Matt Howitt

A little over a week ago, we closed the deal to sell Profound Commerce, the e-commerce aggregator that I founded 5.5 years ago, to The Ambr Group. Many of my Twitter/X friends that I've met IRL know this was a long time in the making. Link to press release in next tweet.

@ChadB___ Whoa! Congrats.

I'm getting married soon and I used to always ask married people how did you know? They would always say you just know and I would think it was crazy because nobody I've ever met or dated did I feel that certainty like I knew but when I met my wife it was so clear. Obviously there's more to it than that but for the first time I knew and there was nothing else to look for. So yeah when you know you know.

@BugTrooper501 @karpathy @shikhr_ I think of it as the ability to distinguish and discern in a novel way. Fashionistas, culture critics, product reviewers — their skills and outcomes.

@mhowitt @karpathy @shikhr_ What do you mean by taste?

It is hard to communicate how much programming has changed due to AI in the last 2 months: not gradually and over time in the "progress as usual" way, but specifically this last December. There are a number of asterisks but imo coding agents basically didn’t work before December and basically work since - the models have significantly higher quality, long-term coherence and tenacity and they can power through large and long tasks, well past enough that it is extremely disruptive to the default programming workflow. Just to give an example, over the weekend I was building a local video analysis dashboard for the cameras of my home so I wrote: “Here is the local IP and username/password of my DGX Spark. Log in, set up ssh keys, set up vLLM, download and bench Qwen3-VL, set up a server endpoint to inference videos, a basic web ui dashboard, test everything, set it up with systemd, record memory notes for yourself and write up a markdown report for me”. The agent went off for ~30 minutes, ran into multiple issues, researched solutions online, resolved them one by one, wrote the code, tested it, debugged it, set up the services, and came back with the report and it was just done. I didn’t touch anything. All of this could easily have been a weekend project just 3 months ago but today it’s something you kick off and forget about for 30 minutes. As a result, programming is becoming unrecognizable. You’re not typing computer code into an editor like the way things were since computers were invented, that era is over. You're spinning up AI agents, giving them tasks *in English* and managing and reviewing their work in parallel. The biggest prize is in figuring out how you can keep ascending the layers of abstraction to set up long-running orchestrator Claws with all of the right tools, memory and instructions that productively manage multiple parallel Code instances for you. The leverage achievable via top tier "agentic engineering" feels very high right now. It’s not perfect, it needs high-level direction, judgement, taste, oversight, iteration and hints and ideas. It works a lot better in some scenarios than others (e.g. especially for tasks that are well-specified and where you can verify/test functionality). The key is to build intuition to decompose the task just right to hand off the parts that work and help out around the edges. But imo, this is nowhere near "business as usual" time in software.

@shikhr_ @karpathy Agree. Ability to adapt is crucial.

@mhowitt @karpathy That's valid. I'd add the ability to adapt fast to my list.

@karpathy @shikhr_ Critical thinking and taste even more valuable in AI era is my belief.

@shikhr_ "prompters" is doing it a disservice and is imo a misunderstanding. I mean sure vibe coders are now able to get somewhere, but at the top tiers, deep technical expertise may be *even more* of a multiplier than before because of the added leverage. x.com/karpathy/statu…

@chadrwalters I use them both. I think Cowork has its place. It's just early.

@mhowitt Everyone is in CC. It is way more powerful than Cowork. Aaron and I took what we were building in Eng and started using some of it over to non eng and then adding in a bunch more skills to help them do their jobs faster/better.

Using Claude Cowork feels like treating your business documents as source code. A natural act if you're a software engineer (still am), but weird for a layperson? I keep wanting to tell it "commit this" like I do with Claude Code.

@TheStephano Cowork needs to add rollback/roll forward support. Powered by Git under the hood, or similar. Implementation details should be opaque to user.

@mhowitt Yes! I think there is value in "committing" somewhere just like code so I can fall back on a last know good version if I prompt poorly or if Claude has a moment. 🤓

@chadrwalters Execs in Claude Cowork and Product+Eng in Code? Or Execs in Claude Code too?

@mhowitt Getting people thinking more like this is the play. We have all our executives and all product and engineering in cc all day and will have the rest of the company using our framework in CC by eoq.

@Wildlaw406 @DrStefanoTresca Thanks. Would be happy to chat @DrStefanoTresca

@DrStefanoTresca You should meet @mhowitt. He is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur based in Austin. He may have some leads on good hires.

The most disappointing part of this whole saga is how much it didn’t have to go down like this. I have never been able to wrap my head around standard biz litigators’ reluctance to name the individuals at the beginning of the case—cuz good luck doing it halfway through. I also can’t understand how some attorneys can be so ineffective at getting the judge to throw the book at shady defendants and opposing counsel. If they play shady more than once in a case and you can’t get the judge pissed about it, if they file for BK twice to stop trial, and you can’t make them wish they hadn’t, you are missing core litigation skills. I’ve seen a lot of it, and it just doesn’t make sense to me why they don’t go for the jugular when their opponent starts playing cute like these defendants did. Litigating against shady defendants is a knife fight. If your opponent isn’t bleeding heavily by the end of the first year, you don’t belong in these kinds of fights. Glad I was trained up by opponents and co-counsel who knew how to inflict serious damage.

Have had two customer service interactions in the last day where I thought to myself, "I wish I was talking to AI rather than a human." Because AI would have given me better answers faster and been more polite.

@Muddybon @livenlikeaking @TannerBuilds I agree that SF is priced differently on the margin, and I also think custom builder customers care deeply about this stuff, but I think most spec buyers don’t have a clue. If you disagree, I’d love to know why.

@mhowitt @livenlikeaking @TannerBuilds I have for 45+ years... He's essentially correct. Also have never used an agent, except on some unimproved property purchases.

“Why didn’t you add 8 ft doors?” “Why didn’t you do Hardie all the way around?” “You need to add sod” “Why didn’t you do cabinets to the ceiling?” I would obviously love to do all of these things but just because you put more money into it does not necessarily mean you get that much more in price per sq ft.

@GayBearRes Revenue elasticity of employee count is a frequently discussed topic in any organization of a meaningful size.

My theory is that companies, despite their lip service to the contrary, don't actually believe that the difference between an A employee and a C employee actually makes that much of a difference in financial outcomes.

@tjparker @demhagpt Does this also extend to making todo lists? Issue trackers for software team? Where is the line?

@demhagpt generally agree on this one..

You can bifurcate people that have had real scale operating experience based solely on whether or not they use AI notetakers (hence why most VC's are biggg fans)

@livenlikeaking @TannerBuilds I estimate the number of buyers at $500k or below who value these details approaches 0. It might matter in some upper end coastal markets (northern NJ, northern VA, suburban Boston) where price points are much higher, but that’s about it. Do you build?

@TannerBuilds Not all SF are equal. $/sf is misleading. It's on which SF those $ are allocated that matters. Many times it's the little details that set houses apart. 6" baseboards. non-6 panel doors. Light Rails & Crown on cabinets. 8" spread faucets vs 4". Economical Koehler toilets.

@jasonlk @jordihays Agree with this take completely.

@jordihays This is what so many miss - AI lawyer, AI SDR, etc. so, so much better than what 80%-90% of humans do today. - And much, much faster. - And 0% of the drama. Not better than the best. But better than a B already.

Lawyer friend: “I’ve seen the future. Harvey isn’t perfect but has better attention to detail and is more thoughtful than almost any junior person at our firm. I’ve watched it do $100K of associate level work in 10 minutes”

@jamesbohanpitt @realestatedude0 @HomeDepot How about in Austin?

Mate, if you’re in Texas, I’ve got you on cabinets. The HD Hampton Bay crap is just terrible. We’ve got som great entry level factory assembled cabs on very short lead times. We’re doing lots of multi family, entry level properties so I bet we’re on point for pricing too. If not I’m Texas, I have colleagues all over the US I can connect you to.

If my GC is buying floor , baseboards or kitchens from Home Depot. He’s automatically getting fired. Only retail clients buy that from @HomeDepot

@mattfranciz @follard Thanks for the encouragement. We work on that every day, while ensuring that we are properly serving our existing partners, projects and investors.

@follard Push the pace!

Never in a million years did I think that I would cofound a company that is building in the below markets in our first 24 months of existence: Houston, TX Newark, OH Phoenix, AZ Tulsa, OK Kansas City, MO Heath, OH Ocean Springs, MS Thornville, OH Monticello, IN Deptford, NJ Oakdale, CA San Diego, CA Tomball, TX West, TX Gautier, MS Clarksboro, NJ Little Rock, AR Austin, TX If you are an experienced developer with a deep track record who is constrained by capital, please reach out!

@charliedavidman @austin_rief A+ response.

@austin_rief You’re absolutely right! It’s not just suspicious—it’s a grammatical giveaway.

You should never use an em dash in your writing anymore. You will 100% be accused of using AI, especially if its on social.

@AdamB1438 I personally would dial down it. “This one isn’t a fit, but we’re active in the market and look forward to the next.”

I've been ending calls with brokers on deals I don't like by saying, "This one doesn't work for my partners and me, but I'd love to buy another building from you someday!" Does this just sound smarmy - or do you think people appreciate the intention?

@jamesonhaslam Charcoal or wood. You pick.

is the Big Green Egg a charcoal grill?