Box CEO Aaron Levie on Why AI Agents Won’t Take Your Job
Aaron Levie is AI-pilled, but he’s one of the few CEOs who sees a future where AI agents work for us, instead of replacing us—helping us to do more than we could before.Aaron’s been the CEO of Box for 20 years–long enough to see a few tech revolutions up close—and taking the company AI-first gave him a glimpse of what the next one means for us. We get into why jobs aren’t going away, the new shape of work, and what it takes to build an AI-first company from the inside.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share. Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribeFollow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipperMeet NotebookLM, the AI research tool and thinking partner that can analyze your sources, turn complexity into clarity and transform your content: https://notebooklm.google.com/Timestamps:00:00:00 - Start00:01:30 – Introduction00:02:36 – Why AI won’t take your job00:06:42 – Jevons Paradox and the future of work00:10:40 – How Aaron’s experience with the cloud era shapes his view of AI00:19:44 – Why every knowledge worker is becoming a manager of AI agents00:25:21 – What Aaron’s learned from bringing AI into every corner of Box00:33:57 – What’s overhyped in AI today00:43:31 – How Aaron balances everyday execution with innovationLinks to resources mentioned in the episode:Aaron Levie: Aaron Levie (@levie)Box: https://www.box.com/Dan’s essay on the shift toward the allocation economy: "The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy"Dwarkesh’s podcast with Richard Sutton: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/richard-sutton
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MCP Servers: Teaching AI to Use the Internet Like Humans
If your MCP server has dozens of tools, it’s probably built wrong.You need tools that are specific and clear for each use case—but you also can’t have too many. This creates an almost impossible tradeoff that most companies don’t know how to solve.That’s why we interviewed Alex Rattray, the founder and CEO of Stainless. Stainless builds APIs, SDKs, and MCP servers for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Alex has spent years mastering how to make software talk to software, and he came on the show to share what he knows. We get into MCP and the future of the AI-native internet.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share. Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribeFollow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipperReady to build a site that looks hand-coded—without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at Framer.com, and use code DAN to get your first month of Pro on the house.Timestamps:00:00:00 - Start00:01:14 - Introduction00:02:54 - Why Alex likes running barefoot00:05:09 - APIs and MCP, the connectors of the new internet00:10:53 - Why MCP servers are hard to get right00:20:07 - Design principles for reliable MCP servers00:23:50 - Scaling MCP servers for large APIs00:25:14 - Using MCP for business ops at Stainless00:28:12 - Building a company brain with Claude Code00:33:59 - Where MCP goes from here00:41:10 - Alex’s take on the security model for MCPLinks to resources mentioned in the episode:Alex Rattray: Alex Rattray (@RattrayAlex), Alex Rattray Stainless: https://www.stainless.com/
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Cognition’s CEO on What Comes After Code
The future has a way of showing up early to some places. In software engineering, one of those places is Cognition—the startup that made headlines in early 2024 with Devin, the world’s first autonomous coding agent, and more recently with its acquisition of the AI code editor Windsurf.Scott Wu, Cognition’s cofounder and CEO, has a front-row seat to what comes next. In this episode of AI & I, we talk with Wu about why the fundamentals of computer science still matter in an AI-first world, the direction he sees for the short- and long-term future of programming, and why he believes we may already be living with AGI.Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Start00:02:02 – Introduction00:02:32 – Why Scott thinks AGI is here00:09:27 – Scott’s personal journey as a founder00:16:55 – Why the fundamentals of computer science still matter00:22:30 – How the future of programming will evolve00:26:50 – A new workflow for the AI-first software engineer00:29:33 – How Devin stacks up against Claude Code00:40:05 – Reinforcement learning to build better coding agents00:50:05 – What excites Scott about AI beyond CognitionIf you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Links to resources mentioned in the episode:Scott Wu: Scott Wu (@ScottWu46) Learn more about Cognition: https://cognition.ai/ Try the world’s first autonomous coding agent: https://devin.ai/
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One Developer Got Thousands of Users Before His App Launched
Naveen Naidu built an app that found product-market fit backwards.Most apps launch first and then try to find users. Monologue, Naveen’s AI voice dictation app that came out of beta yesterday, did the opposite. It built a following of thousands of users during its incubation period at Every—many of them switching over from venture capital-backed competitors—all while the app barely had a landing page.The growth has continued in the 24 hours since launch, with an average of 1 million words being transcribed weekly, and in this episode of AI & I, we sit down with Naveen to talk about his journey as the single engineer behind a viral app. We get into the false starts and side projects that taught Naveen how to ship fast, the brutal feedback that kept Monologue honest, why Every decided to build in a crowded category, and the AI coding tools that let one developer do the work of a team.Get free early access to Amazon's Alexa Plus: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCCNHWV5?ref_=aucc_us_dis_everyalexa_q3_25Timestamps:00:01:27 – Introduction00:03:51 – A live demo of Monologue00:06:27 – Hard lessons from Naveen’s years in the wilderness00:12:29 – Building a muscle to ship fast00:21:11 – The spark that became Monologue00:26:09 – Dogfooding your way to a killer feature00:29:45 – Why the harshest product feedback is the most valuable00:31:47 – Every’s strategy for launching an app in a crowded space00:40:08 – Giving Monologue the Every “smell”00:45:09 – Naveen’s one-person AI stack to build beautiful appsIf you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribeFollow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipperLinks to resources mentioned in the episode: https://www.monologue.to/
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Claude Code Can Be Your Second Brain
Noah Brier uses Claude Code as his second brain—it’s the coolest notetaking setup we’ve ever seen.He has Claude running on a server in his basement hooked up to a VPN. It stores, reads, and writes to thousands of notes in his Obsidian vault. He does it all from his phone.We had him on the show to tell us exactly how he’s pulling this off. Dan and Noah get into:The nuts and bolts of the Claude Code-Obsidian setup: Noah set up Claude Code on top of his Obsidian root directory, and he walked me through how he uses it to prep for an upcoming speech—creating a project folder, pulling in relevant research from his notes, saving transcripts from chats with other LLMs, and generating daily progress updates.The “thinking partner” that lives inside Noah’s second brain: Noah points out that in the hype around AI’s ability to write, the fact that it can read is overlooked. That’s why he has an agent inside Claude Code with strict guardrails to stay in “thinking mode.” It logs his questions, tracks insights, and catches him up on research if he returns to a project after a few days away.How Noah does deep work on his phone: Noah rigged a home server in his basement, put his Obsidian vault in it—and then runs Claude Code on top. Noah says that being able to think, write, research, and ship code from his phone has fundamentally changed the way he works.This episode is a must-watch for anyone curious about who wants to learn how to use Claude Code to build a true second brain.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Start building in Google AI Studio at ai.dev. Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded—without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at Framer.com, and use code DAN to get your first month of Pro on the house. Want even more?Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.To hear more from Dan Shipper:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps: 00:01:19 - Introduction00:04:28 - How you can do deep work on your phone00:06:14 - Why Noah thinks Grok has the best voice AI00:11:39 - The nuts and bolts of Noah’s Claude Code-Obsidian setup00:23:59 - Using an agent in Claude Code as a “thinking partner”00:35:07 - Noah’s Thomas’ English Muffin theory of AI00:44:04 - The white space still left to explore in AI00:50:41 - How Noah is preparing his kids for AI01:01:54 - How he brought his Claude Code setup to mobileLinks to resources mentioned in the episode:Noah Brier: https://www.noahbrier.com/, Noah Brier (@heyitsnoah) / XAlephic, his AI strategy consultancy: alephic.com The conference he leads about marketing and AI: http://BRXND.AI A newsletter he writes about AI: newsletter.brxnd.ai The declassified relic from World War II they talk about: Simple Sabotage Field Manual The apps Noah used to set up Claude Code on his phone: Termius, Tailscale
Learn how the smartest people in the world are using AI to think, create, and relate. Each week I interview founders, filmmakers, writers, investors, and others about how they use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Midjourney in their work and in their lives. We screen-share through their historical chats and then experiment with AI live on the show. Join us to discover how AI is changing how we think about our world—and ourselves.
For more essays, interviews, and experiments at the forefront of AI: https://every.to/chain-of-thought?sort=newest.
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