Chapter preview · Arc VI — Build moats that last
Chapter 24 — The Second Watershed
AI compresses the build and compounds the product
Artificial intelligence changes both sides of the hardware equation — it speeds up development before launch and expands what products can do after launch, narrowing the old divide between the shipped product and everything that follows.
Since large language models entered the mainstream, research cycles have compressed, production work has accelerated, and development itself has begun to change shape — in some cases agentic enough to earn the loose, slightly ridiculous, but revealing label: “vibe programming.”
Chapter 8 treated connectivity as a watershed: the moment a product stopped being a frozen object and became an updatable, observable member of a fleet. AI marks the second watershed. The first opened the data pipe. The second fills it with intelligence, while also accelerating the work of the people who decide what should flow through it, build it, test it, ship it, and support it.
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