I was warned by the Chinese zodiac that I’d be feeling pretty pretty pretty creative in the Big ‘26. Those animal lovers weren’t wrong.
In the first month of my situationship with Clode, I built:
- a run tracker (data entry is my stim of choice)
- a stock tracker (I like to imagine I’m a savvy investor)
- a stripped-down Quicken clone → Hasten (objectively a genius name)
- a blogging platform that doesn’t get in the way
On the data side:
- a scrappy RAG system across research docs
- a timeline engine for campaigns + events from Slack
- some light MMM + revenue forecasting experiments
- a marketing agent tracking spend, CPA and conversion
Nothing groundbreaking. Wouldn't call it slop either.
For one analysis, I asked Clode how long it would've taken: 6 people, 4 weeks, heads down; another 4 weeks for human brain coordination.
Clode knocked it out in a day. Fantastic.
This should feel incredible. But it's too easy...so it feels kinda blah.
Have you seen ManualLaborTok? Ancient processes that take weeks, all to make a bit of red ink. Precise carving of wooden joints (so satisfying); tempering and hammering of hardened steel (swords, man). There's also the exploitative variant - day laborers manually printing thousands of metal cups or molding clay bricks, one at a time.
I'm already starting to see engineers on the internets loudly lamenting their desire to go back to the art of clean, controlled, coherent human-generated code. Coming soon to ManualLaborTok: literal handwritten code on fine, mulberry paper.
What would an Etsy for Engineering look like? I'd name it Hande.
Anyway, I had a heated debate recently with my teenaged daughter, who is smarmishly anti-AI. She believes that the craft of creating art is what gives it meaning. I agreed that that could be the case for some artists. But as a consumer with a touch-o-tism, I couldn't care less about other people's special interests. I just want to consooooom!
Clode has given me a novel channel of creative expression. But that dopamine hit every time you manifest something from your mind?! It's like those rats that feverishly press that big red button to feel something...
Till they're dead.
So yeah, it's unclear what my relationship is with Clode...like, what are we?