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There's been a remarkable leap forward in the ability to orchestrate coding bots, making it possible for ordinary creators to command dozens of AI bots to build software without ever having to directly touch code. The implications of this kind of evolution are potentially extraordinary, as outlined in that first set of notes about what we could call "codeless" software. But now it's worth looking at the larger ecosystem to understand where all of this might be headed.
One idea that's come up in a host of different conversations around codeless software, both from supporters and skeptics, is how these new orchestration tools can enable coders to control coding bots that aren't from the Big AI companies. Skeptics say, "won't everyone just use Claude Code, since that's the best coding bot?"
The response that comes up is one that I keep articulating as "frontier minus six", meaning the idea that many of the open source or open-weight AI models are often delivering results at a level equivalent to where frontier AI models were six months ago. Or, sometimes, where they were 9 months or a year ago. In any of these cases, these are still damn good results! These levels of performance are not merely acceptable, they are results that we were amazed by just months ago, and are more than serviceable for a large number of use cases — especially if those use cases can be run locally, at low cost, with lower power usage, without having to pay any vendor, and in environments where one can inspect what's happening with security and privacy.
When we consider that a frontier-minus-six fleet of bots can often run on cheap commodity hardware (instead of the latest, most costly, hard-to-get Nvidia GPUs) and we still have the backup option of escalating workloads to the paid services if and when a task is too challenging for them to complete, it seems inevitable that this will be part of the mix in future codeless implementations.
The most thoughtful and fluent analysis of the new codeless approach has been this wonderful essay by Maggie Appleton, whose writing is always incisive and insightful. This one's a must-read! Speaking of Gas Town (Steve Yegge's signature orchestration tool, which has catalyzed much of the codeless revolution), Maggie captures the ethos of the entire space:
We should take Yegge’s creation seriously not because it’s a serious, working tool for today’s developers (it isn’t). But because it’s a good piece of speculative design fiction that asks provocative questions and reveals the shape of constraints we’ll face as agentic coding systems mature and grow.
Once you've considered Maggie's piece, it's worth reading over Steve Krouse's essay, "Vibe code is legacy code". Steve and his team build the delightful val town, an incredibly accessible coding community that strikes a very careful balance between enabling coding and enabling AI assistance without overwriting the human, creative aspects of building with code. In many ways (including its aesthetic), it is the closest thing I've seen to a spiritual successor to the work we'd done for many years with Glitch, so it's no surprise that Steve would have a good intuition about the human relationship to creating with code.
There's an interesting point, however to the core point Steve makes about the disposability of vibe-coded (or AI-generated) code: all code is disposable. Every single line of code I wrote during the many years I was a professional developer has since been discarded. And it's not just because I was a singularly terrible coder; this is often the normal thing that happens with code bases after just a short period of time. As much as we lament the longevity of legacy code bases, or the impossibility of fixing some stubborn old systems based on dusty old languages, it's also very frequently the case that people happily rip out massive chunks of code that people toiled over for months or years and then discard it all without any sentimentality whatsoever.
Codeless tooling just happens to embrace this ephemerality and treat it as a feature instead of a bug. That kind of inversion of assumptions often leads to interesting innovations.
As I noted in my original piece on codeless software, we can expect any successful way of building software to be appropriated by companies that want to profiteer off of the technology, especially enterprise companies. This new realm is no different. Because these codeless orchestration systems have been percolating for some time, we've seen some of these efforts pop up already.
For example, the team at Every, which consults and builds tools around AI for businesses, calls a lot of these approaches compound engineering when their team uses them to create software. This name seems fine, and it's good to see that they maintain the ability to switch between models easily, even if they currently prefer Claude's Opus 4.5 for most of their work. The focus on planning and thinking through the end product holistically is a particularly important point to emphasize, and will be key to this approach succeeding as new organizations adopt it.
But where I'd quibble with some of what they've explained is the focus on tying the work to individual vendors. Those concerns should be abstracted away by those who are implementing the infrastructure, as much as possible. It's a bit like ensuring that most individual coders don't have to know exactly which optimizations a compiler is making when it targets a particular CPU architecture. Building that muscle where the specifics of different AI vendors become less important will help move the industry forward towards reducing platforms costs — and more importantly, empowering coders to make choices based on their priorities, not those of the AI platforms or their bosses.
A good example of the "normal" developer ecosystem recognizing the groundswell around codeless workflows and moving quickly to integrate with them is the Tailscale team already shipping Aperture. While this initial release is focused on routine tasks like managing API keys, it's really easy to see how the ability to manage gateways and usage into a heterogeneous mix of coding agents will start to enable, and encourage, adoption of new coding agents. (Especially if those "frontier-minus-six" scenarios start to take off.)
I've been on the record for years about being bullish on Tailscale, and nimbleness like this is a big reason why. That example of seeing where developers are going, and then building tooling to serve them, is always a sign that something is bubbling up that could actually become signficant.
It's still early, but these are the first few signs of a nascent ecosystem that give me more conviction that this whole thing might become real.
Joël Guerriau sentenced to four years in prison after spiking lawmaker’s champagne with ecstasy
A French court has found a former senator guilty of drugging a female lawmaker with ecstasy with intent to sexually assault her.
Joël Guerriau, 68, was sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday, of which 18 months must be behind bars.
In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Continue reading...A ‘massive smack’ of lion’s mane jellyfish has appeared across Port Phillip Bay, but experts say fears of a ‘jellygeddon’ are overblown
Swimmers have been advised to steer clear if they see red jellies in the water after a gelatinous horde descended on Melbourne beaches.
Thousands of lion’s mane jellyfish have washed into the shallows and on to the sand across Port Phillip Bay, from Altona in the west to Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula.
Continue reading...Vow to bring ‘stability and clarity’ to the UK’s approach to Beijing on first visit by a British prime minister in eight years will be sorely tested
Keir Starmer has travelled to China with a vow to bring “stability and clarity” to the UK’s approach to Beijing after years of what he described as “inconsistency” under the Tories, but a series of issues may get in the way of his efforts to improve relations with the economic powerhouse.
Continue reading...Ruling is a setback for Democrats looking to increase number of seats in midterm House elections in November
A Virginia judge ruled on Tuesday that a proposed constitutional amendment letting Democrats redraw the state’s congressional maps was illegal, setting back the party’s efforts to pick up seats in the US House in November.
Tazewell circuit court judge Jack Hurley Jr struck down the legislature’s actions on three grounds, including finding that lawmakers failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session.
Continue reading...Filing by New Mexico’s attorney general includes Meta staff emails objecting to AI companion policy
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, approved allowing minors to access artificial intelligence chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made public on Monday.
The lawsuit – brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month – alleges Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and Instagram.
Continue reading...PM promises ‘stability and clarity’ in approach on first visit to Beijing by UK leader in eight years
Keir Starmer has said the UK government will remain “clear-eyed and realistic” on the national security threat posed by China as he travelled to Beijing in an effort to improve relations with the economic powerhouse.
The prime minister promised “stability and clarity” in his approach to Beijing after years of what he described as “inconsistency” under the Tories, as western powers turn to China in their search for economic stability amid concerns the US may no longer be a reliable partner.
Continue reading...Attack in Kharkiv region was denounced as terrorism by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said it undermined ‘efforts to end the war’
A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in north-eastern Ukraine has killed five people, prosecutors said, an attack denounced as terrorism by president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Prosecutors said fragments of five bodies had been found at the scene of the strike on the train, which occurred on Tuesday near a village in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
Continue reading...



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Tags: design
Dabin Ahn has always been interested in the way objects and materials become markers of life. The Chicago-based artist renders delicate vessels, pottery shards, and taper candles with warm wax pooled underneath small flames. Nested in hand-crafted wooden frames, his sculptural paintings are luminous meditations on the passage of time and what remains over the years.
What’s lingering for Ahn at the moment are memories of his father, who died earlier this month. Just as the artist was wrapping up preparations for his solo show at François Ghebaly, he received a call from his brother saying he needed to return to Seoul to say goodbye. Ahn’s father had been sick for a while, and while much of the work in Golden Days reflects this grief and impending loss, the paintings are much more reflective of his father’s death.

“Throughout the process of preparing for this show, I was mostly thinking about, not my life without my dad, but taking myself back to the 90s, when we were most happy as a family,” the artist told Colossal. In deep blues and grays, much of Ahn’s work is veiled in a sort of meditative melancholy, one that comes through processing grief and loss over a long period of time. Candles, fireflies, and gleaming vessels appear as beacons among the somber color palettes.
Works like “Flora and Fauna II” and “Repose” feature vases fading in the background, a clear metaphor for his late father. The weave of the linen itself also peeks through the scratchy surface of the paintings, which the artist rubbed with sandpaper to achieve the grainy, worn texture.
While Ahn is known to meticulously follow what he’s referred to as a “script” in creating a piece, this body of work is more amenable to nature’s forces as burled wood frames and craggy turquoise assert their textures. Golden Days also gives more space for the materials’ histories and the patina of various objects to shine, a choice echoed in the artist’s own actions. “I still feel my dad’s presence,” he says. “I brought back his old watches and his glasses, which I started wearing. I changed the lenses so that I can wear them, so I’m still living with him in a way.”
Golden Days is on view through February 14 in Los Angeles, and Ahn has another solo exhibition upcoming this spring at Document in Chicago. Until then, find more on Instagram.









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Users of Meta's WhatsApp messenger looking to simplify the process of protecting themselves are in luck, as the company is rolling out a new feature that combines multiple security settings under a single, toggleable option. …