[2026 Update] This post has garnered significant traffic to my blog as well as discussion on and offline over the last 10 months. For some google search queries (such as “ai just a tool”), this ranks in the top-2 search results consistently. So for folks finding this post, and my thoughts on the matter, I want to note that I’ve given a keynote on “tool-making” (which is the subject of my PhD) and I encourage you to read this blog and then consider watching the first 10 minutes (or so) of my talk. The introduction is a concrete walk-through of some of the ideas I discuss here in this blog. These two complement each other well: And I have also recently written more, about very similar problems, in terms of how modern generative AI influences prototyping, and threatens what prototyping should be about. So if you’re interested in further reading after this, consider checking out that post on genAI+prototyping .…