Adrig
Joined 9 years ago
Joined 9 years ago
Chatbots also had huge drawbacks that are still present with AI: - Inability to see what outcomes are possible - Very constrained environment with only lightly formatted text - Sequential flow
You can see how the modern AI chat interface tries to overcome these issues. But even then, just the power of LLMs made users adopt this approach massively despite these drawbacks
Hindsight is 20/20, maybe you can accurately predict the inflection point of every modality, but the fact that most AI patterns currently used started as a quick experiment shows that most people can't, and probably shouldn't.
But I have to admit that in the design field we have a strong tendency to over-rely on "proper rules" and to overgeneralize learnings. (My pet peeve is when B2C patterns are transferred as-is in B2B or prosumers)
AI makes some old UX viable but can also unlock tons of value once you break your assumptions and reluctance. An example I see a lot here and on socials is how much of the code developers actually read nowadays. In the case of Instict, it is how many people actually share their credit card with an unknown startup's IA to buy stuff. I just heard on a podcast that 40% of them actually used their AI to buy something online (I didn't verify the %)
I'm the kind of guy who didn't understand why people use phones so much when a desktop is way more comfortable, so I have to keep track of the crazy ones!
Chatbots have been tried for a decade and were a total failure. With AI, it has become the fastest-growing way to interact with technology, ever.
GPT-5 tried to have an auto router and create abstraction for the user; people hated it. Instinct and Muse are doing the same with a different framing; it's going wild.
There are tons of these little examples where a small difference in framing, a small threshold in tech, and product assumptions completely flip on their heads.
It's amazing to follow but requires you to be way more flexible in your assumptions.
Great read, probably really smart positioning from Mistral but I can't help but be disappointed by the lack of ambition and innovation. This looks like more of a regulatory moat than a competitive technology.
Although I'll probably never use Grok, this is an interesting release. I always thought GPT work and Claude Cowork are a bit awkward in their positioning. I'm still not sure what the real difference is with standard chat. This looks like the same thing with seamless memory and skills creation.
This seems like the middle ground between work mode and OpenClaw/Hermes (which I've never tried, too scared to mess something up). I think the humanization of the agents is cute and makes sense UX wise. I hope to see alternatives soon.
The point is that simple apps like these have just become insanely competitive to distribute, and it's best not to think of it as mini businesses
> Tools help me achieve a specific goal. Products help me work better in a way I've not necessarily thought about myself.
For me a product = a packaged set of tools.
What was interesting with the micro-saas wave is that a lot of people started to build products around one simple tool. It worked because sometimes a well-crafted one is better unbundled. Here's one example that thrived on this premise: https://www.bannerbear.com/
100%, which is why I think hyper-tailored, small software is an exciting option. When you shift your goal to serve 1000 customers, the hardest part is not having a tech stack that supports them, but making sure the software is good enough for all their different needs. Or you try to meet them all and you get into feature creep.
> For businesses, the buy vs. build tradeoff does now have some new compelling evidence in favour of "buy" but there's still maintenance needed for the service internally
What if you neither buy or build the software but buy the service outcome?
A data analyst that creates custom workflows with auto-generated dashboards. A dev-ops that provides access with exactly the information you need, depending on the hand-off level you want for the process.
My point is that a lot of these micro tools that started to appear the last few years will vanish, either bundled with bigger SAAS, internalized, or shifted to a service offering. This trend started with productized services, this is the next step.
> SaaS is far from dead.
Micro SAAS*. I agree with all your points, but I do believe the small software landscape will change drastically in the coming years
I try to learn writing and copywriting directly in english to avoid the awkward translation effect, but I focus more on the rythm, structure and content than the prasing itself
Feel free to reach out on Twitter if you want to chat : @adriengonin