I love getting emails from Ben Casnocha. Short, sweet, and to the point. Today’s was “what tech are you obsessed with now? Saw your blog post…” I wrote a response and then realized it was a good answer to my tease from my previous blog post (Blurry Transitions) about what I was exploring. The only thing I removed was my ad hominem comments on various tech companies, since that’s not that interesting to me. And, I fixed some … typos.

Here are a few hints: IntensityMagic and an image of my computer screen (the one above).

I decided I really wanted to understand how AI coding works. I’ve been deeply involved in a few shifts in the past (Agile software development, user-generated content (RSS), email everything (SMTP), … and, if you go back far enough, Feld Technologies was all about shifting from minicomputer business systems to PC-based network database systems). In all cases, I had to “do stuff” to understand it and form a viewpoint, given all the BS and marketing in tech.

I wanted to see if I could create a zero-employee company, aside from the CEO and CTO. Daniel (Feld) is the CEO. I’m the very part-time CTO. I’ve created a thing called CompanyOS, which is IntensityMagic’s AI-powered business operations system. It’s designed around the premise: “Run 100% of a company’s business operations through Claude Code. Two people, multiple Claude agents, zero employee overhead.”

At the core, I’ve gone extremely deep on Claude Code and everything around it.

– I think “vibe coding” is nonsense – it’s just prototype development and a different flavor of no-code software, which is useful but not compelling for scaled applications.

– There are $x billions of VC who have funded what are effectively wrappers on AI and/or point solutions that can be made obsolete overnight. 

– Most companies that try to integrate “AI coding” into what they are doing are struggling because they haven’t figured out the tooling, which is not just “turn on Github Copilot” or “use Cursor.”

It’s much easier to experiment deeply with “no employees” and “no legacy stuff,” so that’s what I’m doing. I’m viewing it as a video game, and I’m on level 19. It’s awesomely fun.