This started as an analysis of Andrej Karpathy's excellent overview of AI's capabilities:\nhttps://x.com/karpathy/status/1979644538185752935
"Ghosts" is a brilliant metaphor for what we've created. They're not animals, and they're definitely not human. They are imperfect replicas of us. Karpathy describes them as a "statistical distillation of humanity's documents".
AI channels that distribution more effectively than any human and can beat us at Go, schoolwork, analyzing medical images, and many well defined tasks. At the same time, it lacks the reward systems that humans use to improve including curiosity, empowerment, play, intrinsic motivation, and culture.
As a result, AI's capabilities are limited. If you watch how the best work gets done with AI, it happens in chunks where a human supervises the output and gives iterative feedback to the AI. Large scale autonomous agents are brittle and fail quickly. Watch anyone vibe code an application with any level of novel complexity.
AI also faces integration barriers into existing organizations. AI is not capable of pulling a lot of the levers you need to be effective like coordinating with multiple stakeholders, building trust, authenticity, and interacting with different modalities across time and space. You could argue that the average human doesn't either, but people know when they're interacting with an AI and don't allow it the same agency as they do to people. The most successful AI B2B companies actually need more humans to integrate what they've built (forward deployed engineers) than traditional B2B SaaS.
Now, that all said, I think AI will completely reshape SaaS. Incumbents will be killed by those who know how to leverage AI. I've seen countless homepages talk about being the "AI platform for AI agents" but can't even string a demo together. Meanwhile they're trying to pitch a future where fully autonomous entities collaborate in parallel to write all the code and humans are useless. They will be the first to be replaced when they get surpassed by AI native companies.
The investors blindly throwing money into companies at 100x multiples are going to lose their money. I spoke with one of the most disciplined investors I know last week. They said they felt they had to play the game on the field even though they knew it didn't make sense. And this was from someone who is closer to the technology than 95% of investors.
On the other hand, companies who deeply understand AI will win everything. Cursor, Glean, Decagon, Sierra, Linear, Lovable, Replit, Bolt, Granola, and many AI natives are off to a great start.
While 90% of incumbents haven't adapted, it is possible. Figma, Notion, Vercel, Box, and Intercom have done a great job of tearing down what they have and rebuilding AI native products. They have teams who are close to the current capabilities of the models. They also understand their problem domain and as new capabilities come out know what capabilities will map well to what problems in what way. They are able to deliver on AI's promise to their customers. Whereas the majority of existing companies will die.
Within Amplitude's space (analytics), the door is wide open. In spite of many of our competitors filling up their homepages with the text "AI", I haven't seen a single compelling demo. We're still working like it's 2015.
We have spent the last year at Amplitude rebuilding our team to be AI native. We've learned about what models are capable of, how to write prompts, and how to leverage evals for building great products. We've worked with our customers to see what gets used in practice and what doesn't.
I know HN isn't one for hype, but we're going to be coming out with a lot over the next 6 months and I genuinely think it will change analytics."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The State of AI in SaaS"}},"_tags":["story","author_sskates","story_45634211","ask_hn"],"author":"sskates","created_at":"2025-10-19T14:03:46Z","created_at_i":1760882626,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"45634211","points":2,"story_id":45634211,"story_text":"SaaS is Dead, Long Live SaaS
This started as an analysis of Andrej Karpathy's excellent overview of AI's capabilities:\nhttps://x.com/karpathy/status/1979644538185752935
"Ghosts" is a brilliant metaphor for what we've created. They're not animals, and they're definitely not human. They are imperfect replicas of us. Karpathy describes them as a "statistical distillation of humanity's documents".
AI channels that distribution more effectively than any human and can beat us at Go, schoolwork, analyzing medical images, and many well defined tasks. At the same time, it lacks the reward systems that humans use to improve including curiosity, empowerment, play, intrinsic motivation, and culture.
As a result, AI's capabilities are limited. If you watch how the best work gets done with AI, it happens in chunks where a human supervises the output and gives iterative feedback to the AI. Large scale autonomous agents are brittle and fail quickly. Watch anyone vibe code an application with any level of novel complexity.
AI also faces integration barriers into existing organizations. AI is not capable of pulling a lot of the levers you need to be effective like coordinating with multiple stakeholders, building trust, authenticity, and interacting with different modalities across time and space. You could argue that the average human doesn't either, but people know when they're interacting with an AI and don't allow it the same agency as they do to people. The most successful AI B2B companies actually need more humans to integrate what they've built (forward deployed engineers) than traditional B2B SaaS.
Now, that all said, I think AI will completely reshape SaaS. Incumbents will be killed by those who know how to leverage AI. I've seen countless homepages talk about being the "AI platform for AI agents" but can't even string a demo together. Meanwhile they're trying to pitch a future where fully autonomous entities collaborate in parallel to write all the code and humans are useless. They will be the first to be replaced when they get surpassed by AI native companies.
The investors blindly throwing money into companies at 100x multiples are going to lose their money. I spoke with one of the most disciplined investors I know last week. They said they felt they had to play the game on the field even though they knew it didn't make sense. And this was from someone who is closer to the technology than 95% of investors.
On the other hand, companies who deeply understand AI will win everything. Cursor, Glean, Decagon, Sierra, Linear, Lovable, Replit, Bolt, Granola, and many AI natives are off to a great start.
While 90% of incumbents haven't adapted, it is possible. Figma, Notion, Vercel, Box, and Intercom have done a great job of tearing down what they have and rebuilding AI native products. They have teams who are close to the current capabilities of the models. They also understand their problem domain and as new capabilities come out know what capabilities will map well to what problems in what way. They are able to deliver on AI's promise to their customers. Whereas the majority of existing companies will die.
Within Amplitude's space (analytics), the door is wide open. In spite of many of our competitors filling up their homepages with the text "AI", I haven't seen a single compelling demo. We're still working like it's 2015.
We have spent the last year at Amplitude rebuilding our team to be AI native. We've learned about what models are capable of, how to write prompts, and how to leverage evals for building great products. We've worked with our customers to see what gets used in practice and what doesn't.
I know HN isn't one for hype, but we're going to be coming out with a lot over the next 6 months and I genuinely think it will change analytics.","title":"The State of AI in SaaS","updated_at":"2026-03-05T22:50:27Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"zebirdman"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"Say a company (eg Delta Air Lines) wants to use genAI for their customer service. OpenAI/Anthropic (and maybe Gemini too) can help with this and partner directly with Delta and call them a customer. But there are also specific companies (i.e., application layer companies) that use OpenAI's and/or Anthropic's LLM to build a product that uses genAI for customer service. Examples are Decagon, Sierra, Cresta, MavenAGI, etc. \nThe same applies for other use cases beyond customer service too: legal tech, enterprise search, etc. \nWhy would Delta partner with an application layer company vs. the LLM themselves?"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Difference b/w partnering with OpenAI/Anthropic vs. an application layer company"}},"_tags":["story","author_zebirdman","story_41436688","ask_hn"],"author":"zebirdman","created_at":"2024-09-03T16:45:24Z","created_at_i":1725381924,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"41436688","points":1,"story_id":41436688,"story_text":"Say a company (eg Delta Air Lines) wants to use genAI for their customer service. OpenAI/Anthropic (and maybe Gemini too) can help with this and partner directly with Delta and call them a customer. But there are also specific companies (i.e., application layer companies) that use OpenAI's and/or Anthropic's LLM to build a product that uses genAI for customer service. Examples are Decagon, Sierra, Cresta, MavenAGI, etc. \nThe same applies for other use cases beyond customer service too: legal tech, enterprise search, etc. \nWhy would Delta partner with an application layer company vs. the LLM themselves?","title":"Difference b/w partnering with OpenAI/Anthropic vs. an application layer company","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:44:19Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"polygot"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Pedant: Linting for English texts"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://github.com/decagon/pedant"}},"_tags":["story","author_polygot","story_12136165","show_hn"],"author":"polygot","children":[12137648,12152076,12152426,12161514],"created_at":"2016-07-21T11:41:14Z","created_at_i":1469101274,"num_comments":6,"objectID":"12136165","points":15,"story_id":12136165,"title":"Show HN: Pedant: Linting for English texts","updated_at":"2024-09-19T23:28:22Z","url":"https://github.com/decagon/pedant"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"polygot"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Hn-sonar: get notified for HN replies to your comments. No email address needed"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://github.com/Decagon/hn-sonar/"}},"_tags":["story","author_polygot","story_15997605"],"author":"polygot","children":[15998969],"created_at":"2017-12-24T02:49:03Z","created_at_i":1514083743,"num_comments":1,"objectID":"15997605","points":3,"story_id":15997605,"title":"Hn-sonar: get notified for HN replies to your comments. No email address needed","updated_at":"2024-09-20T01:52:37Z","url":"https://github.com/Decagon/hn-sonar/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"polygot"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: An app to \u201cpredict\u201d hearing loss, records output volume everyday"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://github.com/Decagon/can-you-hear-me"}},"_tags":["story","author_polygot","story_13286876","show_hn"],"author":"polygot","created_at":"2016-12-30T19:51:13Z","created_at_i":1483127473,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"13286876","points":3,"story_id":13286876,"title":"Show HN: An app to \u201cpredict\u201d hearing loss, records output volume everyday","updated_at":"2024-09-20T00:13:25Z","url":"https://github.com/Decagon/can-you-hear-me"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"polygot"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Bashreqs: like pipreqs but for bash scripts"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://github.com/Decagon/bashreqs"}},"_tags":["story","author_polygot","story_18004917"],"author":"polygot","created_at":"2018-09-17T11:42:09Z","created_at_i":1537184529,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"18004917","points":2,"story_id":18004917,"title":"Bashreqs: like pipreqs but for bash scripts","updated_at":"2024-09-20T03:00:01Z","url":"https://github.com/Decagon/bashreqs"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"polygot"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Wick: browse and interact with the internet like your filesystem"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://github.com/Decagon/wick"}},"_tags":["story","author_polygot","story_13361523"],"author":"polygot","created_at":"2017-01-10T00:47:39Z","created_at_i":1484009259,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"13361523","points":2,"story_id":13361523,"title":"Wick: browse and interact with the internet like your filesystem","updated_at":"2024-09-20T00:15:00Z","url":"https://github.com/Decagon/wick"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"polygot"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Star.js: auto-correct typos in messages based on the next message*"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://github.com/Decagon/star.js"}},"_tags":["story","author_polygot","story_12087337","show_hn"],"author":"polygot","created_at":"2016-07-13T16:12:34Z","created_at_i":1468426354,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"12087337","points":2,"story_id":12087337,"title":"Show HN: Star.js: auto-correct typos in messages based on the next message*","updated_at":"2024-09-19T23:29:53Z","url":"https://github.com/Decagon/star.js"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Hexahgon"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"RabbitIO: Unified authentication for PlayerIO"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://github.com/decagon/rabbit"}},"_tags":["story","author_Hexahgon","story_10506947"],"author":"Hexahgon","created_at":"2015-11-04T14:54:38Z","created_at_i":1446648878,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"10506947","points":1,"story_id":10506947,"title":"RabbitIO: Unified authentication for PlayerIO","updated_at":"2024-09-19T22:26:51Z","url":"https://github.com/decagon/rabbit"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"bmaupin"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"My Disastrous Experience with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar (2015)"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"http://www.deragon.info/ubuntu14.04.html"}},"_tags":["story","author_bmaupin","story_11488368"],"author":"bmaupin","children":[11488573,11488635,11488637,11488721,11488722,11488726,11488731,11488777,11488789,11488793,11488836,11488872,11488879,11488905,11488923,11488957,11488979,11488998,11489021,11489070,11489098,11489177,11489264,11489319,11489534,11490232,11491233,11494945],"created_at":"2016-04-13T14:20:39Z","created_at_i":1460557239,"num_comments":122,"objectID":"11488368","points":77,"story_id":11488368,"title":"My Disastrous Experience with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar (2015)","updated_at":"2024-09-19T23:07:26Z","url":"http://www.deragon.info/ubuntu14.04.html"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"allleycat"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Calling All Outlier Founders"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://medium.com/decasonic/calling-all-outlier-founders-e7542a717089"}},"_tags":["story","author_allleycat","story_28840777"],"author":"allleycat","children":[28841539],"created_at":"2021-10-12T15:17:54Z","created_at_i":1634051874,"num_comments":1,"objectID":"28840777","points":7,"story_id":28840777,"title":"Calling All Outlier Founders","updated_at":"2024-09-20T09:36:23Z","url":"https://medium.com/decasonic/calling-all-outlier-founders-e7542a717089"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"kawamuray"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Use and extend WebAssembly/WASI for language-agnostic Kafka consumer framework"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"https://engineering.linecorp.com/en/blog/adding-experimental-webassembly-support-to-decaton---part-1/"}},"_tags":["story","author_kawamuray","story_24717868"],"author":"kawamuray","created_at":"2020-10-08T10:48:42Z","created_at_i":1602154122,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"24717868","points":2,"story_id":24717868,"title":"Use and extend WebAssembly/WASI for language-agnostic Kafka consumer framework","updated_at":"2024-09-20T07:05:00Z","url":"https://engineering.linecorp.com/en/blog/adding-experimental-webassembly-support-to-decaton---part-1/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"xbmcuser"},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"What \"Decolonizing\" Israel Looks Like. | Professor Noura Erakat - Full Interview"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuBMKhObhgs"}},"_tags":["story","author_xbmcuser","story_49583537"],"author":"xbmcuser","created_at":"2026-09-06T05:17:02Z","created_at_i":1788671822,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"49583537","points":2,"story_id":49583537,"title":"What \"Decolonizing\" Israel Looks Like. | Professor Noura Erakat - Full Interview","updated_at":"2026-09-07T07:31:29Z","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuBMKhObhgs"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"temeya"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"Hi HN,
From that scene in Hackers where they were listing off books with nicknames (ex. Compiler: Principles, Techniques and Tools, aka "The Dragon Book," I ended up being curious about what other books might also have the same treatment. This is the current list I have, scoured from places like Wikipedia, Amazon and other forums, but I wondered if anyone found anything else? (This is just for my own curiosity)
The AWK Programming Language, Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, Brian Kernighan, aka "The Gray Book"
The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, aka "The White Book"
Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools, aka "The Red/Purple Dragon Book"
Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, aka "The Pillar Book"
The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, aka "The Devil Book"
Foundations of Computer Science, Aho, Alfred and Ullman, Jeffrey, aka "The Turtle Book"
Introduction to Automata Theory, aka "The Cinderella Book"
Lions' Commentary on UNIX, 6th Edition, aka "The Lions Book"
Modern Compiler Implementation in ML, aka "The Tiger Book"
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, aka "The Comet Book"
The OpenGL Programming Guide, aka "The Red Book"
The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC, aka "The Pink Shirt Book"
Principles of Compiler Design, aka "The Green Dragon Book"
Programming Perl, aka "The Camel Book"
Programming Ruby, aka "The Pickaxe Book"
Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation, aka "The Blue Book"
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, aka "The Wizard Book"
Unix Power Tools, aka "The Unix Book""},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Nicknames for Computer Science Books?"}},"_tags":["story","author_temeya","story_37230995","ask_hn"],"author":"temeya","children":[37231274,37231775,37231779,37231781,37231847,37231902,37232018,37232088,37232279,37232315,37232376,37232380,37232460,37232463,37232657,37233029,37234209,37234760,37235120,37235896],"created_at":"2023-08-23T01:58:32Z","created_at_i":1692755912,"num_comments":46,"objectID":"37230995","points":44,"story_id":37230995,"story_text":"Hi HN,
From that scene in Hackers where they were listing off books with nicknames (ex. Compiler: Principles, Techniques and Tools, aka "The Dragon Book," I ended up being curious about what other books might also have the same treatment. This is the current list I have, scoured from places like Wikipedia, Amazon and other forums, but I wondered if anyone found anything else? (This is just for my own curiosity)
The AWK Programming Language, Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, Brian Kernighan, aka "The Gray Book"
The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, aka "The White Book"
Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools, aka "The Red/Purple Dragon Book"
Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, aka "The Pillar Book"
The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, aka "The Devil Book"
Foundations of Computer Science, Aho, Alfred and Ullman, Jeffrey, aka "The Turtle Book"
Introduction to Automata Theory, aka "The Cinderella Book"
Lions' Commentary on UNIX, 6th Edition, aka "The Lions Book"
Modern Compiler Implementation in ML, aka "The Tiger Book"
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, aka "The Comet Book"
The OpenGL Programming Guide, aka "The Red Book"
The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC, aka "The Pink Shirt Book"
Principles of Compiler Design, aka "The Green Dragon Book"
Programming Perl, aka "The Camel Book"
Programming Ruby, aka "The Pickaxe Book"
Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation, aka "The Blue Book"
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, aka "The Wizard Book"
Unix Power Tools, aka "The Unix Book"","title":"Ask HN: Nicknames for Computer Science Books?","updated_at":"2026-09-06T15:36:56Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"xcc3641"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"Everything evolves in digitality, and deconstructs in logic.
Tired of filters that make everyone look like a glazed donut? Same.
Yan is not another beauty app. It's a digital chaos engine that treats your pixels like they owe it money. We don't enhance photos \u2014 we interrogate them at the binary level until they confess their true nature.
[What We Actually Do]\n\u2022 Luma Stretch: Grab your image by its light and shadow, then yeet it into oblivion. Speed lines included.\n\u2022 Pixel Sort: Let gravity do art. Pixels fall, colors cascade, Instagram influencers cry.\n\u2022 RGB Shift: That drunk 3D glasses effect, but on purpose. Your eyes will thank us. Or sue us.\n\u2022 Block Jitter: Ctrl+Z had a nightmare. This is what it dreamed.
[Why Yan?]\nBecause "vintage filter #47" is not a personality. Because glitch is not a bug \u2014 it's a feature. Because sometimes the most beautiful thing you can do to a photo is break it.
Warning: Side effects may include artistic awakening, filter addiction withdrawal, and an uncontrollable urge to deconstruct everything.
Your camera roll will never be boring again."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Yan \u2013 Glitch Art Photo/Live Editor"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://yan.yichenlab.com/"}},"_tags":["story","author_xcc3641","story_46970768","show_hn"],"author":"xcc3641","children":[46971126],"created_at":"2026-02-11T04:19:54Z","created_at_i":1770783594,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"46970768","points":3,"story_id":46970768,"story_text":"Everything evolves in digitality, and deconstructs in logic.
Tired of filters that make everyone look like a glazed donut? Same.
Yan is not another beauty app. It's a digital chaos engine that treats your pixels like they owe it money. We don't enhance photos \u2014 we interrogate them at the binary level until they confess their true nature.
[What We Actually Do]\n\u2022 Luma Stretch: Grab your image by its light and shadow, then yeet it into oblivion. Speed lines included.\n\u2022 Pixel Sort: Let gravity do art. Pixels fall, colors cascade, Instagram influencers cry.\n\u2022 RGB Shift: That drunk 3D glasses effect, but on purpose. Your eyes will thank us. Or sue us.\n\u2022 Block Jitter: Ctrl+Z had a nightmare. This is what it dreamed.
[Why Yan?]\nBecause "vintage filter #47" is not a personality. Because glitch is not a bug \u2014 it's a feature. Because sometimes the most beautiful thing you can do to a photo is break it.
Warning: Side effects may include artistic awakening, filter addiction withdrawal, and an uncontrollable urge to deconstruct everything.
Your camera roll will never be boring again.","title":"Show HN: Yan \u2013 Glitch Art Photo/Live Editor","updated_at":"2026-09-06T06:04:09Z","url":"https://yan.yichenlab.com/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"jdw64"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["decagon"],"value":"Nowadays, almost everyone codes with AI, right? I am a freelancer, and the entire market is now setting deadlines based on AI-assisted coding speeds. If you don't use AI, you simply cannot meet the deadlines. Because of this, I completely transitioned to AI-driven coding at the beginning of this year (starting around GPT-5.3).
It's not that AI coding isn't fun. It is. But in the beginning, there were still many things AI couldn't do well. The community focus was on "Harness Engineering," attaching MCPs, or deep Prompt Engineering. I actually built and used quite a few custom AI tools during that phase.
In the past, you had to provide not just your intent and direction, but also detailed, step-by-step instructions to reach that goal. Lately, though, even if you skip the detailed instructions, both Claude and GPT-5.6 handle it perfectly. You don't even have to agonize over which model to use. "Graph engineering" is currently trending, but it seems the models have already learned those patterns natively\u2014if you establish a high-level plan with them, they automatically embed the execution policies into it. Whenever I try to learn and apply a new AI engineering technique, the next model update already does it out of the box, making the effort feel pointless.
The real problem is that AI is now too good. It applies ADT patterns, immutability, Option/Maybe, Result patterns, functional programming patterns, monadic chaining, and architectural structures like MVC, MVVM, MVI, and Hexagonal architectures far better than I can. It's heavily demotivating.
All those years I spent memorizing GoF patterns, slowly applying them to my work, and tweaking them into my own style\u2014it all feels meaningless now.
Honestly, the vast majority of freelance work revolves around simple CRUD apps. Sure, there is domain knowledge to memorize, but when it comes to structuring CRUD, using functional techniques for error and value handling, or writing boundary tests, AI is just far more meticulous and capable than I am.
It even feels like AI is better at domain modeling. I try to hypnotize myself into believing I'm still necessary, but realistically, I don't work in Big Tech. I'm a programmer who mostly assembles business logic on top of existing frameworks, and the truth is, AI does my job better. And faster. I don't think I can deny it anymore.
Top-tier developers might still outperform AI, but for the vast majority of us, including myself, that is no longer the reality. To write the kind of code AI generates, I used to have to keep documentation open on a second monitor, think deeply, and constantly Google better approaches. AI just generates it instantly, making my past efforts feel obsolete.
When AI writes better code than I do, how am I supposed to maintain my motivation and identity? I would especially love to hear from other freelance developers. With market deadlines getting tighter and tighter because of AI, how are you handling this transition?
Again, it's not that AI "vibe coding" isn't fun. It is. But entirely separate from that, the stark realization that I am losing my competitive edge is making me increasingly depressed."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: AI writes better code than me. How to keep my identity?"}},"_tags":["story","author_jdw64","story_49481969","ask_hn"],"author":"jdw64","children":[49482120,49482145,49482521,49482930,49483272,49483303,49483306,49483386,49483530,49484121,49485433,49485699,49485711,49485936,49486562,49488152,49488821,49492789,49493175,49495001,49497115,49503538,49503552,49511486],"created_at":"2026-08-28T17:40:39Z","created_at_i":1787938839,"num_comments":25,"objectID":"49481969","points":15,"story_id":49481969,"story_text":"Nowadays, almost everyone codes with AI, right? I am a freelancer, and the entire market is now setting deadlines based on AI-assisted coding speeds. If you don't use AI, you simply cannot meet the deadlines. Because of this, I completely transitioned to AI-driven coding at the beginning of this year (starting around GPT-5.3).
It's not that AI coding isn't fun. It is. But in the beginning, there were still many things AI couldn't do well. The community focus was on "Harness Engineering," attaching MCPs, or deep Prompt Engineering. I actually built and used quite a few custom AI tools during that phase.
In the past, you had to provide not just your intent and direction, but also detailed, step-by-step instructions to reach that goal. Lately, though, even if you skip the detailed instructions, both Claude and GPT-5.6 handle it perfectly. You don't even have to agonize over which model to use. "Graph engineering" is currently trending, but it seems the models have already learned those patterns natively\u2014if you establish a high-level plan with them, they automatically embed the execution policies into it. Whenever I try to learn and apply a new AI engineering technique, the next model update already does it out of the box, making the effort feel pointless.
The real problem is that AI is now too good. It applies ADT patterns, immutability, Option/Maybe, Result patterns, functional programming patterns, monadic chaining, and architectural structures like MVC, MVVM, MVI, and Hexagonal architectures far better than I can. It's heavily demotivating.
All those years I spent memorizing GoF patterns, slowly applying them to my work, and tweaking them into my own style\u2014it all feels meaningless now.
Honestly, the vast majority of freelance work revolves around simple CRUD apps. Sure, there is domain knowledge to memorize, but when it comes to structuring CRUD, using functional techniques for error and value handling, or writing boundary tests, AI is just far more meticulous and capable than I am.
It even feels like AI is better at domain modeling. I try to hypnotize myself into believing I'm still necessary, but realistically, I don't work in Big Tech. I'm a programmer who mostly assembles business logic on top of existing frameworks, and the truth is, AI does my job better. And faster. I don't think I can deny it anymore.
Top-tier developers might still outperform AI, but for the vast majority of us, including myself, that is no longer the reality. To write the kind of code AI generates, I used to have to keep documentation open on a second monitor, think deeply, and constantly Google better approaches. AI just generates it instantly, making my past efforts feel obsolete.
When AI writes better code than I do, how am I supposed to maintain my motivation and identity? I would especially love to hear from other freelance developers. With market deadlines getting tighter and tighter because of AI, how are you handling this transition?
Again, it's not that AI "vibe coding" isn't fun. It is. But entirely separate from that, the stark realization that I am losing my competitive edge is making me increasingly depressed.","title":"Ask HN: AI writes better code than me. How to keep my identity?","updated_at":"2026-09-07T02:24:57Z"}],"hitsPerPage":50,"nbHits":21,"nbPages":1,"page":0,"params":"query=Decagon&tags=story&hitsPerPage=50&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":7,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":16},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":1,"total":1},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":1,"total":1},"total":1},"total":1},"fetch":{"query":4,"total":5},"total":7},"query":"Decagon","serverTimeMS":9}