Context:
We’re now running open source AI systems like Claude locally, on commodity hardware (hello, Mac Mini). I’ve been integrating these agents with everything: 8sleep, Notion, Google, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, iMessage. The power here is nuts: you can hook up multiple models, script workflows, and build tools across your whole digital life.
Case in point: Dave reverse engineered the Mural photo frame API in under 20 minutes. He spun up a new web interface for sorting, uploading, and resizing photos, and even bypassed a broken Netgear authentication scheme along the way. He open sourced the whole Mural Manager project on GitHub, and for good measure, did the same with Tonal’s API for data extraction.
Market Signal
The barrier to building powerful, integrated tools is basically gone. If you can script, you can ship.
Security Nightmare Reality: These AI agents need full system access. That means screen recording, file access, Chrome, the works. Sam ran a test where Claude, with Signal integration, could pull all group chat content, store it, and summarize it. That’s… a terrifying amount of access. You’re basically rooting yourself with Claude.
A SaaS company lost a $150k contract because their customer (CTO) built an equivalent in a week using Claude. Public SaaS multiples are in the basement, the market’s figured out that “software” as a defensible business model is over.
Takeaway
Trust is now the primary currency. Apple and Google have a huge advantage here—most people simply won’t trust a random startup or open source project with this level of access.
There are only two viable paths for new founders:
Secret universe insights: Go deep, move stealth, leverage AI for unique edge (but don’t expect VC to fund you).
Own the narrative: Be the most obvious, dominant company in your category.
We don’t need traditional interfaces anymore: AI will instantiate them as needed. Dave’s 11-year-old built a Nintendo Game Boy game in a day. Toby (Shopify’s CEO) had Claude build a functional MRI interface from a USB key. In six months, this will be table stakes for anyone who can prompt. The next battle is for programmatic access; whoever controls the API, wins.
We’re officially in the phase where AI turns software into a consumable commodity and interfaces into something spun up on demand. 80% of the seed market is now “synthetic beta”—perfect pricing, no edge. Alpha only exists in illegible spaces: original networks, weird insights, or places where nobody else is looking. Boardy just raised a $150M fund as a VC marketplace ($10k/year founder fee). Most funds are building automation tools, but defensible investing is getting harder.
If you’re not playing with local agents (or looking for opportunity in places the market hasn’t sanitized yet) you’re already late.