Gaurav Chawla

Today, Sierra is releasing Ghostwriter, our agent for building agents. With Ghostwriter, you can create an AI agent for your customer experience — one that can chat, pick up the phone, speak dozens of languages, take action on your systems of record, and be protected with industry-leading guardrails — simply by having a conversation. No clicking, no forms, no menus. Codex and Claude Code have transformed how we build software, making it possible for software engineers to orchestrate and review the work rather than doing all the work themselves. We think the same transformation will happen for all software. Rather than every enterprise app having a web app for humans and an API for automation, every software platform’s UI will be an agent that can do the work on your behalf. I recorded a demo of my building and optimizing an agent with Ghostwriter so you can see how powerful and easy it is to use. It’s completely changed the way our early adopters build agents, and it’s changed the way I think about the software industry. Let me know what you think, and, if you’re interested in trying it out at your business, please reach out directly.

Cool use case of AlphaFold, this is just the beginning of digital biology!

I have been a big fan of NotebookLM and it keeps getting better!!

Some helpful updates from across Google this week, lots more to come! 🧵 @NotebookLM is introducing Cinematic Video Overviews for Ultra users in English. Distill complex information into amazing visual deep dives - take a look 👇

just got pulled into a meeting since I started using @augmentcode's Intent for all my projects. not sure what to tell these guys. (audio on)

1983 inspired an entire generation to dream big and chase those dreams. 🏏 Today, our Women’s Cricket Team has done something truly special. They have inspired countless young girls across the country to pick up a bat and ball, take the field and believe that they too can lift that trophy one day. 🏆 This is a defining moment in the journey of Indian women’s cricket. Well done, Team India. You’ve made the whole nation proud. 🇮🇳 💙

@engineers_feed Architecture of a Mercedes car! Obviously!

What is Archimedes famous for? Wrong answers only!

@engineers_feed Ohm my God! Did he resist? Wait…is this even current news anymore?

My friend was explaining electricity and I was like watt?

Brits murdered 35 million of us, contrived 12 devastating famines, looted $45 trillion, reduced India to an opium economy, broke us in two, left us with a life expectancy of 32 years. But we survived. India is beautiful because Indians are beautiful. Happy Independence Day! 🇮🇳

Goddamit. I am NOT crying, you are.

CREDENTIALS DON’T MATTER Over the last few months, I’ve seen several A+ execs and operators flounder and fail at AI startups, while young “inexperienced” builders have crushed execution and performed superbly. It’s the biggest discontinuity in talent evaluation I’ve seen in my 25+ years in technology. All of one’s prior experiences, credentials, and traditional markers of success have become nearly irrelevant when the fundamental rules of the game have changed so dramatically. The shift to AI represents such a paradigm break that institutional knowledge often becomes institutional baggage. The executive who masterfully navigated enterprise sales cycles finds themselves lost when the product builds itself. The operator who optimized for predictable growth metrics struggles when the core capability improves exponentially overnight. Meanwhile, the 22-year-old who’s been fine-tuning models in their dorm room intuitively understands token economics, reasoning patterns, and capability scaling in ways that no MBA program ever taught. These “inexperienced” builders don’t carry the weight of how things “should” work. They don’t waste time trying to force AI capabilities into traditional product frameworks or business models. And so, they win. If you’re an executive wanting to find a role at an AI company, be humble. Put in the work. Use the tools and create a personal AI stack. Train yourself to think differently - probabilistically, not deterministically. Be open to an IC role if needed. It’s not magic, but it will take real work. If you’re an AI company founder, ensure your hiring process is not blinded by credentials. What matters is raw building ability (in EVERY role, not just Eng/Product/Design), comfort with uncertainty, and the ability to iterate and experiment exceptionally fast. It’s a new era.

People Don’t Burn Out From Work. They Burn Out From Powerlessness It’s easy to blame the hours. But burnout rarely comes from doing too much. It comes from feeling like nothing you do makes a difference. You could work a 12-hour day and end it energized if the work was yours to shape. If it aligned with what matters to you. If you had the power to change course when things weren’t working. But most people don’t feel that. What they feel is trapped. They sit in back-to-back meetings they didn’t ask for. They execute plans they had no hand in creating. They hit KPIs that don’t mean anything to them. They carry the weight of decisions made by someone else. Eventually, they stop asking if the work is worth doing. They just do it. Until they can’t anymore. This is how good people fade out. Not because they’re lazy or unmotivated. Because they can’t see the impact of their effort. That’s what kills motivation. Not overwork. Not intensity. Not even failure. Powerlessness. If you’re a founder, a manager, or someone shaping a team, this is the pattern to watch for. The people who quietly disengage. The ones who still hit deadlines but no longer challenge anything. The ones who stop bringing you ideas. That’s not comfort. That’s erosion. And it’s reversible. You don’t fix burnout by offering another vacation day. You fix it by giving people the ability to move the needle. You bring them into the why behind the work. You give them context. You show them where decisions live. You make room for them to shape how something is done, not just what gets done. And you start with one question: What part of your work feels out of your control? Then you listen. You listen like the answer matters. Because it does. Sometimes the solution is small. A clearer goal. A tighter brief. One less level of approval. Sometimes it’s bigger. A full reset. A new role. A conversation that’s been avoided for too long. But if you don’t ask, you won’t see it. And if you don’t address it, your best people will leave. Or worse… they’ll stay and settle. So if someone on your team is showing signs of burnout, don’t just ask how much they’re working. Ask what they can’t change. Because it’s not the effort that drains them. It’s the feeling that their effort doesn’t matter.

this is a really cool idea!

With Al removing accents, it'll be impossible to tell if "Josh from Texas" is actually an Indian dude dialing in from a Bangalore call center. (accent neutralizing starts around 0:22)

@ShashiTharoor I feel so smug that I am correcting Shashi Tharoor’s spelling in English. LOL. Ahem. Sir, you meant peculiarity and not peculiarly, right?

(Malayalam) Told the audience at the DCC Office inauguration in Kozhikode that a peculiarly of the English language is that the word “party” means both a political organisation and a celebration. Our Congress party must lead our politics & also give us reasons to celebrate.

@realDonaldTrump @grok analyze this. Be practical and use all your economics knowledge.

Oil prices are down, interest rates are down (the slow moving Fed should cut rates!), food prices are down, there is NO INFLATION, and the long time abused USA is bringing in Billions of Dollars a week from the abusing countries on Tariffs that are already in place. This is despite the fact that the biggest abuser of them all, China, whose markets are crashing, just raised its Tariffs by 34%, on top of its long term ridiculously high Tariffs (Plus!), not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate. They’ve made enough, for decades, taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA! Our past “leaders” are to blame for allowing this, and so much else, to happen to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

There are so many great reasons to be on Signal. Now including the opportunity for the vice president of the United States of America to randomly add you to a group chat for coordination of sensitive military operations. Don’t sleep on this opportunity…

@shekharkapur youtu.be/N_4fJmuLC8w?si…

‘Where was Time before the Big Bang ? ‘ ‘There was no time, Shekhar’ ‘So there was nothing’ ‘Yes’ Said the Scientist ‘Describe Nothing?’ ‘It cannot be measured, so science cannot describe it’ ‘Where does Space end?’ ‘Nowhere. It’s endless’ ‘Unmeasurable?’ ‘Yes’ ‘So it’s Nothing?’

One of the most dangerous temptations investors face is the temptation to find problems with startups in order to show how clever they are. This can make them reject companies that end up doing well.

Urgency is a weapon. Used well, it builds momentum. Used poorly, it destroys it. Most people don’t understand the difference. They think moving fast means rushing. That speed means cutting corners. That pressure means pushing everything to happen now. But urgency without direction is chaos. It burns people out. It leads to sloppy decisions. It creates movement without progress. The top 1% operate differently. They know real urgency isn’t about going faster, it’s about removing friction. It’s about clearing bottlenecks, eliminating wasted time, and focusing on what actually moves the needle. They don’t mistake busyness for progress. They don’t react to everything as if it’s an emergency. They understand that the wrong kind of urgency is just disguised inefficiency. Look at any team that’s constantly in crisis mode. They’re not moving fast. They’re spinning in circles. They’re drowning in last-minute fire drills, half-baked work, and unnecessary stress. The teams that win don’t let urgency control them. They control it. They set the pace. They know when to push and when to wait. They move with intent. The first step is recognizing that not everything needs to happen immediately. The second step is defining what real urgency looks like. Removing delays that slow down execution without creating unnecessary chaos. The third step is protecting momentum. Momentum doesn’t come from working harder. It comes from working smarter, stacking small wins, and moving in a straight line instead of thrashing in every direction. If urgency isn’t managed, it becomes its own enemy. The teams that understand this move fast without breaking themselves. The ones that don’t burn out before they ever get anywhere.