Ben Katz

@apalevich @watchdog_chat

@ben_makes_stuff @watchdog_chat Congrats mate! Good to hear from you

Been a minute. I’ve been building something new (coming soon!), helping @watchdog_chat customers, AND focusing on learning how to fly ✈️ Just finished my 2nd lesson in a Cessna 152 and landed the plane myself! But the complicated airspace in NYC has made things interesting:

@NapierHolland @PeterMcCormack Agreed - a lot of people talk about AI taking jobs, but high value products will not be automated so easily Companies need accountability when one outage costs $5M. Worked at one such company and it was eye opening to see the real cost of “silly engineering mistakes”

@PeterMcCormack You are an exceptionally high-agency person. Yes, AI will disrupt software heavily. But most business users still want to pay a subscription for a reliable, proven third party to solve their problem. Crucially, they want to outsource the accountability.

I now understand why AI will eat the software industry. I used to have a web agency. With Claude over the last 3 days I have built and deployed a system that would have: - Taken 6 months - Cost £150-200k - Required 8 different skill sets I can't design. I can't code. I don't understand SQL, APIs, Cloud Storage - yet Claude has walked me through Github, Supabase, Vercel and it is deployed and working. A 100% custom software system - 3 days, 1 idiot. BLOWN AWAY!

On one hand, this complexity will cost me more time, money to master - it’s a struggle so far. On the other hand, it’s super valuable as I’ll be able to fly anywhere in the US without worrying about airspace complexity too much So, going to continue w/ it until I’m competent ✅

For those of you who aren’t pilots: There are 3 airspaces almost/exactly stacked on top of each other every time I take off 1. Class D (KFRG) 2. Class C (KISP) 3. Class B (KFRG sits underneath JFK’s airspace) Notice how close my ground track is to all 3 😅

@marckohlbrugge We will certainly have AGI before the rest of the world fixes their date formatting to match the superior, American format 😎

will we have AGI before Americans fix their date formatting?

@marckohlbrugge I've mentioned this before, but I think the best way to solve it is require Touch ID/Face ID to post It will exclude lots of people that don't have a fingerprint reader, but I'd rather have that vs. fake AI posts everywhere You should consider something like that for BIP v2

What are the most clever ways communities are fighting AI slop?

@marckohlbrugge Excluding the Tenderloin of course 💉

SF is 100% good

@marckohlbrugge Similar energy to people who get their gf/bf's name tattooed on their chest and then break up 5 minutes later

tell me you’re secretly scared of competition without telling me

@marckohlbrugge Bags competitor that shares all revenue for all coins created on the platform with me at a rate of 0% to the creator, 0% to you, and 100% to me Thank you in advance

what should i build on token(.)new ?

@thepatwalls Redditors also created a petition to a subreddit that was using my product to remove it and it got like 100+ upvotes. Good times. I lost a customer, but learned a lesson from that one on how to do better onboarding so it was a win in the end.

if you're ever feeling down bc someone left a negative comment about your startup... just remember 8 years ago, hundreds of Redditors CREATED AN ACTUAL PETITION to cancel me. I ended up being just fine.

@levelsio I just figured it was an Avicii reference

Levels came from music actually like I wanted to level myself up from my Drum & Bass music career (where I'd a mixing desk with audio levels to produce songs or DJ) into a startup career

@levelsio Sounds like the “outspoken atheist” found God after all 🤖

Boomers easily oneshotted by AI psychosis

@marckohlbrugge @forgebitz To be fair, I haven't tried to solve the same problem with Claude Code Max but I think I'd run into similar issues even in 2026 Undocumented stuff is really where I've noticed these models struggle. MacOS app dev as it relates to privilege escalation is another example 2/2

@marckohlbrugge @forgebitz At the time I built Watchdog I would have wasted so much more time going back and forth with GPT 4o than I would have figuring out the solution myself The capability required was signing into X while avoiding bot detection, inspecting web requests, and making decisions 1/

I have high confidence that in the near future we still stop reviewing code But for now, it still feels uncomfortable to ship unreviewed code Then again, even reviewed code have bugs. So maybe it’s a false sense of control anyway? Maybe our time is better spent building guardrails rather than reviewing code?

@marckohlbrugge @forgebitz I bet it’s a similar issue to what I ran into with Watchdog’s X integration “write browser rendering code using <lib> to fetch posts from the timeline” -> full of mistakes b/c that kind of info is not public, and it just guesses based on 10yo stackoverflow answers about twitter

@forgebitz I don’t see why AIs cannot QA promptwatch

@TheBestOfAdam Campfire by @37signals. Own the code and the data behind your community. It’s basically a giant group chat with topics, but I’m sure it could be modified to support other features you might need for community management. @jasonfried would probably agree!

Dear X, need your help. I started this community in 2021. Growth was slow but grew to 185,000+ people. Tons of hard work. Zero playbook. Supporting each other daily! X is now axing communities in 30 days. I'm scrambling to save it but no luck yet... Any ideas? Please share👇

@petecodes I was waking up due to a dry mouth before because humidity was so low (29%) That has completely stopped since I made these changes

@ben_makes_stuff you sleep more if humid? Why?

After suffering poor sleep for years, I finally fixed it recently: Before: - 29% humidity 🏜️ - CO2 ppm at 1500+ while sleeping 😷 After: - 50-55% humidity (bought a humidifier) 🌊 - CO2 down to ~700 (cracked the door) ✅ Unbelievable difference in hours slept:

Oh also, the humidifier needs distilled water. Instead of wasting a bunch of plastic buying bottles of distilled water at the store, get yourself a water distiller like I did. Costs about $60 but saves tons of time: amzn.to/4mWxyOF (ad)

Finally, here's the stuff I used to track and fix this problem: 1. Qingping Air Monitor Lite (ad): amzn.to/4d9n5fo 2. Levoit OasisMist 450s Smart Humidifier (ad): amzn.to/4t3Zxxl 3. My own door and simply opening it 😄