34: Ryo Lu - It's All the Same Thing

Before we get into the episode, I have an announcement. In case you missed it, I'm going full time on dialectic. Thanks to the support of my new presenting partner, Notion. I guess, first and foremost, I'm just excited and grateful. I'm about a year into this.

I crossed my year anniversary of starting at the November. And it feels fitting to be able to fully lean in and consolidate and focus on something that has just felt like being in my lane. Getting to amplify people I'm excited about. And I've been reflecting on this and I think this ties to Notion too, like, I've been reflecting like, what is what is the show? What makes it good?

What am I trying to do here? And there's been a handful of patterns that have become more obvious over time, things that have become more legible. I think it's definitely a show about ideas. Particularly, I think I love to talk to people who make stuff about the ideas and philosophies that underpin them. But I was also reflecting on like, what what are the patterns that stand out most?

And I think they tie into why Notion is such an ideal partner for me. The first is, I think it's a show about where ideas meet action. I love introspection and reflection and thoughtfulness and philosophy. But I think I also love people who are able to take those things and use it to make contact with reality. This combination of introspection and agency and action.

Ideas are powerful, but we gotta put them to work. The second pattern is craft. Craft is aspirational. Craft is when we deploy our taste. Craft is a human touch.

Craft is saying, I'm just going to push things a little bit more to make them a little bit better. And whether my guests are people who design things or write or invest or whatever else they might create, I think there is a deep amount of craft inside of how they approach what they make and inside the things that they make. And the third pattern is soul or soulfulness. This word is obviously a little bit hard to pin down and that you might instead say authenticity or originality or even aliveness. But soul is about when somebody line is lined up, I think, like in who they are with the way they're showing up in the world, and maybe even more than that, a willingness to reach deep.

And so I think when I think about what I'm drawn to, and all of the people I admire, and certainly the people I talk to for this show, it is soul at its core. One of the things I'm most proud of for this show is the audience. It feels like it's my kind of people. Some of my guests are listeners. Some of the people I've met through the show have been incredible.

And Akshay Kothari, co founder of Notion, is a listener. And so we've gotten to know each other over last few months. And when I started to think about what it would look like to go full time on dialectic and bring on a partner, it was ultimately a pretty easy choice. I think it was clear to me that he really got the maybe even intangible elements that made the show special to me and to the people who were listening. But I also, think those those patterns I mentioned earlier really do embody Notion too, and that's why it made it such a right fit.

Notion makes beautiful tools for your life's work. Think I I'm someone who's certainly interested in tools. I've talked to a bunch of tool makers on the show, including Notion's own Jeffrey Lit. He wasn't at Notion when we spoke and he is now. But also, on those themes from earlier, I mean, Notion is a tool for taking your ideas and turning them into action, whether that be tinkering with them or expanding them or sharing them.

It starts with ideas with Notion. It's a brand and a tool that despite a long road, a tremendous scale, and a great deal of complexity has embodied craft, I think, in every step of the way, both as a brand and as a product. And then finally, Soul. Again, Soul might be in the eye of the beholder, but I think Notion is a tool that cares deeply about letting its users pour themselves into the product they use. And I think Notion's community and templates and remixing and creative expression are all evidence of just that, a product that is full of aliveness.

So it ultimately wasn't a very hard decision to partner with Notion. And I feel so grateful to them for helping me embark on this journey. As for what's to come, I mean, I I think a lot more of the same. Hopefully, people who are inspiring to you, people you're really excited about, and people who surprise you. I I would like to keep you guessing.

I think too, a lot more video for those of you who are listening or haven't tried. Video is coming. And more than anything, I hope to amplify people who can or have the ability to shine. Last but not least, while I'm so grateful to Notion, I'm even more grateful to those of you who have listened, watched, read, whatever, found a way to support me. I feel so lucky.

I hope I am doing you a service when you spend your time here listening to these conversations. I hope you go take your ideas and turn them into things. I hope you do it with craft. I hope you do it with soul. With that, I will I will turn it over the episode.

But thank you so much, and and I'm so excited to continue to share Dialectic with you. Welcome to Dialectic with Rio Liu. Rio is the head of design at Cursor. Prior, he was a designer at Notion, working across so many different projects and features, including Notion AI for about five years. And he was a designer at Stripe and Asana.

He grew up between China and Montreal, and now lives in San Francisco, where he's focused on building Cursor and helping anyone create software. We talked extensively about his design philosophy and how he is constantly moving between simplicity and complexity, bare material and abstraction, and why in his words, so many of these ideas and these patterns are all the same thing. We also talk about how design is changing, where in the past, using tools like Figma, it felt more like painting or drawing. Now much of Brio's design feels more like sculpting clay or finding David in the marble. So much of his philosophy is about getting closer to the material.

And in the case of digital things of software, that is working with code. And that's why I think why he's so excited about Cursor. The line between vibe coding and real engineering is also I think everyone's feeling that it's flattening. And there's no better example of that than Rio's personal project, Rio OS, which you can find on his website, which is essentially a nearly a full on operating system of apps and games and simulations. You can talk to Rio's agent.

I've watched him literally make games and new apps for Rio OS in Rio OS. And in some sense, it's entirely vibe coded. He's built it using cursor. And what's, I think, so outstanding about it is that it's quite literally the opposite of AI slop. It is so deeply personalized.

It has so much soul. It feels so much like Rio. So we talk about how he is iteratively designing both his personal projects, as well as all of the design decisions he's making at Cursor and helping more and more people across the team work with him in a range of different ways. This is definitely a philosophical discussion. Much of it is about designing things that feel true or even inevitable.

But in many ways, I think Rio is also an amazing example of somebody who is doing a lot more doing than thinking. And so I think that marriage together, makes him so effective, and I hope and I think we we really dove into that today. If you already make things, especially software, I hope you are inspired to be all the more willing to try things, to be more flexible, be more dynamic, and expand the boundaries of what you can personally do. And if you feel like you could be making more things, I hope you are inspired not only to try tools like cursor and make software, but to apply some of this philosophy to making any range of things. I just so love the way Rio thinks about getting up close with material and how learning with material, getting feedback from it, is how we design anything.

It's addictive. It pulls us in. And in The Limit, we end up making things that other people get to enjoy. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. With that, here's Rio Lou.

Rio Lou. Okay. Let's go.

We're here. Thank you for being here. I'm really excited about this. Yes. We're gonna start with a, I guess, what you could call a catchphrase of yours, which is you love to say it's all the same thing.

Yes.

What does that mean and what does it tell us about design?

It's like when you look at all the apps you use or even like everything around you, even looking at ourselves as like humans, as like life forms, we are always built It's almost like with the same parts that are really simple. But when you merge them or combine them, recombine them, they give a rise to complexity. Like the most fundamental elements are the same. Like a lot of the concepts that we use, regardless if you call it like, oh, this is a task management thing or like a document thing. They're all just information organised in databases.

Yeah. So, there's not that much difference. And there's always, like, something at the core that is the simplest form of the thing itself. And it's most likely things that you've seen before. Or there's like analogs in nature or like patterns.

When you talk about those simple things, are they abstract things?

Mhmm.

Like, they, as you say, are they patterns or like metaphors or sort of like ideas? Or are they Can they be also like very concrete?

Oh, yeah. I think they can be very concrete and it's like the same thing manifested at different levels. Different levels of abstraction.

Okay.

So you can think of maybe like, oh, these are my core ideas. But then how do I say visually represent it in this two d space, which is like a screen, like a phone, or like you stretch it to like a window. Then you have more space. Then what are the things that should be shown? Like, what are the relationships between them?

What are the more important bits that you want people to get in? Like, it's almost like it's like a multi floor apartment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And then you you want people to go to the lobby on the Top Floor with the best view. They can kinda see everything. Ah, this is cool. Now, let me go to the place I want. That's more like for the users, but the same thing applies to say, like, you're designing UI, you're designing some flows, You're designing how the data model works.

You're, like, conceptualizing how do I, you know, make this into, like, a big scalable distribute distributed system. And when you're operating on all these layers, there's still, like like, just manifestations of those core concepts or ideas. Then you keep everything together and they feel cohesive. When, like, a lot of people, maybe they think of these things as separate things. And then they treat them as, like, I need to do this box first, and then do that box first.

And then each people doing the boxes don't talk to each other. Then they build something that's kind of it's like, it wiggles.

Yeah. Doesn't have the connectedness. You have you have a you have an essay, a little essay you wrote about complexity coming before simplicity.

Mhmm.

The one one part you say, it's like a swan serene on the surface, but paddling like hell beneath. Yes. Which is an amazing metaphor. Why does complexity actually have to come before simplicity?

I do think, say conceptually, it is possible to say, these are the core building blocks of my world. And that's it. Let's just go. Yeah. But, like, it needs to survive in the real world that we live in.

Like, there's people who like, they don't come here to look at your essay or look at your academic idea of, like, ah, these are the ways we need to, like, connect these computer ideas.

Yes.

They're here to do something. Yes. So they come here. They should ideally, you know, do the thing they want to do first.

Without thinking well, understanding too much.

Yes. Without thinking too much, they can do it. They can actually, like, you know, slowly master it, configure the thing, customize it. Then they kinda know what what is in there. You can do it from both ends and they kinda are it's like two sides of the same coin almost.

But a lot of people, they only see one side. Say, like, we do a lot of user centered design or, like, you know, let's start with the user problem and then decompose it or, like, do some research, look at some numbers, figure out if solution a b for this problem one, which one is the best? Ah, a is the best. Oh, let's just do a. And then you keep doing this a a a a b b b a b b.

Then now you have a platter of like random choices. And then they don't connect. And then they're all like discrete buttons on your on your UI.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's kinda crazy. When fundamentally, maybe all of these ideas are the same ideas or maybe they they are like better versions of your original ideas. Like a remix version of that or like a reconfigurations of the thing.

Yeah. You're sort of seeing both the swan both aspects of the swan at the

same time.

You're seeing the elegance in the kind of

things. Like you need to test your model with real world examples and people. And then as you do that, you figure out, this part of the system is a little weak. I need to make it better. Or like, ah, maybe we really to add this new thing.

Then we should probably do it because a lot of people need it. Yeah. But if you're just conceptualizing yourself and then you're kind of in your own world thinking and you're just like ideating, then you're not really doing anything. Like you're not helping anyone.

You're just You're untethered.

Yeah. You're just like, I don't know, having fun of yourself, I guess. Another

line from you. You say, the universe is fundamentally modular, simple rules, endlessly recombining, creating emergent complexity. Design is the human practice of participating in that process consciously. We look at the world, identify the patterns, extract the rules, and use them to build new realities. Obviously, much of this sort of, it's all the same thing inside of that.

I'm curious maybe at the most zoomed out level, like what initially drew you to what you describe as design there? And what kind of keeps you coming back? Like what is it about this almost like philosophical approach to the world that's so compelling to you?

I did not come here, like, you know, when I started. I did not know the difference between even like engineering or design or product or anything. I just saw these things that were made by people. Like, I started playing with software when I was a kid. I would get these pirated CDs.

And then they are almost like software subscription packs monthly. Like, they get you you just load them on your PC and then you play with all the all the new apps. And then I started playing with, like, all the Office tools, like all the fonts, Excel, PowerPoints, Photoshop, video editing things, three d making things, programming tools, starting making websites and stuff. And as you do these things, as you make things, you start to realize, like, the end output of what we do is just code. But there's, like, a lot of different depth in all the layers.

And if you're curious enough, you can go to every layer really deeply. But the more you do these things, like make more websites for different kinds of people or make different apps for things, you realise, like, lot of it is just the same ideas. And then you also can trace it back to history. Like when you look at people when they started this or when they were just, again, like ideating. Things were not real because things weren't ready.

But the ideas were there. And all you're doing is like remixing the idea, repackaging it a little bit. And then you want to find out what is the core essence, things that, you know, you cannot remove that will always be there. Yeah. And then you keep making those better.

You use the phrase things weren't ready. Yes. Obviously, technology design applies across disciplines. Technology is an area where design, you actually are dealing with that sort of

Mhmm.

The the rate of progress. I'm curious, especially maybe now since what it you have this great great future site you made for Cursor where

you're

listing the kind of arc and the lineage of computing. We're in the middle of an immense amount of readiness, you could say. But I'm curious what your relationship has been like to things being ready or maybe not ready. Even let's say in the last two years with AI models and Cursor.

Yeah. Yeah. There's like the technological level of whether it's ready.

Right.

But there's also the conceptual level of whether it's ready. It's like, for example, Notion, even though technologically, it's like everything is kind of fully ready. Like Notion itself is almost like just databases in the cloud. And then you can do live editing with people. You're just manipulating like blogs and databases.

Like, the ideas have existed for a long time. Right. But then people have not caught up or people are not familiar with these ideas. Yeah. Then it's like still, like, kind of foreign to people.

And then, boom, AI happened. Then, it's almost like using this new primitive new technology, we can actually, like, help people understand better or, like, make translations of ideas.

It's bridging the conceptual gap.

Right, You can use that to bridge the gap and basically, instead of people making databases manually, or they have to learn about you know, coding is like, there's so many layers and there's so many dependencies in order for you to do like a running program. You need to know so many things. You can actually reduce that to like nothing. But then it's like people kind of start from the other end. They get some output, they play, they tweak.

And as they do that, they learn. Instead of like They're backing into it. Right. Instead of doing it in the reverse. Mhmm.

That's like, we are fundamentally the limiting factor, like, as humans. Like, our brains can process too much information. We can't hold too many concepts in our heads. Yeah. Then, like, what what we're doing is you're, like, simplifying the amount of information or ideas that you're giving to people.

It used to be like designers have to do it, the thinkers have to do it, the inventors have to do it. They're thinking about what is the simplest configuration of the thing, what are the parts. But now it's almost like a lot of it can be handled by the AI, then you can reach to like lower level of primitives or even connect more things. Then You can pull the

more complexity. Yeah.

Yeah. Because this yeah. But then the the presentation layer can still be simple. And the simplicity can be more subjective. It is not designed by the designer.

It is actually, like, to you, the person using the thing or you're doing this thing, the ideal configuration for that thing. AI can kinda do the translation.

Yeah. There's we're talking about simplicity. There's another comment you made that is very similar to something you wrote about making things true.

Mhmm.

And I think truth and simplicity next to each other seem interesting. Say Yeah. Design is the practice of seeing through the surface of things to understand their underlying structure, and then rearranging those elements to new forms that didn't exist. Design is philosophy because it forces you to ask, what is this thing really? What are its central properties?

You talked about that. Mhmm. What can I remove before it stops being itself? And once I understand that, what new things can I build? This is the work, not making things pretty, making things true.

I

think I have a sense and the listener probably does too, but what is maybe not what is the difference between truth and simplicity, but what is it maybe even what does it feel like when you're designing and you're approaching trueness

Yeah.

Yeah. Or truth.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like you The thing is, I think, I believe there is actually an ultimate solution given, say, the amount of this space and the constraints and the things you know. But the problem is you never know everything. And the things always change.

So, it's like, maybe it is the ultimate solution for this point in time, for this condition, but then maybe tomorrow it's not true anymore. But I think, you know, there are always, like, say, when you're doing a product or making software, like a set of things that don't really change. And it is so important to, like, figure out what those things are. Those are almost like your fundamental building blocks or ideas of the the software deep. It's like, I see like software as it's just like a tree of concepts.

And you package it up, give it a name. And then give it a UI, put it out.

Are those concepts changing a lot or are they changing very little?

Like, most likely they don't change.

Okay.

Or it is really hard to change them, especially the ones that are core to the thing. For example, I worked at Asana. Asana is basically projects and tasks. And then everything revolves around it. Every data model is like kinda locked in there.

And then, for example, it will be hard for Asana to expand into like whatever. But then it is easy for Notion to do that because Notion's building blocks on the in the underlying, like abstractions are more flexible. Yeah. And then they actually don't change that much. All you're doing is like you're fixing some problems with how they connect to each other.

Or, now there's like a different kind of data that we can present better. What are the better views for that? How do people like, you know, combine these things so that they can do a lot more crazy things? How do you help people? Instead of them building this thing, maybe the AI agent does this thing.

And say for cursor, it's like that common layer is even lower, which is code. And it's so generic. It means you can actually do anything.

Is truth universality? Is it the same thing?

Kinda. Or like it's like, given this constraint, what is that ultimate answer? Or what is that simplest configuration of your system that does everything? Yeah. The most beautiful state.

You have another idea about inevitability. Mhmm. You say the best future solutions seem almost retroactively inevitable. The philosopher who said that the truth is what never had to be said. Yeah.

Might as well have been talking about a product so perfectly aligned with its context that no competitor can have us propose a simpler alternative. Is that I mean, it obviously connects to the truth and the universality. Maybe it maybe maybe really what you're pointing to there is what you said earlier, which is there there actually is some objective final, at least final for right now form.

Mhmm.

How do you design how do you design towards inevitability?

Yeah. You kind of project. It's like you always design Say, there's a set of fundamentals that don't change. And then there's like an ideal future that you want to go to. Then you figure out, what are the deltas between that?

Is that That future sorry to interrupt you. You you could certainly think take Notion example. Yes. We are gonna take a really really simple set of very flexible building blocks.

Mhmm.

Some of that, you when you're working on it five years ago or Ivan when he was working on it ten years ago

Yeah.

May have had some sort of future conception. I've seen some of the early acts Ivan had, like he

There's crazy stuff in it.

It's amazing. Yeah. But on some level, of course, he didn't fully know.

Mhmm.

And so I'm curious how, like, how important it is for the specificity of that inevitable future outcome.

Right. It's more like, it looks retroactively inevitable. But when you get there, it's very ambiguous. Like, you actually don't know. Like, you start with you actually don't know, and then you're looking at, what do I have?

What do I want to do? Or like, you know, my future state, my ideal. You can just imagine, like, don't limit yourself. And then you start thinking, maybe there are these kind of big changes I need to do. These are the little steps that I need to take.

The closer you are to the present, the clearer the the step is. The further out, the muddier it is. But then the only way you can start doing or start going towards it is you do things. You build, you know, steps or I kinda like say like prototypes or like pieces of it. And then as they get built, get used, get feedback, you kinda clarify the thing and you move forward.

Obviously, a lot of this is philosophical. Someone might listen to this and this this combination of complexity and simplicity, it's really appealing. Most designers, most people making things

Mhmm.

Along a long road are forced to compromise somewhere along

the line.

And so it almost feels like maybe one of the things getting in the way of getting to trueness or inevitability is practical compromise. Yes. You're also very practical. You're you're sort of just pulling this thread in many ways,

like Yeah.

How do you do you sort of fend I'm sure there are million compromises Notion could have made along the way. I'm sure there will be many compromises Cursor is faced with. Yes. How do you relate to that?

Yeah. It's like, I don't want every single thing to be perfect. Or like, there are certain things that are like, say, they are actually okay to be a little divergent. Or, like, you kind of let it go a little bit, let it roam a little bit. And then see what people feel, see how the thing, you know, does.

And then you're on this constant loop of re examining what you have in your system, all the things you add, see how they're perceived. And then you're trying to Maybe now we need to like unify these things together. Maybe now we need to like clean this part up. Yeah. And then once you do that, then you maybe open up, boom.

This amount of, like, people can use it now or you make this part of the experience better. And it could, like, it's not like a feature level thing anymore. It's more like all these things together because they make a better system, because the system is more flexible or extensible, and you also, like, increase its capabilities, then it can do a lot more for a lot more people. And it's not just about, like, let's make this feature A and then see how it does and then run some numbers on the, I don't know, like adoption, retention, whatever. It's It really kind

of feels like it goes back to the Swan. Like or or maybe use another metaphor. It's like, you seem to be constantly taking stock of both like, what is this pixel and also Yeah. What is the what is the picture of

the box? You need to like go around these layers of abstraction. Yeah. If you really want to make something truly simple. It's like a lot of people also think simplicity is about like removing things or let's just get rid of all the I don't know, any feature that gets used less than 5% by users.

And then you're, like, removing something that maybe the 0.1% power user really loves and depends on. Maybe the better way is to just, like you just Marie Kondo it. Like, just clean it up a little bit or reorganize it so that, like, most people get the most easy path, but there's still like little pathways for others. You don't have to take things away, you just tuck tuck them away maybe. Or like you you build like elevators.

What do you say to It's funny you bring up Marie Kondo. I think like, for many people that's very aspirational. For other people, they're like, how unrealistic. Like, she doesn't live in the real world. She spends all her day cleaning.

You've you've written and talked about minimalism, which maybe is a little bit I think minimalism maybe people take it too far, gets a bad rap.

Yeah. How

do you relate? Like, you it it doesn't seem to you you you present you're very refined, you you you clearly care about aesthetics. And yet, Rio OS, it has like a little lived in, like a lived in messiness almost.

Uh-huh.

Is that I don't know what my question is there, but like, do you how do you how do you have that sort of tidy, thoughtful, careful, and also, like, aliveness in a system Right. Designing it?

I think it's like a lot of people think these attributes is like, you have to have this or this when you can actually have both. So, like, should it be simple or should it be complex? Should it be flexible? Should it be rigid? To me, it's almost like because software is almost like a life form.

It's like a run. It can mutate. It changes itself. You don't have to be, like, so opinionated. Like, your opinion is actually taking the stance of I don't have too much opinion.

But you always make things start really simple. And then you let people play with it. You let people discover what they want or the way to do things. What is, you know, their way to do things? It's not my way.

Like, I don't want to force my, like, my way of thinking or, ah, this is how you do it, one, two, three, onto you. I just kind of give you, like pathways and elevators and the tools to do the thing you want.

Yeah. You have a line somewhere where you say no point solutions, always spectrums. Yeah. And then captures that.

Yeah. It's like, fundamentally, all these tools are the same things. So, like, if you're okay with that, then you don't have to really pick like, do I want to do this, like, cursor for salespeople or cursor for coding? It might be the same thing. I

wanna talk about that kind of process of making and you you could start to get a little bit. You have this metaphor of of sort of like sculpting or finding what's in the stone. It's really powerful. That's not totally intuitive for how people think about creating. Yeah.

You say there's there's a quiet almost mystical art to starting with something so unrefined that you're unsure if it's mud or marble and patiently revealing its shape until others recognize its beauty. In the end, they'll say, of course, it's so obvious.

Yes.

Why why can't greatness be why must it be emergent?

Because you haven't seen enough, you haven't tried enough. You think, god, this first idea I have is perfect. And you throw it out there and they realize, maybe only I think like that. Or maybe people like it, but they don't really understand the words or the nuance in there. Then you need to, like, keep tweaking and keep getting input.

It's like you never start with something that's, like, the the ultimate answer. You always start with shit. And then you make it better and better.

Is that the case for every medium?

I think so. Like Like, even when you're painting. Yeah. You start with, like, the pencil sketches and then you layer on top, like, the paint. Or like you're sculpting, you start with just like a blob of clay.

And you're, like, making the high level, like, shapes good enough. And then I start working on the details. It's the same thing. Like, you never you never get the first shot right. Even more true with AI.

Yeah. But with AI, it's like or, like, say, with Crystal Composer one, because it's so fast, it's like it's a different way to do things now. Like, you're building as you're seeing things as you're thinking.

Right.

And as you're designing and it's all together.

Yeah. I wonder, like, you you referred to software earlier as almost like an organism. And maybe that's something that's true about software inherently, but it feels especially true with AI now. Yeah. You one of the things you said to me when we met, you talked about sort of how you used to work being much more like painting or drawing and now it feels much more sculpting or finding something new with stone.

Yeah. I don't know that that way of thinking is intuitive to people. Even people who make software. And so, maybe one question I'd have would be like, have you started to think about it in a fundamentally different way with AI? Or is this actually just a continuation?

I think it's almost like going backwards. It's like, I started building things myself and designing everything. A lot of times, I did not use, like, pixel tools. I just coded it. And then I became, like, a professional product designer.

Yeah. Capital d design.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then oh, interesting. Now I just make mocks and fancy animated prototypes.

And then I will drop that mock into my p PM's PRD. And I'll wait for things to happen, and things don't happen. And then now it's like going backwards. Meaning, like, I have an idea. I'll just prototype it out.

And like a kid. Or like a Like a

kid with a piece of glass.

Oh, yeah. Or oh, there's a bug. Okay. I'll just, like, make a screenshot and then circle the thing. Ah, add Chris or fix this.

And it'll get fixed. It's like, instead of waiting, instead of getting stuck in pictures or words, you actually make the thing. Or you use software or use code as a tool to communicate your ideas better. And because we're software makers, the best tool is code.

A I interviewed early on, I interviewed a couple of designers, like industrial designers, physical designers, Sayway and Taylor. And one of the things that they feel really strongly about is like, they hate renders. It's like make make the prototype. Oh, yeah. And I almost feel like this is the digital version of that.

Exactly. You have to play with the material. Like our material as software makers is never the pixels. It is the code itself that renders the pixels.

Yeah. Yeah. You have a line I love you say, but it existed and because it existed, it could be improved. Mhmm. Which so captures the like power of working with actual material.

Mhmm.

It I I do wonder like, you you we were talking when we're first talking, you said, I use Figma when I wanna go into my my old way of thinking. Yeah. Which obviously relates to what you just said. I'm curious today like and maybe part of it is that you're designing cursor which is especially conducive to it's it's less about the pixels already.

Mhmm.

But when do you find yourself sort of like tempted towards the old way of thinking? And like, is it a yo yo? Is it a event like, will you be using Figma at all in the year?

Oh, yeah. It's like, there are just tools. And, like, sometimes we think in words. Sometimes we think in pictures.

On podcast, we definitely think words.

Yeah. Or like making videos too. Some people do that. Yeah. Or like slides or whatever.

Like, those are just, you know, different artifacts or, like, forms to help us think. And I I think, like, I don't want to take them away. Like, different people have their perform preferred form to think. Maybe some people are more like linear. They just write text.

Yeah. Yeah. I like bullets. I I think I got the disease from Notion. It's like like, all I do now is, like, I go go out and then I walk.

I have ideas. I'll open Notion doc and then I put in a list. And then once I'm done with my walk, I'll go go back. Maybe now draw some pictures. Then maybe I'll do Figma.

Because it's so like because I've been doing this for so long. It's like water to me. I don't yeah. I don't think When I make more artboards or when I do the Figma, like, shortcuts. So when they change shortcuts or, like, they move around my things, I get mad.

They keep doing that.

I saw you're you were really mad that they had changed the checkbox

Oh, for notion. To do box. Yeah. Oh,

That's for another thing. That's more for like

it's like I feel like every piece of software is almost like a person. Has a vibe. It has like a history. It has some character. Essence.

Like, you don't want to lose that. Yeah. You don't want to water everything down to like border radius for pixels. Like, sometimes it's good to keep that. Yeah.

Keep a lineage and keep a thing that's maybe a little weird, but it's so, like, characteristic. Yeah. Yeah.

On the on the note of sort of your thinking time, and you talked about thinking and using different tools. You're thinking using Figma. You you've you've talked about your walking and like the the value of this sort of like idle time, the space between thinking time isn't wasted time. Are you and and maybe this is running against what you just said about it feeling like water, but are are those like different modes? Like when you watching you use cursor, at least on your phone where you're hanging out, it didn't seem like you were doing very much thinking.

You were just like, you were just throwing like paint at the canvas. Right. And then when you write about your walks or like, that that feels like a very structured. Is that maybe a template for how

That's more for the longer term things. Yeah. Or like vague ideas, ambiguous. Dreaming. Or like, maybe we should do this.

I'm not sure. Maybe we should do it this way. What are the like the components in there? How do I like break it down? What are the things people care about?

Whereas

when you're using Figma, you're using cursor, you're

Those are more for maybe like Figma, just like there's still some, say, like, difficulty where it is just take it just takes more time to say, build a really crazy prototype in, like, code. So if you want to just communicate ideas into this space really quickly, draw some pictures. That's fine. And then when the thing gets to the state where I think I know what it is, I want to figure out how they fit together, how they work together, what are the you know, especially with, like, building AI stuff, there's, like, so many, like both, like, procedural and, like, nondeterministic things that you need to think about. It is really, like, really hard to simulate in Figma or, like, in static pictures.

Yeah. And you're not with the material. You're

not up close

with Like, the

you actually need to glue it up and then see how they fit together, see how the states transition. If I get this, like, error, what happens? Or if the the the return gets too long, what happens? Like, you'd never get that in Figma.

I wanna talk a little bit about RealOS.

Mhmm.

Both because I know you're you're very obsessed with it. It it does feel like the perfect embodiment of this sort of working with clay. Mhmm. And I I think it's I would strongly encourage people listening or watching to go to poke around with it. As I understand it, Rio has started as a soundboard app you made for your friends when you were leaving Notion.

And it sort of feels like it's this just infinite thread you keep pulling or this piece of clay, just kinda keep turning over in your hand.

Yeah.

For people's contact, I I we we when we first met, you had your phone out and you were like, we were just talking and you were literally making apps as we sat What there and have you learned about making things and maybe even about yourself from this crazy project?

Uh-huh. I learned that, oh, shit, I can do all of this. I think that's the biggest thing. And it's like, it's all like little ideas piling up on each other. You start with, like, something simple, small, And you just keep building and building and building and building and see it see it grow.

And then when it grows to, like, a size where it's, like, you know, there's some constraints. I actually started the thing in v zero, not cursor. Like the soundboard thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like I ran into some like errors. Then I'm like, I need to do it in cursor.

And you used cursor much prior to that?

Not really. I tried three times. I turned three times.

Oh, interesting. Why? Yeah.

It's like the first time, I was like, oh, cool. New new code editor. Let me try it out. I typed some lines. It completes, like, five lines of code instead of one line of code versus, like, GitHub Copilot.

Then I turned.

Because you felt like it was trying to do too much.

No. It's like it's just completing code. Oh. With more likes. Yeah.

And then second time, it was the chat. Yep. It's like chat GPT next to your code. Yep. And it can read the code, it can answer some questions, but it can't do much.

So I checked. And the third time, it was like discovering the agent.

This is post using v zero or pre? After. Okay.

It's like, I needed some tool that can let me do anything. Then I found cursor. And I'm, like, hooked. Yeah. And you start from, like, simple things and then you just ask them maybe a little crazier idea.

And then you see it getting built. So now with plan mode, you actually see how the models think. And you can change. You can be part of every, you know, step. But it's still your clay.

But it's like the model now handles all the parts that I don't really care about. I actually studied, like, computer science Okay. Because I love computers and software. But I hated writing code or, like, all the algorithms and stuff we learned, that's, like Yeah. Kinda useless.

Yeah. And what I care more about is, like, like, what are the ideas? How do people, you know, feel?

How quickly can I make this thing I thought of?

Mhmm. Exactly. It was like the thing, the idea, the concepts. I want to play with the concepts.

You mentioned it, like, Real OS, it doesn't really seem like something like that could be should be able to be built by just throwing more paint at the canvas. Like, it feels like the type of thing that should have needed to be more planned.

There is a lot of things that say, like, it's not just throwing. Okay. So it's almost like it's a constant throwing things and cleaning up shit.

Okay. Same

one. It also happens there in ReOS.

What is the cleaning up? That's I that's what we're not seeing, I think.

Yeah. You don't see that, but you can see it in my commit logs. The maintenance. Yeah. It's like the more things you add, the more things you realize.

It's the same thing that I just talked like earlier. It's like, all these apps need, say, some AI endpoint and some auth. And like, they need to store their states. They need to write or read into the file system. Like, maybe I started, you know, doing the file system part from the text edit app.

But then now I want, you know, all the other ones that can use the same ideas. To use the thing, then I need to re kinda abstract the system. Like, put that part out or unify some, you know, state management things. And then you need to kinda refactor your original things. Even though maybe to the user, it looks exactly the same.

That part of it though, I think is where, like, for lack of more precise language, people get stuck. Yeah. It's like, again, I I watched you use cursor. It's like, you're literally it's like you're just nudging the model. Yeah.

And and your prompts are not yeah. It's that it's that demeanor for for the listeners. You're just poking it.

Yeah yeah

yeah. It's not these long specs. I'm watching you just be like, can you come up with an app idea? Yeah. Like, your language is really casual.

And so, I think to the per average person using v zero

Uh-huh.

Or the person who tries cursor and is churning.

Think Yeah.

We'll talk about it later. You're you're very clearly focused with cursor on building for the hardcore user.

Mhmm.

But for someone who has somewhat of a computer science background, hadn't written a lot of code, what I wonder about is like, in the poking process, you're getting more invested that you care enough to do the hard maintenance part.

Oh, yeah. I learned a lot by building RealWise. Like before, even like, since I became a professional product designer, I would have little projects I do on the side. Like, the first few years, I kept doing those. And then I got busier or something, and then I stopped.

And then every time I tried to go back, oh, shit. I need to learn, like, React 18, when Tailwind CSS, whatever. All of those, like, new things. And then it takes a long time. I have to read all the docs.

I need to understand how people do things now. But it's like, now with the agent, you don't have to do that, but you're still doing that. It's like the agent maybe helps you do the research. It comes up with some, here are how people do it now. And then maybe gives you some alternative options.

Maybe you know certain things. You also don't know certain things. But the agent can kinda help you find your way. And then you can say, Ah, now just do this. It will write the code, you can look at the code still.

You can learn from its output how things work.

You're getting deeper into the complexity. Yeah. Intentionally or otherwise.

Yeah. Like, it's almost like just by reading Like a lot of users say this too, it's like they love reading how the models think. They actually want to expand everything and then they want to look all the output because it helps them understand what the model is doing, gain trust from it, and learn, you know, especially when they're starting

to cope. Yeah. It's a it's it's might be a strange comparison, but somebody I interviewed, he was talking about reading with his like seven or eight year old daughter.

And

how reading with her, these books that were actually far beyond her sort of ability level, it pulled her in. And it and now she's reading whatever. I don't

know if

she's reading Anna Karenina, but like she's reading well beyond her level and there is something about sort of like Yes. Being exposed to someone else's thinking. Yeah. You know, if it's GPT five codecs or composer or whatever.

Yeah. It's like, most of the, as you said, most of the prompts that I did in real life is like just really short simple things. Yeah. It's it's like theoretically we are ready. Like, you can actually build a lot of things and you just vibe.

But there is, like, you know I'm a little cheating too because I know things before. Right. So I know, like, when when the AI gets stuck, how to, like, get get it unstuck. Or, like, as I play more it's like my full time job is to play with all these models and use cursor. So I kinda develop, like, some intuition on how these, say, different models behave as I make it.

Or, like, what are their limits? Maybe this one's faster, this one's slower, this one's smarter at certain things. That a lot of people, like, they don't know. They don't really know what to do yet. So that helps me, like, put this back the tool.

On that last note, when is it your job as the desire or maybe a better way of asking, when is it Cursor's job to try to solve those things versus the models improvements job to solve those things?

I think it's both. Okay. The models can raise in capabilities or like say, now the models are getting better at say using terminal commands, clicking around in a browser, stuff like that. It's like as they get better, like, you still need a way to kinda unlock those capabilities. So you need to fit them back to the tool itself, package them up, make make them just really obvious so people can just play with them.

They don't have to think too much, like, how do I, I don't know, trigger it or get it out, or use this crazy, like, script or MCP thing to do something. Yeah. Like, you start simplifying, making things that are possible more obvious Yeah. For more people.

That's an interesting way of thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Making things more obvious. Making the next step

more obvious. Yeah. It's like you're constantly simplifying, unifying, figuring out like, now that I have this and this and this now, how do I like clean up even better?

It feels like it relates a little bit to the like readiness thing we talked about earlier, which is like, it feels like maybe the model's job is the technical readiness and your job at Cursor is the cognitive readiness.

Yes. Like, again, humans are kind of single threaded. You know, we've been trying a lot with multi agent or parallelization of agents. Yeah. And nobody has really solved it yet.

Because most people are still thinking about, now, like, let's just give you 15 agents. Here you go. 15 agents are like, have done all these changes, like, 2,000 lines of changes.

It's like all horsepower, no steering wheel.

Yeah. Yeah. So, we need to, like, figure out, you know, these like I'm not even sure if there will be new patterns, but it's like better framings or packaging or interfaces for people to just get out, get utility out of these things without breaking their minds or, like, changing too much or feeling overwhelmed.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you've obviously worked on a lot of different types of systems. Mhmm.

And you're sort of drawn to almost like this container type tool or product or something. And certainly at least with cursor notion, you have line where you say systems thinking is essential because the only path to building products that scale, not just technically, but cognitively along the lines of what we were just saying.

Yeah.

What are the is the goal when you're designing a tool like that to allow the user to stay as single threaded as possible? And like like, is that essentially what you're designing for?

No. No. Or it's like, it's up to you. It's like you need to design the zero state, the one state, and the n state for everything and then see how they melt together.

This is the simplicity of complexity. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, when you have n times n times n, it'll be kinda crazy. But if you really want to be there, so be it.

Yeah. You you should meet the user where they're at.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if you are actually, like, someone I don't know. You you have ADHD or something, like, you want, like, eight different windows all, like, running, so be it.

Yeah. Yeah. Like The average person probably wants Right.

Maybe average people just want one main thread and then Yeah. It's like, how we're thinking right now is like, instead of having you, like, you need to review changes from these 15 different agents. Maybe we help you, like, kinda cluster them a little bit, organize them semantically. Maybe you instead of talking to each of them separately, you just talk to one person or like one agent. And it's almost like your PM or like your assistant.

And then it's gonna figure out, ah, these these guys are blocked. Do you want to, like, approve the terminal command? Yeah. Ah, these changes, I think they're pretty good. This is bad.

You should look at it.

There's a very small subset of users want StarCraft. Yeah. Most people want Candy Crush.

Right. It's actually like, I'm fine with both. Yeah. We can actually do like both like a I don't know, a TikTok and Starcraft. Because of AI.

Yeah. Yeah. There's an idea that I think is really interesting that I think is connected here, which is about Slack in systems. You say, the best systems have Slack in them. Redundancy isn't always waste.

Yes. With optionality, multiple paths mean you can explore without breaking everything. The core remains simple. While layering itself into more complex permutations, controlled chaos means you're stable enough to not collapse, but loose enough to to evolve. Mhmm.

I think that's such a powerful metaphor. And maybe slack is that like willingness to go as complex as I want to. Yeah. I wonder about like, somewhere else you talk about that sort of chaos and order together.

It's like you you let diversions happen. Mhmm. And you let things evolve. It's like evolution. Yeah.

It's like the like nature is constantly, like, making more, you know, permutations of the same thing a little different. See which one works better.

How do you give a tool more slack?

It's What does

mean to add slack to cursor?

Right. It's like it's a little complicated. But also, it's like sometimes you just kinda you know, all designers or we're like kind of perfectionists. We want, like, things to be exactly what we wanted. But sometimes you just allow this ugly thing to pop up or this random button someone else added.

And then I kind of keep a blind eye on it. And you let it simmer a little bit. You let people play with it, more people like our internal group of people. And then, as you do that, or like maybe people, you know, threw the first bucket of paint. And then, now that it's there, you can see it, you can play with it, you can think about it more, understand it better.

Versus sort of roping off the the canvas. Yeah.

Yeah. Then it's like, ah, now I know how this thing fits with the other things. Or like, ah, this thing is actually like a start of something much bigger. Then, it's almost like this constant, you know, chaos convergence thing. And it gets into like an equilibrium.

And then you want that thing to be in like almost at the edge of like the maximum chaos you can allow for the thing.

Your job as designers almost

Like, you're trying to help people like, here's the line, don't cross it. Yeah. And then you're also helping people like bring this, like, it's like reducing like entropy, like, just tame it a little bit back. We're like, ah, this you, you should talk together. Yes.

And then make this thing actually the same thing. Or like, ah, you're making a new thing? Cool. Think about these four things that we have. Yeah.

And that's it. I'll just let them think about how does this new thing relates to the four things. And then, ideally, they come back with a good answer.

You're almost like you're like the game maker or you're like, you're the agent of evolution that's sort of like setting the rules of a little bit of what is tolerated, but critically, you're not snuffing things out too early.

Yeah. And it's like you're you're mostly like an observer or like like, I'm not dictating how things should happen. I just tell you, like, given all the things I know, here's probably how we do it.

And this is also maybe why it seems like you're very attuned to not just the different ideas for Cursor inside of the company,

but

all over Twitter, different stakeholders, students, whatever. Cause you're almost trying to like broaden the aperture of what is allowed in.

Right. Cause fundamentally it is the same thing. All the vibe coding tools, cursor, all the CLI agents, it's all the same thing. But only, like, Cursor kind of tries to bridge all of them. And, like, I try to give people, like, their ideal form.

And I think, like, one big like, a big reason Cursor got popular is because it looks exactly like Versus Code, at least before. But as we kinda noticed, like, people changed their patterns of usage, people kinda moved from, like, manual coding at, like, reviewing every line to do more agents.

Yeah. You have to move with them.

Then we just flip.

Right.

Like our defaults change as the world moves and as the product evolves. But fundamentally, it's still the same thing. What is cursor?

Obviously, cursor is a plugin or a skin of Versus code on some

No. Not just that.

Of course, of course, not just that. And it's changing every day,

like Yeah.

Again, at least when we spoke first, like, you talked about cursor like it. Like, at least the way you seem to relate to cursor is almost like it's your little butler that just does things for you. It's your hand. And we talked about code being the universal language, like in many ways, it almost feels like cursor is just this medium to work with code with computer. Right.

And so, I'm kind of asking about what cursor will be when I ask what cursor is. But like, do you have a conceptual do you have a metaphor you like, is a tool, but it's sort of

this

morph is it just the agent?

I see it as just like we we started from like one slice of like making software, which is you're just actively coding when you're sitting on the computer. Yeah. We put an AI next to it so that it can help you write the code. And now it's like like, I want Cursor to be it's like one place where you can do everything about making software. And that is not just writing code.

And it's not just the developers. There is, like, the PMs thinking about what to do, how to measure things, aggregate all the data, synthesise it, figure out like what are the problems to fix, breaking it down into tasks. There is the designer, maybe they're trying to kind of, you know, explore in two d space, higher level of abstractions. There's the engineers writing the code, but also they need to, like, review, they need to test whether it worked. Once you put it out, you need to, like, gather feedback and input from the market and people using it.

Like, all of this is making software, especially in, a team or, like, a company. And now people's people's workflows and tools and the metaphors they use, the artifacts are all scattered and disjoint. Yes. Whereas, I think Kursa can actually help everyone put everything together again. And then using the agent, it's the same agent, to help you translate between, say, your form of thinking, your preferred artifact into the code itself.

Then it's almost like anyone who wants to build software or any team, they can just be closer together. Yeah. And then the agent kinda helps them besides solving a lot of the issues that we have today that were kinda created by all the tools that that we've made in the last

Yeah. We just need one more tool.

You need you need a thing that kind of melds them fully.

What about cursor shape though? Yeah. Every people have been trying to build the final tool forever. Right. What about cursor shape?

Right.

Makes it what you're describing theoretically possible? Acknowledging Yeah. It's still currently serving mainly devs.

Yeah. I think it's like like people joke about, like, cursor is like a fork of Versus Code and it's just code editor. But if you look at Versus Code, like, deeply, there is actually, like, really good low level primitives. For example, like in Versus Code, there's a concept of editors. Like, you can open different files and different kinds of editors.

Some of them might be looking like, you know, the code editor. Maybe there's like a diff viewer. Maybe there's like a markdown preview. Maybe there's a browser. Like, just having this allows me to just present different things to people differently.

Even though, you know, underneath it's still the same code.

Is that because it works with files or is it Yeah.

Yeah. So, that's another thing. It's like in Versus Code, there's a concept of workspace, which is just like folders and files. Maybe they're tied to a repo. It's like a lot of these low level ideas, again, it's like they don't have to change.

And I don't intend to change them. Though, like, I don't know if we will ever detach from Versus Code at some point. Maybe once we kinda, you know, go fully agent.

Yeah. Or at least a lot of the people using

Yeah, exactly. But I think it's still like Like the challenge for me is to come up with a way to So, you're tying all of these different workflows and people's preferences together into one thing, and you're trying to come up with, like, different reconfigurations of that thing. How they transition between these states. For these different people, what do they each see by default? How do they, like, customize it?

How do they actually talk together?

That's a really complex problem.

How do we move from like cursor from like a single player thing to like a multiplayer thing? Not sure.

You got your work cut out for you.

Yeah.

On on the note of like literally using cursor, we talked about the way you kind of poke it. Yeah. At least when you're using ReOS. Yeah. You had given me, like, your advice was like, treat it as someone who's like a little dumb Yeah.

Commosing things it's seen before.

Yeah yeah

yeah yeah. Don't expect to come up with full components. You shared a list of 12 rules or tips for using cursor back in April.

Yeah.

So those are almost like two slice time stamps of of advice around cursor,

like,

of those I think that that strikes me is if the code is wrong, just write it yourself. Cursor learns faster when from edits than explanations. Obviously, that's that works for someone with a coding ability, not without

a How coding

often is advice like this changing?

Oh, yeah. It changed a lot. Okay. I would say a lot of the things I said in April don't apply. Okay.

For example, like, the agents now are so good at finding stuff that you don't have to say like, at the exact file anymore. Back then, it was like, if you don't include the right context, the agent will just come up with something random or it will make some mistake.

What is the what is the is there anything that stands out as long as you've been working on Cursor that has been true consistently? Or even like the type of person who consistently remains good at like, is staying the same, I guess, is what I'm asking.

Not much. Not much? Yeah.

So you gotta be surfing the new wave Yeah.

Things are constantly changing. Even the things that appear the same might be replaced under the hood.

That's both exciting but also back to the you were talking about what you I don't know, was Notion or something else like some you you have a tool you're used to and they change a little. Jeffrey Lit has this metaphor. They change your chef knife. Yeah. Yeah.

That's hard

to Yeah. I guess there are things that don't change. Say, the agent. It used to be like, you know, before I joined Cursor, there were like five things. Like, there was command k, tab, chat, composer, composer agent.

The first thing I did was to merge the agent. So Chad composer, composer agent became agent with like, you know, more specific modes if you want. Right. You know, more specific behaviors. And then the agent, the idea is they're all the same.

They're just like apply configurations on top of the agent. Maybe for this agent, it has some custom prompts. It has a specific model set to it. Maybe it has like some tools that it can use or cannot. That's it.

And you give it a name. And then these agents all, you know, operate on different models. Those don't change. They need context that don't change. And then you need to show something with the editors that don't change.

Yeah. But all those things are changing.

But all of these things are changing. Yeah. It's like all the things inside are changing.

I guess your bet is that How they somebody's know that are changing. Right. So if your bet too is that if somebody's playing with the clay, they're okay with change because they are living with the material

You in a way that have to. Or like, I think, like in my career as a professional product designer, the thing I hate the most is like, like, people want the design to be final. Where's the final version of this mock? If you don't have it, I won't start building it. Like, that doesn't make sense.

Because the first mock is never right.

Yeah.

Like, you have to keep building it. Yeah. Like, now, it's almost like the reverse happens at cursor, which is kinda chaotic, but I'm actually okay with it. It's like, our engineers were like, some of our enterprise PMs, they start like, vibe coding. And then some weird patterns emerge or say you need

clean it up again. You

need to like, wrangle it back. And then now it's like, because AI is really good at composing parts, I'm actually thinking we need to, like, build bricks, really good bricks. It's like, from all the things that we have as that kinda suck all the patterns, the the core bricks.

This is something that seems like you guys did a really good job at Notion, which is like, pretty principled about what the bricks were gonna be.

Yeah. Notion did it more like on the conceptual level.

Oh, you mean like tangible feature bricks almost?

More like, I don't know. It's like low level components up to like patterns that people can just reuse Yeah. That are not just, you know, every dialogue is different or list view is different. You Like you start helping people create these patterns that just work and just fit together, that both humans and agents can, you know Yeah. Make things a little better by not reinventing the wheels every time.

Because the agents, when they're lacking guidance, they have a tendency to do that.

We talked a bit about like, I think you're clearly designing for hardcore users. Even if people are vibe coding with cursor, like, maybe the lines are thinning. There was a I think a line from you somewhere that I found where you, or maybe I made this up, but I think you talked about like designing for power, like to get the What user does that look like? Maybe in the context of cursor or more broadly.

Yeah. I think a lot of people, so I don't see your users as like, they're dumb. They're not. They can figure things out. They don't have to be like babysit it.

They can it's like, I want to make things the simplest that you can when you start, but as you go, you get all the, you know, depth that you want. Like, as a beginner, you get the same tools as what the pros use, just maybe packed a little differently.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't have 18

You don't see everything yet, but maybe this thing that you get can do like 90% of what you wanted.

Maybe on the other side, like, currently, there's I think most people's my my intuition would be that most engineers relationship is like there's five coding and then there's real engineering. Obviously, that's

It's the

same a challenge. Yeah. What is how did what does it look like designed for power and for serious hardcore users on the like vibe coding dimension? And part of that is conceptual. Right?

Because it's like, they have to be willing to say, I'm gonna I'm gonna give up the wheel. Or not the wheel maybe, but I'm gonna let the engine be.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do like little nudges and we change our default sometimes. And I think those are probably the most powerful tools that you can do as a a product or like a piece of software.

Yeah.

And then you want to introduce them in a way that like, people can still get out of it if they want, but you want to show them that, ah, now here's the new world. Here's how you do it. If you don't want it, you can get out. But it's almost like, again, the same thing, but reconfigured. Or like slightly more optimized for the new way of doing things.

There's a little trust there too, right? Like, it's like, actually, if you trust us for a minute, let us show you how much the agent can do.

Yeah. Yeah. People like a lot of people haven't felt it yet, or maybe they've tried it before, but it didn't work. And then they kind of lost their trust.

Right. Then they never They turned three times like you.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like so it's I would say, for now, you can probably do something pretty impressive even on the first shot. But even, say, like, for for a month ago, it's not the case. So maybe the first time you tried Cursor, it didn't work, or it got blocked or it did something stupid.

And now you're like, I don't want it. It's like we need to figure out how to get the new people in without too much thinking and set up, they can do stuff. Get the existing users, you know, onto, like, better ways to do things that are more, like, up to date.

Without feeling like they're about

It's have this or like, you want to kinda carry them over instead of, like, teleporting them to the new world and then they're like, ah, what the fuck is this? Yeah. And then there's like getting the people who maybe tried Cursor before that thought it was not good to come back because it's good now. Yeah. There's like work for us to do there.

Solvable problems.

Yeah. Many many problems to solve. Some questions about kind of process and some some other stuff that relate have this amazing essay about creating something great. So a few things in this broader vein. First, like, I guess we kind of talked about this and maybe this is silly, but is design kind of just writing now?

Like, it seems like most of the design you're doing, you have your walks, you go on, and then you go to cursor and you write.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe you write a longer spec sheet as cursor improves.

Yeah. I do write docs and stuff. I think it is just about like communicating your idea and all the details that you can think of in a way digestible for your peers and the agent.

And the agent, critically.

Yeah. So depending on, like, who I work with even, I will change the way I make these things. So, like, I work with an engineer, his name is Ian. He loves mocks. He loves pictures.

Like, when I do, like, live code prototypes, he doesn't like it. He just want Figma mocks with all the like, every detail in one picture.

Yeah.

So I just do that with him. Or if I, you know, talk about something more vague, people have, like, also vague ideas, then I keep it more like, maybe they're just bullets, maybe they're, like, simple writing. And then maybe when we want to do something like, it's gonna be like a multi month stage thing that's a little bigger. Yeah. Then I'll write a big RFC.

Yeah. So all that kinda inherited from the way we do it at Notion, the writing part. Mhmm. But with cursor, it's like, now there's like, also, you just kinda I have this idea. I'll add it to my prototype and then, ho ho, look at this.

Should we do it? Yeah. Let's do

it. I suspect those two modes together are quite powerful.

Mhmm.

Yeah. What Like, you

get from, like, the most high level, like, abstract level to the most detail.

Writing when when you say the abstract level, you mean long writing?

Or like even just high level bullets or what are the ideas and the constraint?

Are are is a is a really detailed spec doc and a actual prototype two forms of, like, two almost different trees of detail.

It's like the same thing but Yeah. Visualized differently at different levels. Totally.

Yeah. What is on that note, maybe like, what is a week What does your time look like over I think Cursor has like one meeting a week.

Mhmm.

You're going on walks and thinking Yeah. You're prodding ReOS, whatever. Yeah. You're in Figma sometimes, like Mhmm. What is that like pie chart of time?

That's kinda random.

Every week's different.

Yeah. Very different. Yeah. We also like jam with people at the office. People are always like there.

Not much meetings.

But a lot of talking, it sounds like. Not scheduled meetings, but a lot of

Yeah. Chatting and talking and jamming and yeah, drawing pictures, finding people to help join us.

Podcasting sometimes.

Oh, yeah. Getting designers to to turn into coders.

You're a big ring leader for that.

Yeah. I want to make it happen.

What do you say to the average designer currently who's feeling stressed out? You're ready. You're ready.

Yeah. Like, it's it's time. Just start building.

Start pulling the thread. Get it get in there with the clay.

And then send me all the feedback and if you don't like what you're seeing, we'll fix it.

Maybe on that note, although this could buy the engineers or any maker too. Mhmm. I think one intuition people have around AI, maybe the average creative or artist, non technical person especially

Mhmm.

Is that vibe coding or AI or whatever can make slop, but it can't make soulful things. You have made one of the most you've certainly made the most soulful vibe coded thing that I've ever seen, if if that's Right.

You just need to put your soul in this. You need to care about every detail. You you need to not accept whatever gray purple gradient the AI gave you as the end. Like, that is just the beginning. Yes.

You always start with shit. You always start with sloth, with AI. And then you refine it and you make

That's it the beginning, not the end.

Yeah. You you just poke at it with little prompts. And then it'll get better. Mhmm. It'll take some turns.

You say, in the age of AI, the question everyone's asking is, will I be replaced? The real question is, do you know yourself well enough to become irreplaceable?

I

don't think we're through with technique and skill and craft and mastery. I am curious if there are any of those that you think are worth mastering now. But it seems to me that it's actually more about what you might call intuition or sensibility.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Can you talk about that? Like what goes into that? Because that feels like the it's not the end, it's the beginning. Right. The beginning feels like, I don't like the purple slot.

Uh-huh.

That's like, know what I like and I know incrementally what I

like. Right. True. It's like the AI models are trained on all the public knowledge information and the code that I can see. And you are trained on the same thing.

Like all the books you've read, all the fonts that you know, all the artists that you admire, the world around you. And you build that intuition or taste or whatever. And you start forming an opinion about how you want to shape the world. And you express it by building. Yeah.

That's what it is.

Not by thinking, by the way.

Yeah. Not by thinking, not just thinking. Then it's like you have to keep making things and keep looking at things.

Yeah. One of the things that get missed in the when people talk about taste is taste is eating food. Yes. Stop thinking about food.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You need to keep eating and making shit. Yeah.

And then make the shit better and better. Mhmm.

You critique design as aesthetics, I think, a lot. But you're also like very attuned to aesthetics. Yeah. Real ass is like the most specific thing ever.

Like, you've

perfectly handcrafted recreated Aqua among many other things. Like, what is the maybe it's back to this taste thing, but like, what is your relationship to sort of like not holding aesthetics too tightly, but also still clearly really putting a ton of time and effort and energy and thought I into

think it's like it's like how you present things visually will always be there. And, like, I don't really think about it anymore. You just start noticing, like, this feels off, this feels wrong. And once you have almost like a set of patterns, then you don't really think about it anymore. Unless it's like something new that you want to stress on or you want to like put a little bit more flair into it.

But it's like all the found foundational bricks, they need to fit perfectly, even individual space. It's like the visual space, the the the bricks are it's like the color, the spacing, the layout, the grid, the different like type type scales, font sizes, and all of that.

It's sort of part of the it's part of the big picture. Yeah.

It's part of it. It's more like one layer of it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, ideally, the thing is also constructed in a way that is like like, it's almost like the simplest form for the low level ideas that you want to convey.

Yeah. I like that. It's a it's a it's they're compressed.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like compression to pixels. What are they?

Yeah. Yeah. In the So you you still think about it, but you don't think about it too much. Yeah. Once you're over

It has its hierarchy.

It has

its role in the hierarchy.

Right. And I also just like how people think of them separately sometimes. It's like, so at Google, they have like interaction designers and visual designers that are split and that's bad. Then you create a world where the visual designers only think about how the button looks and then they fight.

Not what it looks like to press the button. Yeah. Or Or feels like, I should say.

Like, how should the buttons be fit fitted together? Why is there so many buttons? Yeah.

Yeah. You're always backing into this. You need to have the cohesion in mind Mhmm. When you're in the micro. Yeah.

It's like, I don't know, in that in that greatness piece, you wrote about focus and breadth. Like, we're taught to focus early, choose what's important, discard what's peripheral. The genesis of a thing that might be great. Strict focus is a ruse. The treasure lies in expansive searching and stitching together a tapestry of interrelated issues.

Later, once you roam far enough, clarity will guide you toward the right edges until then let curiosity roam. And it almost feels like that is going in two axes, which is the axes of like incremental new thing and the axes of like hierarchy and cohesion.

Yeah. You do that at the same time. And that's why it's chaotic. Yeah. And ambiguous.

Yeah. Yeah. And you have to rein it in with the order

and Yeah. Yeah. Like when people try to put this into like a linear process or order, they just fuck it up. Yeah. Because there is no more like emergence.

Do you

think that one view just says that like Google doesn't have Riolu or whatever, pick your favorite designer.

Sure.

Another view that says, the people at Google are talented and actually like they

are cool.

Their system is failing them. Yes. Seems like you think the latter.

I think the latter. And I think say a tool like cursor or its ideal form can help with this. Meaning, like, people with different roles or they're kinda stuck in boxes right now. Yeah. You just break the box and let them build the thing they want.

Yeah.

Another part of that essay on greatness, pursue agility and quality in equal measure.

Mhmm.

The myth says you must choose, move quickly and break things or move slowly and ensure elegance. But genuine excellence emerges from a dance between speed and depth, agility, and quality. I love this. Like a skilled musician who can improvise yet still maintain impeccable technique Yes. You must learn to adapt fluidly without compromising the integrity of the final piece.

Yeah.

I'm curious how this this dance it makes sense to me that it could happen working solo on a short term project without that much of a plan, maybe Rio. How does that happen maybe at other modalities, either with wide collaboration or let's say you're working on Cursor two point o and it's this big long term project. How do you how do you embody that in that type of context?

It's kinda like the you let chaos be and you wrangle it at the same time. Or it's like you're you're you don't pick size. You find like an equilibrium.

Yeah. Between the complexity and

the simplicity. And same thing with, like, how much fast you want to go versus, like, how much thinking do you want to

do. And

I think, especially in this age, it's actually so easy to just try try things out.

Maybe it starts with so much in so many of your answers, it starts with just saying, like, it doesn't have to be a choice. Like, you're allowed to do both.

Oh, yeah.

They're the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, people get stuck thinking like they need to pick sides or they need to make these hard trade offs when all of these are just like variables and you can add a little bit here, lower a little bit here. It's all dynamic. You want to be more flexible to the situation you're in and the change that's coming.

You don't want your system to be stale or stuck in, like, a form that you can't get out as the world is changing. You want to keep the essence clean and simple. You want to create, like, a space for people to play with ideas so they can ship really fast. But maybe it doesn't disrupt, like, the rest of the system as much. And then once you have, say, more more room or even, like, you're constantly doing this, like, oh, let's wrangle things back, let's, like, unify things, Then you keep the core system better as you add more things or as you experiment with more things.

Yeah. It's like a complex system can actually be quite high quality and fast Mhmm. If its parts are simple. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. We build all this complexity and scaffolding and arbitrary bureaucracy, whatever. All these things that all these shoulds.

Right. And ideally, you'd actually get rid of all that all that crap that is not even part of the system, the software itself.

Yeah. It's bloat.

Yeah. It's like everything around it, the processes, a lot of it just don't make sense. Or they slow things down. They slow this loop down. Like, you have an idea to see it real, to test it out, and then you iterate on it.

How does this How many people are Cursor now? 300. And you were obviously Notion for a long period of that growth, like

Yeah.

How does when cursor's 3,000 people

Uh-huh.

How does this not happen? You guys, like, you you don't really have that much of road map.

The the planner agent will be ready by the way. And then multiplayer cursor will be there. Yeah. Fair enough. Then people can be still like pretty like, I think how Cursor does it really fast and pretty good is like a lot of people we hire, they're just really high agency people.

They were like founders before, they have made stuff before. They just want to build. They don't want to think too much.

Sure. But that maybe that works with that definitely works with 30. Maybe that works with 300.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All wisdom would say that doesn't work with 3,000. Even if you got 3,000 Steve Jobs Right. It would actually be a disaster. Yeah.

I'm not sure. I think that is actually one part of the it's like a part of the questions we need to answer, which is like, in this new world of building with AI, how do teams work? And I think it won't be that Like, it won't be too close to what we had before, like layers of management and linear processes. It's probably not going to be that. So what is it?

How do you, like, both make sure, like, people are kind of aligned on the general direction, but each person have agency, each person can build whatever they want to an extent, have systems to kind of manage this and help people control. Making sure that these people are actually talking to each other and share the same information when they do stuff. Like, that's the main problem we have now, I think. It's like people are so disstrained. They talk to their own teams that are created, like, with raw boundaries.

They work in their own files, own tools.

One thing that maybe helps that I you also have in that essay is about the quality of a team. You say, the team that molds greatness is not a conscript army, but a band of pilgrims. Such people don't hide behind process or hire.

Oh, yeah.

What does it feel like when you meet a group of people, you're in a room or you're in a visit an office, or when you first kind of met the cursor people or whatever. What is how do you know how do you how can you tell that it's a band of pilgrims?

Just see what they're doing and what they care about. You ask them why are they here? And then they tell you, because I love programming. They just like doing this thing. Like, they're into it.

They're passionate. They care deeply. And they want to make the best thing. And they want to put the work in it. And you see it.

Like, they don't talk about, I don't know, equity or whatever, you know, investment or I don't know. They talk about, the latest models, the new ideas. They exchange their ideas. And they're there for quite a long time every day. And they're doing that, like, not being forced.

Yeah. Yeah. On the note of of the sort of essay about making something great.

Mhmm.

Do you aspire to greatness? Oh, yeah. What does that mean for you?

To me, it means, like, you make something that helps a lot of people that lasts. And ideally, it's like pretty close to the ideal configuration of the thing.

Yeah. That truth. The trueness we talked about.

Right. But sometimes you fake it. It's like, sometimes we make the upper layer really nice and pretty and cohesive, but under the hood is like chaos. But that's fine. You you just you do that, like, slowly.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like the I don't know. The the picture of the SpaceX rocket, the first SpaceX rocket, the The same,

like Yes.

The iPhone Air now is like

Oh, yes. Like, if you even if you look at the inside, it's like so pretty.

Yeah. Yeah. I saw your you I want the clear iPhone Air too. That would be amazing. I have we have a little time left.

I have

a bunch of like quick speed round questions.

Uh-huh.

We can we we can we don't have to take too super long on each one. First off, maybe it relates to your last answer. What does it mean for technology to feel more human? Not exactly the easiest speed round answer or question, but

I think I should, like, fit each human better and it's different for everyone. Like, some people prefer something really simple. Some people actually want to see every button. Some people like talking. Some people like reading.

Some people like like watching YouTube tutorials. Some people like going to a course, buying a book.

It's fit. It's a personal connection.

It's about, like, fitting the human in the way they do things, not in the way, like, I do things. Yeah. Or like our engineers do things. Yeah. Those can be like good examples.

And as it fits you better, it inevitably needs to understand you better. Your preferences of even like your way of thinking or how you talk and the things you care about.

It's like almost being seen by a design or

a product. Or like, when you do it, it just feels like like you're in flow and you don't think. Kinda like how I use Figma. Yeah. But that took like years of training.

Yes. But now, it's like maybe a couple tries you you're like there.

Yeah. Yeah. You write a lot and you clearly are really thoughtful about how what not only what you have to say about cursor publicly, but the narrative and the conversation around cursor. Mhmm. We we spoke about this briefly and you said like, tools are all selling ideas.

They're all attaching themselves to ideas. There's a lineage of ideas they're they're sort of pointing at.

Yep.

How you talk about tools matters tremendously. You have to plant seeds.

Mhmm.

What do you mean by planting seeds? And like, how how do you think about shaping what people think and perceive about Cursor?

Right. Yeah. I think, like, software to me, kinda like what we said, that's just like a tree of concepts packaged up in the word cursor or Notion. Notion is blocks, pages, databases. Cursor is agents, models, context, and editors, maybe.

But you also want to, like, create something like it's like a brand that lasts, that is not just your present form, that is a little bigger, that ties with the past and the future. And that is definitely not say, Cursor is the AI coded. It is not even like, say, Cursor makes you extraordinary productive. It is bigger. Yeah.

And then you want to tell the bigger story, and then you want to also tell smaller stories to different groups of

people. Right.

Right. But tie them all together.

Yeah. It's almost like it's like the tool itself or the product is like the ship. And the story is like, we're going to The Americas or something. Having that broader context is important. People attach a lot of identity to the things they use to to make things.

Yep. Like, I think it's actually a service. Like, we need to do more of this to kind of paint a picture for people to see how we came here. Yeah. And how these things are actually the same things, same ideas, how the ideas originated, how they kinda interweaved.

Yes. Well, that's so important

to AI, especially. Yeah. Yeah. It's so alienating

to people. A lot of people, like, now when they start, they actually just start from, like, now now. They don't see the the past. They don't know how we came here.

Or they're living in the past. And they're like, I don't like this future.

Stuck in the in the past and they don't know how this future can take them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You said there was a tweet where you said, talking about a bunch of things. You said don't build slot machines. And a few people accused Cursor of being a slot machine. Right. What do you say to that?

I don't think Cursor is a slot machine because slot machines, they don't let you open it up.

It's closed. Black box. Yeah.

But cursor is like I actually don't want your primary way to interface with cursor to be like kinda like, say, Cloud Code or Codecs CLI. It's like, you're in the terminal, you're in this little box, and then you're kind of constrained in just like that input, and you're just typing the thing in a little box and then enter and see what happens, wait for a little bit, see what happens. Versus in cursor, like that is, say, it is possible, and you can do it like that, but that is just one form of it.

It's the beginning.

Yeah. Or like, you will just naturally hit these, ah, I see a code block. Maybe I want to click and see what's in it. Ah, I'm, like, done with this chat. I hit this review button, and then now I see all the things.

And it slowly teaches you, say, like, now we're doing code reviews, we're gonna stitch the agent reviews with the code review, with git, and, you know, all the other stuff. Then as a new newcomer even, like, come in and then you started with a simple thing, You slowly get to the like, if you want. Like, I don't force you either.

Right.

It's like, if you don't want to open the code, you don't have to. And you just keep

hitting the slot machine if you want.

If you want that, it's fine. And I don't think that's a slot machine either. Again, it's like it's customizable. It's open you can open it up. You can do whatever to it.

Even in the simple form, you can still customize the thing. And you have full control. And you have the whole spectrum of control from, like, the most manual coding, which is you just type and it's still your thing. I don't do anything to, like, you type and then our tab model is still the world's best thing. You type and then boom.

It kinda completes your thought. It jumps you to the next place. You keep going. So if you prefer that and you're, like, in your flow state there, you should keep doing that. And then for a second, there's now, like, a small chunk of, like, professional developers who have became very agent coded.

Like, they don't do manual coding as much Then for them, it's like we have tools for them to focus on one agent, spend multiple agents, manage them at a higher level soon, then you get the whole spectrum. And for these people, again, it's like they can find their preferred spot, and then they can open it up and do more if they want. But I don't force them to be like, ah, you're always in this little box and then Yeah. All you can do is put the prom in the little box, see what happens.

Is there a pattern from stripe to notion to cursor? As you've spent most of the last decade? Yeah.

I don't see them as too different either. Or like, they're actually very similar. Like, Stripe to me is just passing messages around the Internet, but the messages are transactions or money related. Notion is just like basically, like, the meta SaaS tool kinda databases and all the archetypes of views and patterns. Cursor brings it more low level, but it's also more flexible.

Like, you actually break all of these patterns and parts completely. And at some point, like, you will get it composed by the AI or with our, like, presets or something. So you get the tool you want.

Yeah. You have a line somewhere where you say building stuff that frees up people's minds.

Mhmm.

And I felt like that's kind of true for all of those three things.

Yeah. It's like helping people make make the thing they they want.

What did you learn from what did you and what have you learned from the Notion founders and the Cursor founders respectively? Or maybe even Stripe?

From Ivan's, like, I think he kinda showed, like, system thinking and aesthetics can be melded together. Like, you don't have to pick. Wow. And then from cursor people, it's just like, you should just YOLO and do stuff and don't think too much and

keep doing it. Ambitious naivete almost.

Yeah. And It's like, that is actually so so good in this age because actually nobody knows what they're doing. Right? Like all the old ways of doing things don't really apply anymore.

What do you love about Steve Jobs?

I love him as almost like a spiritual figure, kinda. Like, I'm not religious. But I feel like sometimes people need like a it's like a thing there. And I kind of put this as a symbol there. That helps me a lot.

What does that symbol represent?

It's like forcing you to be thinking about everything, all the details, and coming up with the simplest thing. Yeah. And he kinda helped me start all of this. Like, he got me into design. Or like, you know, the old Apple.

Yeah. Like, they showed how, like, computers can be beautiful.

Maybe on that note, what is the difference to you between liquid glass and

aqua? I mean, like, aqua it's more like what they're trying to do was, like, they bring a lot of, like, the physical metaphors into the computer. Yeah. So that people feel more familiar with things. Like, if you look at all the icons, they almost look like like, they look like the emojis we use today.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, they're super detailed. Yeah. Like, with real world, like, reflections and material.

Yeah. And it's like, back in the days, it looks completely different from, say, the gray boxes people used. Like the beveled three d buttons So, and that was like pretty game changing. They also mastered like how to render fonts. Like, back then, how Aqua was made, it's like all just kind of PDFs rendered on your screen.

You can stretch the UI, like, freely. The text was not like, you know, in, like, bitmap, little pixels, but it's like it's all, like, inter alias, like, perfect. Liquid glass almost feels like it's almost like a flex on what Apple can do now. Yeah. And it's kinda weird.

It's like I get the point. It's like they're trying to, like, unify the design language across all of their platforms, coming up with, like, one thing. But it's like how you use a phone versus how you use the VisionPRO when you stare at things and then, you know, they need to track your eye, your finger, and your little pointer on the mouse button, they're all different. So your interface probably can't be the same same. But they try to make it the same thing, And this material, even though it's like, you know, inspired by glass, it's purely digital.

They're just flexing that they can build, like, system level shaders and make them perform across every single, like, UI. And then my menus can morph into a button and out from the button. But then to the users, like, what's the point? Yeah.

It's just

actually makes a lot of the UI like like, you can't see much anymore. Or like, the the the tabs take so much space. Like, you need to keep clearance for for the tabs. There there are shadows, the little blur under it. So you actually like, when you compare the old iOS and the new one, you actually see less text or, like, there's, like, less stuff you can do.

So maybe, like, the priorities have changed. Like, instead of being truthful to the platform themselves and the way you interact with it, either it's a finger or your eye or your little pointer that have different precision. That's just like make everything the same.

I I have to stop you because I know you can rant about this all day. I I'm I'm really good at finding things to get my guests to rant about in the last few minutes. Just a couple more questions. Yes. I know I had to get this one in.

Okay.

What makes Newjeans stand out in a world of factory farmed kale?

I think it's the same idea. Like, I think all of the things that we make, the new things, are just kind of remixes of the old things. And what New Jeans did was they just mixed things really well. And then they give these girls like a space to just be themselves and have fun. And that's why, like, it feels so different from like all these scripted, manufactured, like, K pop songs that were it's almost like most, you know, people, they're just kind of mixing a lot of crazy things together now.

Whereas, like, new genes, they're more like thoughtful. And so again, it's like about taste and Yeah. Like the constraint.

Yeah. K pop in some ways, K pop can feel like it's just like, what does the algorithm want? Just give

Like you find like a concept and then you kinda, like, what they do is they get a lot of sound writers and they buy a lot of songs and then they're just like, oh, let's, like, mix these parts or mix these genres. Boom. Put the English, Korean, Japanese lyric together. Boom.

What can you say something about Zhuangzi's butterfly dream?

Butterfly dream. It's like life in a sense is like reality is not that real. And a lot of it is just in your head. So, sometimes you feel like almost like you're living in a dream where you can actually mold anything.

So, Steve Jobs video. It's like when you figure out that the world is moldable and plastic, can poke it and you get feedback back.

Yeah. And it's like the the butterfly. And sometimes you you just let things go and see how it how it happens. And sometimes you go back and you take control. Like you wake up from the dream or sometimes Yeah.

In between dream Yeah. Dream and reality. Yeah. We're always all doing that by the way. We're on autopilot and we're not.

Yep. I was talking to Rio OS.

Mhmm. And

I was talking to Steve Jobs, Pope Francis, and Rio.

And

Pope the Pope said something about a revolution of tenderness. Oh. And Steve was skeptical. So I asked Rio what tenderness means to

him. Uh-huh.

He said, tenderness to me is when a system or tool feels intuitive, almost invisible, making things smooth and delightful. It's the empathy baked into the design. Right. We didn't talk a lot about empathy today. Although I think it's kind of running in the background of our conversation.

It's clear you are deeply empathetic to the people you care about, which is I think people who make things. What does IRL Rio think about tenderness?

Tenderness. Just like putting the care into things and people you meet and the people we serve. Being truthful, that the ideas that we work with, or the technology even, is universal. Generalizable. It's not exclusive to a group of people.

And you can always start by like, you understand what you need, what you are frustrated with, and then you find a group of people who are maybe similar to you. So, like, the people who are cat cursor. And they all share similar problems. And they, you know, make stuff for themselves and make this tool. And then it's about, like, how do we bring it out to more people like us, or even beyond people like us.

And that's maybe like the next breakthrough will be. Like, the vibe coding tools and the pro coding tools today are still very split. Like, it's really hard for, say, the nontechnical people to come into Cursor today, but also very hard for them to, like, progress from a vibe coding thing to a real thing. So maybe we can help with that. We can help with it's like turning the designers into coders, the PMs into coders, the coders into designers.

It's all the same thing.

It's all the same thing. And we start realizing, oh, we can actually, like, we don't have to, like, put boxes around our heads or our eyes. We can actually do things. We can do things better with other people who have, say, different areas of specialisation. But we're all thinking about the same thing.

People don't have to fight. Like, instead of fighting about, I don't know, bureaucracy, you fight about the truth. Like, what is the best thing to do? What is the ideal configuration of the thing we're doing together? And you're helping people, you raise all the parts in their job that they don't really like doing.

You help people amplify their strength, like what they care about, what they're really good at. And you help meld these people's strengths together. And then the agent covers the rest. Real Lou. Yeah.

Thank you very much. Thank you.