I’m not going to lie—if someone told me I couldn’t use AI for any part of my job, I’d be in trouble.

Hooking up MCPs, APIs, and building my own home-brewed apps, it feels like I’ve got real power.

That said, I do wonder what the hell is going on half the time as Claude makes changes in my terminal.

“Click yes if you’d like to proceed,” it tells me.
“Yes, go ahead,” I select.

Who knows—maybe my computer is already compromised. Ha.

Anyways, it still feels worth the risk. I mean, millions of other people are doing it.

This year I’ve really experienced the “magic” of AI—specifically Claude Code.

It’s raised a lot of thoughts and questions about software. Here are a few:

AI becomes an extra layer of the user experience

In other words, I’m accessing software simply by using my terminal and Claude.

This is especially helpful for data analysis, because f*ck going into GA4 and trying to sift through everything.

Software that is “open” (i.e. has APIs) becomes more valuable

Small example: my LingQ account has a ton of personal data.

When I connect LingQ's API to Claude (Terminal? Claude Code?), I can access the platform in entirely new ways and extract more value.

For example:

• It can analyze content I’ve read
• Recommend sources based on my tastes and level
• Generate hyper-customized Anki decks

…and so on.

A lot of software companies will go out of business

I know this has already been talked about a lot.

My take is that it’s not all doom and gloom.

However, if software is “closed,” or if customers only use a small portion of its features, it’s in trouble.

It’s now insanely easy to create bespoke software, push it to GitHub, and share it with your entire team.

Pricing Power

The more inputs I connect with Claude, the harder it is to switch over to another AI provider.

Claude can raise prices and many companies would eat it.

That brings me to my next point.

Open source AI as an alternative to the big boys

I’ve explored this briefly in the past but didn’t get much value from it. Prompts that didn’t require many tokens caused my laptop to heat up and its fans to go berserk.

However, it seems like things are becoming a lot more efficient, and I’m ready to jump back in.