Elliot C Smith | Posts about Dev, Startups, and Product

Elliot C Smith | Posts about Dev, Startups, and Product

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Latest — 05 Aug 2026

Five styles of 'AI Product Development'

Me and lots of people I work or interact with are using AI to build things. The kind of things they are building vary a lot so I figured I would write down a few of the archetypes and some brief observations on each. Type 1 : A long running conversation

More issues

You can just do things.

"You can just do things" or some variation has been the unofficial slogan of startups for a long time. The expression was a reminder that you have permission. You are allowed to do things, nobody but you is stopping you trying something. The caveat that existed was that

Raising the floor, lowering the ceiling

I find that it is now very easy to write a lot of software. In the past, if I was writing this much software I would take that as a strong signal that I was become a better developer. Now, I write more software than ever but the link between

Quick thoughts on AI in Game Dev

Over the last couple of weeks I've been working on two different small games. Both are ideas that have been kicking around in my head for a while and now felt like a good time to work on them. One is an existing project written long before I

All the other bottlenecks

Writing code is fast now. Most teams are no longer blocked by the speed of turning specs into PRs. What I've noticed is that a lot of people, usually non-code-writing people, assumed that the speed of shipping the code was the only thing determining the speed

Autoresearch, Claude and Constrained Optimization

Introduction You don't need to look far to find claims that folks have been using AI to do the work of dozens of people. I tend to be skeptical of any claim that discusses improvements without evidence. I decided to take that skepticism and put it to work.

Findings, May 2026

Assorted Links * I finished book eight of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Loved it. I have recommended the series to a lot of different people now with a pretty good hit rate. If you haven't read it yet, you should. * This was a fun read https://tastecooking.com/i-want-

Momentum is the Safest Moat

If you are at all worried about AI disrupting your business, learn to build momentum. Your ability to execute more reps that your competition is, and always has been, the best moat. The trigger for this post was hearing that Claude Code was built in a weekend. It's

Don't sell the build effort.

There's a trend I have noticed when folks try sell software, their perception of how hard it was to build the software influences their comfort in setting a price. More difficult to build, more expensive. Easy to build, we can't charge a premium for that! This

Build 'Taste' for the critics but 'Care' for the fans.

There are a lot of folks out there tell you that what matters now is 'taste'. Some loosely defined term that boils down to "know if the output is slop or not slop". While it is probably a useful skill, I'd argue the thing