Reposted by Geoffrey LittCyrus Omar on sabbatical in Cambridge @neurocy.bsky.social · 11/06/2025Really enjoyed this distillation of the vision of malleable software that drives so much great work in our community today. Important point is that we need tools that titrate in programming continuously, so that users of all skill levels can adapt their tools and expert users can *really* build. 1202
Reposted by Geoffrey LittJosh Horowitz @joshuahhh.com · 13/06/2025BTW: I'm slowly assembling a LIVE Primer to help folk submitting to LIVE (& others) get the lay of the land. Please take a look and let me know what's missing, what sucks, what's rad, etc. live-workshop.github.io/primer/live-workshop.github.ioThe LIVE PrimerThe LIVE Primer 2177
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 10/06/2025It's not a short read, we went deep on it -- but we tried really hard to keep it accessible to anyone who's curious. Let us know what you think, and share with others if you like it :) 030
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 10/06/2025New longform @inkandswitch.com essay! 📜 Malleable Software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps by me, @joshuahhh.com, @pvh.ca and @seaofclouds.com inkandswitch.com/essay/mallea... It's about why people need agency over their software tools, and how to make that happen.inkandswitch.comMalleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down appsThe original promise of personal computing was a new kind of clay. Instead, we got appliances: built far away, sealed, unchangeable. In this essay, we envision malleable software: tools that users can... 39724
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 25/05/2025The key is you can actually explain what you want thoroughly and in detail, so it actually writes the code you want. (And yes, I promise this can be much faster than coding by hand, in some cases!) 020
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 25/05/2025You may not like this answer, but one solution here is to do more coding thru an agent chat rather than autocompleting… it achieves a very different kind of “flow” but I find it much faster for certain tasks and less jerky than code autocomplete 100
Reposted by Geoffrey LittPaul Sonnentag @paulsonnentag.bsky.social · 15/05/2025What if you didn't need git to collaborate on games? We've been prototyping a new approach to collaboration in Godot: live and async collaborative editing, with branches and diffs, built right into the editor. We're looking for people to test out an early version, see link in next post: 45511
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 30/04/2025I like your point, but also the single mediocre undergrad works at 10-100x human speed sometimes which is a big deal! 030
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 23/04/2025Strong overlap between good craftspeople and life philosophers! 010
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 23/04/2025Man, this is such a beautiful video series. Seeing the amount of work it takes to build a good house is awe-inspiring. youtu.be/d7e6IOdKfVw?...youtu.beBuilding a Craftsman House [Start to Finish Timelapse]YouTube video by Essential Craftsman 3230
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 22/04/2025we have lots more ideas cooking on ambsheets that we're excited to share - to subscribe to future updates and to see more details on filtering, check out our lab notebook post about this work! 6/6 www.inkandswitch.com/ambsheets/no...inkandswitch.com02 · Filtering scenariosUsing spreadsheet formulas to choose scenarios to focus on 090
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 22/04/2025you can also write any spreadsheet formula you want and use the result as a filter 😎 and, you can filter on *outputs* and filter "backwards" showing what inputs are compatible w/ that output! eg: in this video we see what we can afford while staying under budget: 5/ 160
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 22/04/2025this starts very simple: just check a box to focus down on a subset of the values in your sheet. eg: "if i lease the cheaper car, what might my budget total look like"? but, because we're in an open-ended spreadsheet, it can also get more interesting than that... 4/ 140
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 22/04/2025one way to explore a space is *filters*. we've all seen filters on shopping websites: you can use checkboxes, range sliders, etc to narrow down a list. we can borrow from that familiar paradigm and bring it into our ambsheet. 3/ 160
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 22/04/2025ok, first some quick background. we previously introduced our Ambsheets project: a spreadsheet where one cell can hold multiple values. this creates a space of options... but wait, how do you explore that space? 2/ bsky.app/profile/alex... 160
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 22/04/2025what if you could model a problem in a spreadsheet, and then instantly start applying powerful *filters* to explore your space of options? that's the idea @alexwarth.bsky.social and I have been exploring recently at @inkandswitch.com ... 1/ 4618
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 13/04/2025Yes, I remember loving it, that’s why I chose the name! 000
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 13/04/2025Yeah meal planning is next up for me too! Would be ideal to hook up Instacart automation but unfortunately that seems complicated. 110
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 13/04/2025lol yeah, it’s been a while since I read the book and I don’t really remember the details, I should revisit… 100
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 13/04/2025Yes that’s fair! Have already seen a couple close calls with date / time zone confusion. Wouldn’t rely on this yet as a sole source of info but I find it to be a nice extra layer 020
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 13/04/2025www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/04/12/h...geoffreylitt.comStevens: a hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs 74410
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 10/04/2025And I can happily confirm that vibe coding is the *perfect* tool for a sleep deprived engineer to hack on half-baked side projects in the middle of the night 👌 1201
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 10/04/2025Personal news: I’m a dad now! My wife and I are feeling very fortunate 😊 191340
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 23/03/2025The Deep Research Printer: Say any question, get a custom printed report. The calmness of paper. The meditative quality of *actually reading*, not spawning a million tabs. Combined with the vast knowledge of the Web, answering our most niche curiosities. 2161
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 22/03/2025Simple AI agent challenge: I want a report listing the remaining teams in the NCAA tournament (easy)... *with an embedded image of the mascot for each team* So far I've failed in Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude. Anyone know a service that can produce this? 020
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 20/03/2025In school why do teachers read your work? “In school… you’re attaching a $100 bill to your paper, handing it to your instructor, and saying hey will you read this…” Seriously just go watch the talk it’s so good 040
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 20/03/2025“In the real world - not in school - the purpose of your text is to change what readers think about the world” So simple, so good 1151
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 20/03/2025The other GOAT talk for research communication in my book is SPJ: youtu.be/sT_-owjKIbAyoutu.beHow to Give a Great Research TalkYouTube video by Microsoft Research 1160
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 20/03/2025One of my all-time favorite talks: how to write so people will care what you have to say. First watched it many years ago and I still think about it constantly. youtu.be/aFwVf5a3pZMyoutu.beLEADERSHIP LAB: Writing Beyond the Academy 1.23.15YouTube video by UChicago Social Sciences 7998
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 20/03/2025i think often even when the feature exists it's just too clunky to use often - nothing like the fluidity of pointing 000
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 18/03/2025Imagining a competitive game where duos train to instruct each other in clicking through novel interfaces over a voice channel 140
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 18/03/2025the solution is pointing: "put that there" www.media.mit.edu/publications...media.mit.eduPut-that-there: Voice and gesture at the graphics interface – MIT Media Lab“Put That There” is a voice and gesture interactive system implemented at the Architecture Machine Group at MIT. It allows a user to build and modify a graphic… 180
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 18/03/2025verbally explaining to someone what to click on a screenshare is such a hilariously terrible experience. "click on the button in the top right that says... oh no not that one, move down, one more, oooone more.... ah you skipped it, go back to - oh nope, not quite..." 3311
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 03/03/2025www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/03/03/t...geoffreylitt.comAvoid the nightmare bicycle 082
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 26/02/2025It’s been going totally nuts and doing lots of stuff I didn’t ask it to do. Gonna need to adjust. 110
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 13/02/2025Yeah - I think the entry barrier has been smashed for the simplest UIs but you still need a lot of knowledge past a certain point. Not sure how fast that’ll change. 000
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/202515/ Anyway, that's the lens I'm finding helpful these days. tldr: in the wild west, speed wins, and AI is fast. So we can thoughtfully apply AI to make better prototypes. If you're using similar techniques would be curious how you think about it. 230
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/202514/ As the models improve, it's even feeling like the combo is possible sometimes: move faster than ever before, at higher quality. I'm cautious with the super high speeds though: preserving creative agency does require a lot of iteration and pondering the essential problem. 100
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/202513/ It does take constant vigilance to pull this off. When I'm doing serious UI prototyping I try to maintain a clear separation where I'm driving the big ideas and the UI details, and the AI's role is only implementation assistance. 100
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/202512/ OK, but what about the UI itself? am I abdicating too much responsibility to the AI? Perhaps. I do worry about this a lot... But I actually think the opposite may be true? I can be more attentive to UI detail when I'm not furiously slinging around code. 100
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/202511/ This is not one sentence prompts. It's long detailed prompts, iteration, code review. In the weeds! I can make a proper plan for how something should work... and then the AI executes it in minutes! So we're still moving fast enough for prototyping. 100
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/202510/ There's a second move I find more subtle and interesting: While maintaining my previous speed of prototyping, I can build at much higher quality. 110
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/20259/ There's an obvious here: MOVE FAST 🏎️. One sentence prompt, make an app, boom you're done! This makes for fun demos and can be useful for random throwaway tools... But not useful at all when I'm trying to prototype a good UI that hasn't been made before. 110
Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 12/02/20258/ From my personal experience, AI *significantly* pushes out the speed-quality frontier for rapidly prototyping web UIs in React. (I mainly use Cursor Composer w/ 3.5-sonnet, plus a smattering of other tools) The question is: what do we do with this power? 120
