~Never stop moving~
Joined July 2011
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Graham Seamans retweeted
Bot detection & human verification will be one of the most urgent demands for businesses over the coming years. Agent swarms will suffocate every website and form; small companies and government websites are most vulnerable.
There is a huge gap in the market for this right now. When we looked at what offerings were in the market to use at X, there was not a single company that brought together all the latest technologies so we had to do it all in-house.
Graham Seamans retweeted
If you want AI implemented in your enterprise operations, here's the order we run it in. A total of five steps.
1. Frame. Pick one workflow with real users, a deadline the customer feels, and a number you already track. Client reporting, onboarding, reconciliation, exception handling: the burden shows up in somebody's calendar. Sign the baseline before anyone builds. FOMO hates this step because it produces nothing to show a board, and it's the only thing that makes step five honest.
2. Prove. Build the smallest useful slice on real data in two to four weeks, with the assumptions, traces, errors and the human review all visible. You get a working capability, a first evaluation, and an honest failure profile. If the profile is ugly, you found out for the price of a month.
3. Harden. Add the security, the cost controls, the fallbacks, and a named owner. A working demo is where most programs stop. Production is a runbook and a person whose phone rings when it breaks.
4. Embed. Train the users, hand over the knowledge, watch adoption. Technical accuracy isn't business value. If nobody in the operation touches it on a Tuesday, it's a science project.
5. Scale. Adjacent workflows and reusable pieces, chosen from what step four measured and never from a platform pitch.
The consultancy version of the same journey runs in the other order: a long diagnostic before anyone touches real data, a program justified by projected benefits, success measured in workshops held and slides delivered.
We measure it in work shipped and a return both sides can verify.
The thing holding all assistants back is the simplicity of integrating into your apps and systems. Doing a computer take over to get into my WhatsApp is slow and archaic. We need an authentication system that works well with agents so our assistants can be trusted & verified.
The hottest category in tech right now is AI assistants.
The question is; who is going to win?
Instinct raised at $2.5BN. Has Benchmark and Index behind them.
Grok Bot is ripping with Elon and has the distribution machine of X.
And then there is Town, one of the only ones that’s actually making real money from real businesses.
Don’t write Zuck off. This will be his next play and integrated into every WhatsApp user’s product.
I sat down with Town Founder, @jgreze to understand WTF is going on, who wins and who loses?
Condensed my notes below!
1. We Have Passed the Point Where Humans Look at Lines of Code
Software engineering has crossed a threshold where machines increasingly write and ship code into production under model-based guardrails. Outside critical security controls, humans will spend far less time reviewing raw code. The future belongs to systems that manage autonomous AI agents writing software, running tests, and validating their own work.
2. You Can Build at the Speed of Machines, but You Can Only Learn at the Speed of Humans
AI development tools allow competitors to clone features in weeks, erasing traditional software head starts. But deep user feedback cannot be automated. While machines accelerate execution, true competitive advantage comes from maximizing human learning cycles and understanding customers faster than anyone else.
3. Why None of the AI Assistants Have True Product-Market Fit Today
Despite immense market hype, no current AI assistant has achieved deep product-market fit with mainstream users. Most products still cater primarily to power users rather than everyday workers. Before worrying about moats, founders need to create frictionless experiences that resonate with the mass market.
4. Network Effects at the Agent Level Will Separate AI Winners
Sustainable moats in AI assistants will come from multi-user network effects at the agent level, not single-player productivity. When autonomous assistants collaborate across teams to resolve queries and execute work, switching becomes increasingly difficult. Multiplayer workflows create organizational lock-in that personal assistants cannot replicate.
5. How Much of the Workload Stays at the Frontier Versus Open Weight?
AI application margins depend heavily on how much work requires expensive frontier models versus cheaper open weights. Complex reasoning may still demand frontier intelligence, while routine tasks like scheduling and email tagging continue moving down the cost curve. Shifting 80% of workloads to open weights over time could create far more sustainable economics.
6. My R&D Is Just Spent Getting Product Parity With the Giants
Competing with giants like OpenAI requires massive investment simply to maintain feature parity. Startups cannot rely on unique distribution if their underlying harness falls behind on core capabilities. AI assistants must invest heavily to match the execution speed and product depth of frontier teams.
7. Why Instinct Is Not a Competitor to Town
Consumer assistants like Instinct focus on rapid acquisition through subsidized personal tools, while enterprise platforms build monetizable team workflows. Although their technical harnesses may overlap, their target ICPs and business models diverge sharply. Enterprise agents monetize by embedding collaboration directly into daily operations.
(links below)
Graham Seamans retweeted
Cyber is having a moment
Across 21 major software companies, including Apple, AWS, Microsoft, and Google:
- Reported critical vulnerabilities never cleared 100 per month in four years
- Since spring they've jumped to over 600 per month
Charts of the Week: a16z.news/p/chart-of-the-wee…
Graham Seamans retweeted
I turn 50 today. This is a message to my kids but I offer it to you in case any of it rings useful.
I was born in Sri Lanka in 1976 in a country that, at the time, was about to enter a decades long civil war. My father was able to get stationed at the Sri Lankan High Commission in Canada for four years in the early 80s - when some of the fighting was most severe - and which from our vantage point in Canada gave us some respite from an otherwise omnipresent conflict.
He came as a diplomat but then my father filed for refugee status after four years when his life was threatened by militants. We stayed in Canada as refugees. My dad never really landed on his feet and we grew up on welfare.
My mom stepped up. She did an incredible thing and put our family on her back and kept marching forward. Sometimes the steps were very small but she always tried to keep moving forward.
I worked at Burger King starting at 14, giving my paycheck to my mom and dad to support our family in the role that I was assigned - earn enough to pay for our bus passes because we couldn’t afford a car.
I was a loser growing up. Some friends, some good memories but mostly forgettable and lonely. I wasn’t very studious but did get my act together in my final year and got into a great university.
I immigrated to the US soon after graduating and found an opportunity. Things clicked and I have been traveling a path to find myself ever since. Only in America is this possible…
I worked hard, followed the rules, paid my taxes and stayed in California out of loyalty for the opportunities it has given me despite its dysfunction.
I found my wife here. Had my kids here. Found my tribe here.
There have been some very hard times as well - deaths, divorce, financial pain, mistakes of omission and mistakes of commission. You can’t dwell on these things - they are weights that will pull you down if you’re not careful. Learn from them. Respect them. BUT MOVE ON.
To think 50 years ago I could have ever gotten a chance to meet the people I’ve met and have had the experiences I’ve had would have been mind boggling to my parents. It’s mind boggling to me now.
We forget often and try to convince others it’s not true but America truly is the best country in the world. Everything and anything is possible here. I can testify. Be grateful to be here.
This is the only place that gives EVERYONE a chance to live a great adventure. The first 50 years have been that for me - an incredible adventure.
Notice there is nothing here about accomplishments or money. Because it doesn’t matter and it won’t matter.
You will be dust in less than 100 years from now and the decision to be remembered won’t be yours so stop sweating it. It’s not in your control.
So what is in your control?
Be kind. Have fun. Work on something meaningful to you. Find your tribe. Try to find perspective. Find an incredible partner. Have a bunch of kids. Live an adventure. Forgive your parents - they were doing the best they could even if that wasn’t what you deserved.
I will do what I can to make my next 50 years a wild ride.
You should too.
I love you and thank you. ❤️
🙏🏽🙏🏽
Graham Seamans retweeted
The biggest cheat code for applying to jobs: agency
Make something cool. Demonstrate value. Cold email the hiring manager.
An alarming amount of people suck at this.
Graham Seamans retweeted
Underrated life advice: Just be easy to work with. Show up on time. Do what you said you'd do. Bring solutions, not problems. Never create drama. Be responsive. Be emotionally consistent. Be kind. People will always want to support someone who just makes their life easier.
The bigger the org the more complex it is and the more you need to qualify and quantify the problem. When you’re selling to 100k person company do nothing often becomes your biggest competition because doing nothing is job security.
You can ignore big companies early on, but assuming you can scoop them up later is naive. Selling to small companies doesn’t teach you how to navigate the complexity of an enterprise sale.
Enterprise sales require sophisticated qualifying skills. How important is the problem? Who actually has influence? What alternatives are they considering? How will the decision be made? Who has veto power? What does the approval process look like? Etc.
If you can’t answer those questions, you can’t sell. Qualification is the core skill in enterprise sales, and the best B2B sales organizations are exceptional at it.
Graham Seamans retweeted
Big updates next week :)
the grok cli is SO DAMN GOOD OMG @xai
The model is fast
The UX is literally perfect, even better than having a UI. it's like they took advantage of the CLI interface with such a rich rendering / control feed
Great to be partnering with @augmentcode.
For the first time ever: Grok 4.5 is now available. Welcome @spacexai to Cosmos, our agent orchestration platform.
Together with Augment's context engine, Grok 4.5 is a powerful option for working across large codebases. We're interested to see how Grok 4.5 performs for our customers - let us know your thoughts and what you plan to build
Graham Seamans retweeted
We've open-sourced Grok Build and have reset usage limits for all users.
Open sourcing Grok Build allows anyone to support making a reliable and robust harness. Check out our code, including the Git repo for the Grok Build CLI.
x.ai/open-source
Graham Seamans retweeted
It's great that Grok 4.5 is faster and 90% cheaper than Fable 5. What really matters to enterprise is "does it work". Grok 4.5 allowed me to complete what Fable 5 couldn't. Full ingestion, crawl, indexing, AI searchibility, vault, filestore app of 450,000 files with full app service, ask, wiki, and custom agent enablement. Intelligence layer enabled for an entire company by Grok 4.5. The only one that succeeded. Try it...
Graham Seamans retweeted
Grok 4.5 inside Perplexity Computer harness excels at work people actually do
I made myself a personalized podcast player using @grok 4.5 and @perplexity_ai Computer
It finds the top topics people are discussing on tech and business podcasts, then lets me play a single stream across multiple podcasts by topic.
When you click PLAY DEEP-LINK STREAM, it plays me all the pods talking about China and open source (in the screenshot here)
it's called PODMEME (after Techmeme, which is what i modeled it off of!)
Thanks @AravSrinivas @elonmusk for the harness and model! Cost me 1,100 "credits" on Perplexity -- so $11!
Not sure what it will cost to run this every 48 hours... but, I think worth it.
I might actually output a custom MP4 file for each topic with an audio transition in the middle
Graham Seamans retweeted
Grok 4.5 in Amp. It's not yet tuned and optimized, but we invite you to experiment with us.
If you haven't yet installed Amp: curl -fsSL ampcode.com/install.sh | bash
Then try it out:
amp update
amp plugins add @amp/grok-45-mode --auto-update
amp --mode grok45
Graham Seamans retweeted
Very impressed with @spacexai's Grok 4.5 model. Inside the Computer harness, it scored the highest on our internal benchmark WANDR, which measures agentic research capabilities, at half the price of Claude Opus 4.8 (high); and scores even better than our current GLM 5.2 post-trained model at approximately the same cost.
Graham Seamans retweeted
some special features in Grok Build if you're new
/dashboard: shows you every agent running in your TUI. no need to tab jump. can click and respond.
/imagine: create videos + images w/ an agent. useful for three.js textures or complex video edits.
X search tool: great for research. try asking for the best recent AI papers.
Grok 4.5 is strongest on tough coding problems in real, messy codebases. push it hard and send us feedback.
Graham Seamans retweeted
Now that Grok 4.5 is out, here are some of my workflows which I use daily
1. "use as many subagents and tokens as you need"
I end my prompts with the above to tell grok to spin up multiple subagents at the same time to divide and conquer on a hard problem. Grok is smart enough to realize when a subagent needs its own worktree and if it should inherit context from the main agent.