the main course because I didn't know if everyone would like that … So I'm doing grilled elk sliders which I think is fun.” 𝗬𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗳𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝘂𝗻𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗶𝗼 “My wife, Erica and I, our favorite restaurant, or one of our favorite right now is in New York. It's called Le Bernardin. Eric Ripert is the chef there, and this is a dish from that restaurant. It's a yellowfin tuna carpaccio. It's a really thin slice of French baguette with a really thin slight of foie gras on top of that … So that's a fun one that the club worked with me on as well. They went up to the restaurant and worked with the chefs, and made sure; that they obviously wanted to get it right for the night, so that's really cool.” 𝗪𝗮𝗴𝘆𝘂 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗠𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗺𝗼𝗻 “It's an amazing honor to be able to host it, but at the same time, I want everyone to enjoy it. I went for two different options for the main course, a wagyu filet mignon for people that want red meat, or a fillet of seared salmon; so depending on what you want.” 𝗦𝗶𝗱𝗲𝘀 “When I was a kid, I used to eat (Irish) champ by the bowlful … Some sauteed brussels sprouts. Glazed carrots with brown butter. And then trying to bring a little bit of that local flavor back in, some crispy Vidalia onion rings. Vidalia is not too far away from Augusta, about a two, two-and-a-half-hour drive.” 𝗦𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸𝘆 𝗧𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗲 𝗣𝘂𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 “I think very much a crowd-pleaser, sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream on warm toffee sauce.” 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 "My favorite part of the menu is you obviously get access to the wonderful wine cellar at Augusta National. We're starting off with a 2015 Salon Brut champagne. And then followed by a 2022. Domaine Leflaive Batard Montrachet. It's the first-ever white wine that I actually liked ... And then for the red wine we're receiving a 1990 Chateau Lafite Rothschild from Pauillac in Bordeaux. That is the wine that I drank the night that I won the Masters, so obviously brings back some great memories. Shane Lowry had a little bit to do with getting that wine, so I want to shout him out for that, too ... To finish off, we're going with a 1989 Chateau D'Yquem dessert wine from Sauternes in Bordeaux, as well. Obviously '89, my birth year, and I think every great meal deserved to be finished off with Chateau D'Yquem. It is like liquid gold. I wanted to be really intentional with the wines. It's something that I'm really into and passionate about and started to collect wine, probably over the past decade."

This is the "highest alpha" compound engineering thread I have ever read - by a long shot too. It is simply astounding what @intercom is doing. It takes compound engineering to an entirely different level - it's not even about just engineering - it's the entire organization. It is "organizational compounding" through extremely smart orchestration of AI. It's wild, because there is such a spectrum of how companies use AI. Some have no strategy to use it, or just deploy a very restricted co-pilot - and then 10% of their employees use it like a glorified search engine. And then you have this. What do you think will happen to the performance gap between these two types of companies? Also, what do you think foundation lab companies are doing? They are clearly even more all-in on this type of thing, and they have access to better models and better ways to tie this all together. What a wild and exciting time to be going AI-first.

some details of our use of Claude Code at @intercom - a real flywheel for impact across our teams.

Absolutely sticks the landing. 10/10, no notes. Bualadh bos mór. Name a petrol station after the guy.

Join us in Paris next week for a major @Fin_ai product announcement: fin.ai/paris

We had Brian react to some of our most requested product features. Some have already shipped. One is coming soon. Join us on March 24th to see what’s launching, live in Paris or online from anywhere. Register at the link in the replies.

Last week in San Francisco, we partnered with Snowflake for a candid conversation on what it really takes to deploy agentic AI in the enterprise. Onstage, Jordan Neill (COO, @intercom) and Baris Gultekin (VP of AI, @Snowflake) compared notes on moving from impressive demos to production systems that actually work reliably, securely, and at scale. One theme came up again and again: the iceberg. It’s easy to “vibe code” a prototype in a week. It’s much harder to build the semantic layers, eval systems, guardrails, and feedback loops that make an agent trustworthy in the real world. They also dug into: ↳ Why evals are necessary but never enough without real-world signal ↳ How Snowflake brings AI to the data (not data to the AI) ↳ What it takes to make multi-step workflows (like refunds) actually reliable ↳ Why enterprise adoption is more about habit change than model capability Thank you to Baris and the Snowflake team for the partnership, and to everyone who packed the room, asked thoughtful questions, and stayed late to continue the discussion. If you’d like to join a future Fin meetup in your city, subscribe to our Luma calendar to see what’s next.

Setting @Fin_ai up as a personalized shopping assistant on @Shopify now takes under two minutes. In this demo, Brian and Robert walk through the new setup experience. Just authenticate your store, connect Fin to your full product catalog, then turn on the Messenger. No code, no manual uploads, and no digging through settings. Once connected, Fin has a live link to your store. It can recommend products, personalize suggestions based on what it knows about the customer, add items to cart, and even promote active sales. All in real time. Watch the full product updates video in the replies below.

Everyone is talking about the impact of closing the Strait of Hormuz on oil and gas. I haven't seen much discussion of the war's impact on helium. Most people think of helium as being a fun gas you use for children's balloons. But helium is actually one of the most important industrial gases, used in rockets, MRIs, quantum computers, and most importantly, in the production of semiconductors. Qatar produces ~30% of the world's helium as a byproduct of its natural gas wells, and that supply is now cut off from the global market. 🧵

I was at an event where @DwidenR24 talked about how Intercom's design team uses AI. The talk alone was impressive. But then here I'm seeing their actual workflow in practice, and it is amazing. They might be the most adapted team to an AI-first design culture right now.

The halo of this initiative in @intercom is amazing. I had never opened a terminal before joining in Jan and competing with our eng team's hackathon. Now, like people across the org, I'm building tools from scratch to 2x efficiency & involve more folks in our creative work.

Every business strives to deliver a perfect customer experience. But to make this a reality, you need an AI Agent that: ‣ Delivers incredibly high performance ‣ Can be deeply configured ‣ Generates rich insights ‣ Continuously improves Join us on March 24 for a major product announcement that helps you make perfect customer experiences possible. x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Navigating healthcare can feel complex, painful, and overwhelming for patients. Every interaction involves sensitive information and must be handled with care, empathy, and strict compliance. Circle Medical brought in @Fin_ai, Intercom’s AI Agent, to help patients reach the right care teams faster (cutting resolution time by 58%) and in a secure, compliant way. Hear from Aurélia Dagan, Head of Patient Experience, on how they made the shift ↓

Good to see there’s still room for American innovation outside the world of AI

Your brand name is central to your company’s identity, so it matters how your customers – and your AI Agent – pronounces it. Brian explains how we’ve upgraded Fin Voice with pronunciation rules, in order to give you complete control over how @Fin_ai sounds to your customers. Find out what’s new with Fin and watch the full video, linked below.