[Weekly Retro] Nothing to amplify
#278 - Apr.2026
Happy Friday!
💡 Here's a quick idea before you head off to the weekend:
Claude has been down multiple times in the last weeks...and I learned a few things:
I caught myself in the middle of an automatic workflow through a skill that I've refined over and over again. But since Claude was down, the process stopped.
Now what?
Should I do it manually? Should I wait for Claude to come back and save me?
It's not that I didn't have the time. I just got used to it. It's a new shortcut in my workflow.
That got me thinking about how fast we are adapting (or not?).
Are we aware of how much we are handing over to AI? Are we delegating both repetitive tasks and judgment? The so-called "falling asleep at the wheel" effect.
Are we heading into a future where the lack of AI capabilities will make us lazy for taking up the work?
AI is the most impressive lever I've seen so far in my career. But a lever should amplify the force I bring to it. If I stop building the force (intuition, judgement, intention), there's nothing left to amplify.
Btw, I ended up doing the work by myself :). Took a bit longer.
¡Saludos!
📖 Article I've been thinking about
James Somers, April 8, 2026
A quiet interesting piece about a different vision for technology. A future where we read, write, and create without ever touching a screen.
"I am moved by the idea that our future could feel less futuristic than pastoral. High tech could save us from high tech. We'd go back to the old interfaces without giving up the conveniences of the new ones. Read, write, communicate, create—and hardly ever see or touch a screen."
📰 On education and AI shortcuts
Scott K. Johnson
An instructor writing about how difficult is to teach in the age of AI. "I increasingly feel like I'm just playing impossible defense."
📢 Tech announcement of the week
- Writes code better than the previous model
- Reads images far better now so you can hand it more complex images to interact with
- Capable to run longer tasks (with memory across sessions
New controls to cap the cost (specially useful for longer tasks) - New command (/ultrareview) for bug and design reviews (this seems interesting!)
Looking into the benchmarks, the visual reasoning is the biggest jump. Did a quick test sharing a complex technical architecture and make it find any gaps or improvements. Results are impressive, calling out single points of failure, improvements in load balancers and event disaster recovery/backups callouts!
🖋️ Quote of the week
"The ultimate goal of all art is the building!" — Walter Gropius
