Lenny Rachitsky

The moment I learned one of my newsletter posts became an eval for Claude Cowork

Claude Code launched just one year ago. Today it writes 4% of all GitHub commits, and DAU 2x'd last month alone. In my conversation with @bcherny, creator and head of Claude Code, we dig into: 🔸 Why he considers coding "largely solved" 🔸 What tech jobs will be transformed next 🔸 The counterintuitive bet that made Claude Code take off 🔸 Why he left for Cursor and what brought him back 🔸 Practical tips for getting the most out of Claude Code and Cowork 🔸 Much more Listen now👇 https://youtube.com/watch?v=We7BZVKbCVw

As AI eats more of product building (autocompleting code -> writing 100% of code -> reviewing its own code -> deciding what to build in the first place -> judgement to know what is great), where will human brains be most needed moving forward? (Until AGI 😵‍💫) I think distribution becomes the biggest challenge/opportunity. Getting people's attention in the ever-louder market. This is good news for incumbents and people with a platform. Tough for new startups. You'll have to get ever-more creative to break through. And then...what happens when the users choosing products are also AI?

What's your best tip for getting the most out of @openclaw?

The rise of the professional vibe coder Lazar Jovanovic (@lakikentaki) gets paid to vibe-code full-time. That's his actual job. This is a new career path for non-technical people, and a fascinating glimpse into where product roles are heading. I found myself thinking more deeply about the future of PMs, designers, and engineers during this conversation than I have in a long time. We discuss: 🔸 Why having no coding background can be a big advantage when building with AI 🔸 His markdown file system that keeps AI agents aligned across complex builds 🔸 What to do when you get stuck: Lazar's 4x4 debugging workflow 🔸 Why you should be kicking off 4-5 parallel prototypes 🔸 Why design skills, and taste, are going to be the most important skills in the future Listen now 👇 • YouTube: https://youtu.be/0XNkUdzxiZI • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ahlEY5… • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ge… Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 @strella_io — The AI-powered customer research platform: https://strella.io/lenny 🏆 @Samsara — Saving lives with AI built for physical operations: https://samsara.com/lenny 🏆 @WorkOS — Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs: https://workos.com/lenny

Our 2.5yo always includes @maticrobots as part of our family

Testing out the new Claude Cowork. I asked it to go through every Lenny's Podcast episode and pull out the 10 most important themes and lessons for product builders. Then, the 10 most counterintuitive truths. I gave it access to a folder with 320 transcripts. First, it said "This is a substantial task - 320 podcast transcripts to analyze!" 15 minutes later... The 10 most Important themes from Lenny's Podcast 1. Activation Is Everything — Slack's "2,000 messages" moment, Gamma's 30-second magic. Get users to value fast. 2. Storytelling as a Superpower — Compelling narratives align organizations better than documents. 3. Positioning Is Strategy, Not Marketing — April Dunford's 5-step framework that starts with competitive alternatives, not messaging. 4. Product Discovery Before Delivery — Teresa Torres' Opportunity Solution Trees and Marty Cagan's Four Risks framework. Talk to customers weekly, not quarterly. 5. Ruthless Prioritization — Shreyas Doshi's LNO Framework (Leverage/Neutral/Overhead) and focusing on opportunity cost over ROI. 6. AI is Transforming Product Development — Model maximalism, evals as core PM skill, CEOs becoming ICs again. 7. Empowered Teams vs. Feature Factories — Marty Cagan's distinction: give teams problems to solve, not features to build. 8. Build Your Operating System — Claire Hughes Johnson's framework for founding documents, operating cadence, and decision frameworks. 9. Pre-Mortems and Risk Anticipation — Shreyas Doshi's technique to surface failure modes before they happen. 10. Small Teams, Outsized Impact — Jason Fried's 2-person/6-week constraints, Shopify's pair programming culture. The 10 most counterintuitive truths: 1. Fear Gives Bad Advice—Do the Opposite — Whatever you're afraid to do (hard conversation, telling the board bad news) is exactly what you should do. 2. Adding Friction Can INCREASE Conversion — Adding personalization questions to signup improved Amplitude's conversion by 5%. 3. Fewer Features = More Value — The Walkman succeeded because Sony REMOVED recording. QuickBooks wins with half the features at double the price. 4. Adding People Makes You Slower (Absolutely) — Companies produce MORE total output after layoffs. Coordination overhead is the silent killer. 5. What Customers Say They Want Is Meaningless — 93% said they wanted energy-efficient homes. Nobody bought them. "Bitchin' ain't switchin'." 6. Goals Are Not Strategy—They're the Opposite — Richard Rumelt says confusing goals for strategy is the most common strategic error. OKRs are often just wish lists. 7. Don't A/B Test Your Big Bets — Instagram and Airbnb actively reject testing for transformational changes. You can't A/B test your way to greatness. 8. Your Gut IS Data — Intuition is compressed experiential learning that isn't statistically significant yet. Don't discount it. 9. By the Time You're Thinking About Quitting, It's Too Late — Stewart Butterfield killed Glitch while it was still growing 6-7% weekly. That's why he could start Slack. 10. Most PMs Are Overpaid and Unnecessary — Marty Cagan himself says feature teams don't need PMs. Nikita Bier calls PM "not real." Nice job @claudeai

How to use AI for your next job interview @noamseg (my community research lead) interviewed 30 current and recent job seekers about how they use AI throughout the interview process. What he found went far beyond polishing resumes. People had built entire systems tailor-made for their own situations: ways to get feedback on what they actually said in interviews, methods to predict questions before walking in, workflows to surface stories they didn’t know they had. As he was pulling together a research report from these conversations, he quickly realized that most people on the job market are stressed and anxious enough. The best value he could offer wasn’t a list of tips but, instead, a way to plug-and-play the hard work these participants have already done. So he changed direction, took every interview AI technique that worked for these participants, added a layer of professional coaching techniques, and built a free Claude Code–based coach you can plug-and-play into your interview process today. The coach helps you with every step of the interview process: 1. Scores your interview responses and tells you exactly what to fix, based on what you said, not what you think you said 2. Mines your experience for stories you didn't know you had 3. Runs mock interviews that push back and interrupt you 4. Generates company-specific prep with predicted questions 5. Coaches post-offer salary negotiation with exact scripts and fallback language ...and much more Learn more and grab it here: https://lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-us…

Vibe-coded the "note to self" app I've always wanted: Easy text-to-speech, fat send buttons, easy photo upload, pretty.

I lost track of my Mac Mini password where I have @openclaw running, AMA

"Meta recently added a new PM interview, the first major change to its PM loop in over five years. It’s called 'Product Sense with AI,' and candidates are asked to work through a product problem with the help of AI, in real time. In this interview, candidates aren’t judged on clever prompts, model trivia, or even flashy demos. They are evaluated on how they work with uncertainty: how they notice when the model is guessing, ask the right follow-up questions, and make clear product decisions despite imperfect information. That shift reflects something bigger. AI product sense—understanding what a model can do and where it fails, and working within those constraints to build a product that people love—is becoming the new core skill of product management. In today's 🔥 guest piece by @marilynika, you'll learn three powerful weekly rituals that'll build your AI product sense: 1. Mapping the failure modes 2. Defining the minimum viable quality (MVQ) 3. Designing guardrails where behavior breaks Don't miss this one: https://lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-…

Engineers who''ve integrated AI into their work: have you been enjoying your job more or less since adopting these tools? Poll options 264 votes 2 days left

Replying to @lennysan @cursor_ai and @clairevo And don't miss the $50 in free Cursor credits we're hooking you up with to do this tutorial with Opus 4.5. lennysnewsletter.com How to build AI product sense From lennysnewsletter.com

Been playing with @ManusAI more and it's really really good. It's becoming me go-to for podcast guest prep.

Banger from @ElenaVerna

Everyone's using AI to do data analysis. Almost everyone is getting answers full of lies. Made-up quotes. Invented evidence. Completely wrong conclusions—all presented with total confidence. Today's post shares four prompting techniques that will prevent and catch these errors. Inside: 1. Why AI struggles with customer research data 2. Which LLM is best for qual analysis 3. Four ways AI data analyses lie to you, and how to fix them Save this for the next time you're using AI to analyze data https://lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-do…

"Engineers are becoming sorcerers" @SherwinWu leads engineering for @OpenAI’s API platform, which gives him a unique view into what’s going, where things are heading, and what the future of software engineering looks like. Over 95% of engineers at OpenAI use Codex daily, each works with a fleet of 10-20 parallel AI agents, and he's seeing the productivity gap between AI power users and everyone else widening. In our conversation, discuss: 🔸 Why the next 12-24 months are a rare window of opportunity 🔸 Why “models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast” 🔸 What OpenAI did to cut code review times from 10mins to 2mins 🔸 How AI is starting to change the role of managers 🔸 Why most enterprise AI deployments have negative ROI Watch below and find it on YouTube here 👇 https://youtu.be/B26CwKm5C1k

Do you use @openclaw in some super impactful or fun way? I'd love to know. Please share your 1-2 favorite use cases in the comments. If it's awesome, I'll feature you in the newsletter. Big bonus points for screenshots of what it looks like in action (and any tips for setting it up).

Intersting data from @dylan522p

Here's the link (happening now) ciscoaisummit.com/ai-virtual-sum ? ciscoaisummit.com Cisco AI Summit 2026 | The builders of the AI economy From ciscoaisummit.com