34: Ryo Lu - It's All the Same Thing

[00:00] Before we get into the episode, I have an announcement. [00:03] In case you missed it, I'm going full-time on Dialectic, thanks to the support of my new presenting partner, Notion. I guess first and foremost, I'm just excited and grateful. I'm about a year into this. I crossed my year anniversary of starting at the end of November, and it feels fitting to be able to... [00:20] fully lean in and consolidate and focus on something that has just felt like being in my lane, getting to amplify people I'm excited about. And I've been reflecting on this and I think this ties to notion too.

Like I've been reflecting on like, what is, what is the show? What makes it good? [00:37] what am I trying to do here? And, [00:39] There's been a handful of patterns that have become more obvious over time, things that have become more legible. I think it's definitely a show about ideas. Particularly, I think I love to talk to people who make stuff about the ideas and philosophies that underpin them. But I was also reflecting on, like, what are the patterns that stand out most? And I think they... [00:56] tie into why notion is such an ideal partner for me.

The first is [01:01] I think it's a show about where ideas meet action. I love introspection and reflection and thoughtfulness and philosophy, but I think I also love people who are able to take those things and use it [01:11] to make contact with reality. This combination of introspection and agency and action, ideas are powerful but we got to put them to work. The second pattern is craft. [01:21] craft is aspirational. Craft is when we deploy our taste. Craft is a human touch. Craft is saying, I'm just going to [01:30] push things a little bit more to make them a little bit better.

And whether my guests are [01:36] People who design things or write or invest or whatever else they might create, I think there is a deep amount of craft inside of how they approach what they make and inside the things that they make. [01:48] And the third pattern is soul. [01:50] or soulfulness. [01:52] This war is... [01:54] Obviously a little bit hard to pin down and you might, [01:57] Instead, say authenticity or originality or even aliveness. [02:02] But soul is about when somebody line is lined up, I think, like in who they are with.

[02:09] the way they're showing up in the world, and maybe even more than that, a willingness to reach deep. And so I think when I think about what I'm drawn to and all of the people I admire, and certainly the people I talk to for this show— [02:19] It is... [02:20] soul at its core. One of the things I'm most proud of for this show is the audience. It feels like it's my kind of people. Some of my guests are listeners. Some of the people I've met through the show have been incredible.

[02:32] And [02:33] Akshay Kothari, co-founder of Notion, is a listener. And so we've gotten to know each other over the last few months. And when I started to think about what it would look like to go full time on Dialectic and bring on a partner, it was ultimately a pretty easy choice. I think it was clear to me that he really got the maybe even intangible elements that made the show special to me and to the people who were listening. But also, I think those patterns I mentioned earlier really do embody Notion too.

And that's why it made it [02:57] Such a right fit. Notion makes beautiful tools for your life's work. [03:01] I think I'm someone who's certainly interested in tools. I've talked to a bunch of toolmakers on the show, including Notion's own Jeffrey Litt. He wasn't at Notion when we spoke, and he is now. But also on those... [03:12] Themes from earlier, I mean... [03:14] Notion is a tool for taking your ideas and turning them into action, whether that be tinkering with them or expanding them or sharing them. It starts with ideas with Notion.

It's a brand and a tool that, despite a long road, a tremendous scale, and a great deal of complexity, has embodied craft, I think, at every step of the way, both as a brand and as a product. [03:44] the product they use. And I think Notion's community and templates and remixing and creative expression are all evidence of just that, a product that [03:53] is full of aliveness. So it ultimately wasn't a very hard decision to partner with the ocean. And I feel so grateful to them for helping me embark on this journey.

As for what's to come, I mean, I think a lot more of the same. Hopefully people who are inspiring to you, people you're really excited about and people who surprise you. I would like to keep you guessing. I think too, a lot more video for those of you who are listening or haven't tried. Video is coming. And more than anything, I hope to amplify people who can or have the ability to shine. Last but [04:23] notion. I'm even more grateful to those of you who have listened, watched, read, whatever, found a way to support me.

I feel so lucky. I hope I am doing you a service when you spend your time here listening to these conversations. I hope you go [04:35] take your ideas and turn them into things. I hope you do it with craft. I hope you do it with soul with that. I will, I will turn it over the episode, but thank you so much. And, and I'm so excited to continue to share dialectic with you. [04:45] Welcome to Dialectic with Rio Liu. Rio is the head of design at Cursor. Prior, he was a designer at Notion, working across so many different projects and features, including Notion AI, for about five years.

And he was a designer at Stripe and Asana. He grew up between China and Montreal, and now lives in San Francisco, where he's focused on building Cursor and helping anyone create software. [05:09] We talked extensively about his design philosophy and how he is constantly moving between simplicity and complexity, bare material and abstraction, and why, in his words, so many of these ideas and these patterns are all the same thing. [05:26] We also talk about how design is changing, where in the past, using tools like Figma, it felt more like painting or drawing.

Now much of Rio's design feels more like sculpting clay or finding David in the marble. [05:39] So much of his philosophy is about getting closer to the material. And in the case of digital things of software, that is working with code. And that's why I think why he's so excited about cursor. [05:49] The line between vibe coding and real engineering is also, I think everyone's feeling that it's flattening. And there's no better example of that than Rio's personal project, Rio OS, which you can find on his website, which is essentially a nearly a full on operating system of apps and games and simulations.

You can talk to Rio's agent. I've watched him literally make games and new apps for Rio OS in Rio OS. And in some sense, it's entirely vibe coded. He's built it using cursor. And what's [06:16] I think so outstanding about it is that it's quite literally the opposite of AI slop. It is so deeply personalized and has so much soul. It feels so much like Rio. [06:25] So we talk about how he is iteratively designing both his personal projects as well as all of the design decisions he's making at Cursor and helping more and more people across the team work with him in a range of different ways.

This is definitely a philosophical discussion. Much of it is about designing things that feel true or even inevitable. [06:45] But in many ways, I think Rio is also an amazing example of somebody who is doing a lot more doing than thinking. And so I think that marriage together makes him so effective. And I hope and I think we we really dove into that today. If you already make things, especially software, I hope you are inspired to be all the more. [07:05] willing to try things, to be more flexible, be more dynamic, and expand the boundaries of what you can personally do.

And if you feel like you could be making more things, [07:13] I hope you are inspired not only to try tools like cursor and make software, but to apply some of this philosophy to making any range of things. Um, I just so love, um, [07:25] the way Rio thinks about getting up close with material and how, [07:29] learning with material, getting feedback from it is how we design anything. It's addictive. It pulls us in. And... [07:37] in The Limit, we end up making things that [07:39] other people get to enjoy.

I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. With that, here's Rio Liu. [07:46] Rio Liu. Okay, let's go. We're here. Thank you for being here. I'm really excited about this. Yes. We're going to start with a... [07:54] I guess what you could call a catchphrase of yours, which is you love to say it's all the same thing. Yes. What does that mean and what does it tell us about design? [08:04] Hmm. [08:06] Thank you. [08:08] It's like when you look at all the apps you use, [08:11] where even like everything around you...

[08:14] even looking at ourselves as like humans, as like life forms, we are always... [08:20] Tot de volgende. [08:21] It's almost like with the same parts... [08:23] Thank you. [08:24] that are really simple. But when you merge them or combine them [08:29] Reconcline them. [08:32] they give a rise to complexity. [08:35] Um... [08:36] Like the most fundamental elements... [08:39] are the same. [08:40] Thank you. [08:41] Like a lot of the concepts that we use... [08:45] You know, regardless if you call it like, this is a task management thing or like a document thing.

[08:52] They're all just... [08:53] Like information organized in databases. Yeah. [08:59] that much difference. [09:01] And there's always... [09:04] Like something at the core that is like the simplest form of the thing itself. [09:09] Thank you. [09:10] And this most likely thinks that... [09:13] you've seen before, or... [09:15] There's like analogs in nature where like patterns... [09:19] When you talk about those simple things, [09:21] Are they abstract things? Like, are they, as you say, are they patterns or like metaphors or sort of like ideas? Or are they, can they be...

[09:30] Also very concrete. Oh yeah. [09:33] I think they can be very concrete. [09:36] And it's like the same thing. [09:38] manifested at different levels, different levels of abstraction. [09:43] Okay. [09:44] So you can think of maybe like, ah, these are my core ideas, but then how do I say... [09:51] visually represented in like this constraint 2d space which is like a screen [09:56] like a phone, or like you stretch it to like a window, then you have more space. Then what are the things that should be shown? Like what are the relationships between them?

What are the more important bits that... [10:09] that you want people to get in. Like, it's almost like... [10:13] It's like a multi-floor apartment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you want people to go to the lobby on the top floor with the best view. They can kind of see everything. Ah, this is cool. Now let me go to the place I want. [10:29] That's more like for the users, but the same thing applies to say, like, you're designing UI, you're designing some flows, you're designing how the data model works, you're, like, conceptualizing how do I, you know...

[10:41] make this into like a big scalable distributed system, [10:46] And when you're operating on all these layers, they're still like just... [10:51] manifestations of those core concepts or ideas. Then you keep everything [10:59] Together. [11:00] And they feel cohesive. [11:02] when a lot of people... [11:05] Maybe they think of these things as separate things. And then they treat them as like, I need to do this box first, and then do that box first. And then each people doing the boxes don't talk to each other. Then they build something that's kind of [11:20] It's like...

[11:21] Google. [11:21] Wiggles. [11:23] Yeah, it doesn't have the connectedness. You have a little essay you wrote about complexity coming before simplicity. One part you say, it's like a swan serene on the surface, but paddling like hell beneath. Yes. Which is an amazing metaphor. Why does complexity actually have to come before simplicity? Yeah. [11:44] I do think, say, conceptually, it is possible to say... [11:50] These are the core building blocks of my world. [11:54] And that's it. Let's just go. [11:56] Yeah. [11:58] But... [11:59] It needs to survive in the real world that we live in.

There's people who don't come here to look at your essay or look at your academic idea of like, ah, these are the ways we need to connect these computer ideas. They're here to do something. So they come here. [12:19] They should ideally do the thing [12:22] they want to do first. Without thinking too much. Yes. Without thinking too much, they can do it. They can actually like... [12:29] slowly master it, configure the thing, customize it, then they kind of know what is in there. [12:37] You can do it from both ends, and they kind of are...

[12:42] It's like two sides of the same coin almost. But a lot of people, they only see one side. [12:48] Say like we do a lot of like [12:52] user-centered design or like [12:54] You know. [12:55] Let's start with a user problem and then decompose it or do some research, look at some numbers. [13:02] figure out if solution A, B for this problem 1 [13:07] Which one is the best? Ah, A is the best. Oh, let's just do A. And then you keep doing this A, A, A, A, A, A, B, B, A, B, B, B.

And then now you have a platter of random choices. [13:19] And then they don't connect. And then they're all like discrete buttons on your UI. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's kind of crazy. [13:26] When fundamentally maybe all of these ideas are the same ideas or maybe they are like... [13:32] better versions of your original ideas, like a remix version of that, or like a reconfiguration of the thing. [13:39] - Yeah, you're sort of seeing both the swan, both aspects of the swan at the same time. You're seeing the elegance in the kind of-- - It's like you need to test your model [13:47] With the real world examples and people.

And then as you do that, you figure out, hmm, this part of the system is a little weak. I need to make it better. Yeah. We're like, ah, maybe we really need to add this new thing. [14:02] then we should probably do it. Because a lot of people need it. [14:06] But if you're just conceptualizing yourself and you're kind of in your own world thinking and you're just like, [14:13] ideating [14:15] then you're not really doing anything. [14:17] Like you're not helping anyone. You're just... You're untethered. Yeah, you're just like...

[14:22] I don't know. [14:23] Thank you. [14:24] Having fun yourself, I guess. Another line from you. You say, the universe is fundamentally modular. Simple rules, endlessly recombining, creating emergent complexity. Design is the human practice of participating in that process consciously. We look at the world, identify the patterns, extract the rules, and use them to build new realities. [14:46] much of this sort of, it's all the same thing inside of that. I'm curious, maybe at the most zoomed out level, like what... [14:55] What initially drew you to what you describe as design there and what kind of keeps you coming back?

Like, what is it about this? [15:02] almost like philosophical approach to the world that's so compelling to you. [15:07] Hmm. [15:09] Okay. [15:11] I did not come here like... [15:13] you know, [15:14] When I started, I did not know... [15:17] the difference between even like engineering or design or products or anything. Yeah. [15:24] I just saw this [15:27] things that were made [15:28] by people [15:30] Like, I started... [15:32] playing with software when I was a kid, I would get these pirated CDs... [15:38] And then they're almost like... [15:41] Software subscription packs monthly.

Like they get... [15:45] You just load them on your PC, and then you play with all the new apps. And then I started playing with, like... [15:53] or the office tools... [15:55] that [15:55] like all the fonts, Excel, PowerPoints. [15:59] Photoshop, video editing things, 3D making things. [16:05] programming tools, [16:07] starting making websites and stuff [16:09] And as you do these things, as you make things, you start to realize... [16:14] Like... [16:17] The end output of what we do is just code. [16:20] Okay. [16:21] But there's like a lot of different depth...

[16:24] in all the layers. [16:26] Um... [16:28] And if you're curious enough, you can go to every layer. [16:32] really deeply. [16:34] Um... [16:36] But the more you do these things, like make more websites for different kinds of people or make... [16:42] different apps for things, you realize [16:47] Like a lot of it is just the same ideas. [16:51] And then you also can trace it back to history. [16:54] Thank you. [16:55] like when you look at people when they started this or when they were just [16:59] Again, like... [17:00] ideating, things were not real because things weren't ready.

[17:04] but the ideas were there [17:07] And then all you're doing is like remixing the idea, repackaging it a little bit. [17:13] And then you want to find out. [17:15] What is the core essence? [17:18] things that you cannot remove, that will always be there, and then you keep making those better. [17:25] You used the phrase, things weren't ready. [17:28] Yes. Obviously... [17:30] technology [17:31] design applies across disciplines. Technology is an area where design, you actually are dealing with that sort of the rate of progress, right? [17:39] I'm curious, especially maybe now since what it – [17:41] you have this great future site you made for Cursor, where you're listing the kind of arc and the lineage of computing.

We're in the middle of-- [17:49] an immense amount of readiness, you could say. But I'm curious what your relationship has been like to [17:55] things being ready [17:57] or maybe not ready, even let's say the last two years with AI models and cursor. Yeah. Yeah. [18:03] Thank you. [18:04] Yeah, there's like the technological level of whether it's ready. Right. But there's also the conceptual level of whether it's ready. It's like... [18:17] For example, a notion... [18:20] even though [18:22] technologically as like, [18:24] Everything is kind of fully ready. [18:26] Like Notion itself is almost like just databases in the cloud.

[18:29] And then you can do live editing with people. You're just manipulating, like, blogs and databases. Like, the ideas have existed for a long time. Right. But then people have not caught up or people are not familiar with these ideas. Yeah. Then it's, like, still, like, kind of foreign to people. And then, boom, AI happened. Then it's almost like using this new primitive new technology, we can actually, like, help people understand better. [18:57] or make translations of... [19:00] ideas. Yeah, it's bridging the conceptual gap. Right, right, right. You can use that to bridge the gap and [19:06] Basically, instead of people making databases manually, they have to learn about...

[19:14] coding is like [19:16] There's so many layers and there's so many dependencies in order for you to do a running program. You need to know so many things. You can actually reduce that to like... [19:28] Nothing. [19:29] Thank you. [19:30] But then it's like people kind of start from... [19:33] the other end. They get some output, they play, they... [19:37] They tweak. And as they do that, they learn. [19:40] Instead of like... Backing into it. Right. Instead of doing it in the reverse. That's like... [19:46] We are... [19:47] fundamentally the limiting factor.

[19:50] like us humans, like, like, [19:52] Our brains can't process too much information. We can't hold too many concepts in our heads. Yeah. [19:59] then [20:01] Like what we're doing is... [20:05] You're simplifying the amount of information or ideas that you're giving to people. [20:11] It used to be like designers have to do it. [20:14] The thinkers have to do it. The inventors have to do it. They're thinking about what is the simplest configuration of the thing, what are the parts... [20:21] But now it's almost like... [20:23] A lot of it can be...

[20:26] handled by the AI, then you can reach to like [20:29] Lower level primitives were even connected. [20:32] more things. You can pull in more complexity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the presentation layer can still be simple, and the simplicity can be more subjective. It is not designed by the designer. It is actually to you, the person using the thing, or you're doing this thing. [20:51] the ideal configuration for that thing. AI can kind of... [20:56] Do the translation. Yeah. [20:58] there's [20:59] We're talking about simplicity. There was another comment you made that [21:02] um, [21:04] is very similar to something you wrote about making things true.

Um, and I think truth and simplicity next to each other seem interesting. You say design is the practice of seeing through the surface of things to understand their underlying structure and then rearranging those elements into new forms that didn't exist. Design is philosophy because it forces you to ask, what is this thing really? What are his essential properties? You talked about that. What can I remove before it stops being itself? And once I understand that, what new things can I build? [21:34] Thank you. [21:35] I think I have a sense, and the listener probably does too, but what is, maybe not what is the difference between truth and simplicity, but what is it, maybe even what does it feel like?

[21:45] when you're designing and you're approaching trueness or truth. Oh, yeah. Yeah. [21:52] Yeah, it's like you... [21:55] Yeah, the thing is, I think... [21:58] I believe... [22:00] there is actually like an ultimate... [22:02] solution, given the amount of [22:06] this space and the constraints. [22:09] and the things you know. Yeah. But the problem is you never know everything. And the things always change. So it's like, maybe it is the ultimate solution for this point in time, for this condition, but then... [22:22] Maybe tomorrow it's not true anymore. [22:28] Thank you.

[22:30] There are always, like say when you're doing a product or making software, like a set of things that don't really change. [22:38] And... [22:40] It is so important to figure out what those things are. [22:43] those are almost like your fundamental building blocks or ideas of the... [22:49] the software [22:51] deep. It's like I see software as just like a tree of concepts. [22:56] And you package it up, give it a name And then give it a UI, put it out [23:02] Are those concepts changing a lot or are they changing very little?

[23:04] Like... [23:06] Most likely they don't change. Okay. Or... [23:09] It is really hard to change them, especially the ones that are core to the thing. [23:14] For example, I worked at Asana. [23:17] Asana is basically projects and tasks. And everything revolves around it. Every data model is kind of locked in there. [23:26] And then, for example, it will be hard for Asana to expand into, like, whatever. [23:31] But then it is easy for Notion to do that because Notion is building blocks on the... [23:37] And the underlying abstractions are more flexible.

Yeah. And then they actually don't change that much. Yeah. [23:44] All you're doing is... [23:46] Like you're fixing some problems with how they connect to each other. Or now there's like a different kind of data that we can present better. What are the better views for that? How do people like, you know, combine these things so that they can... [23:59] do a lot more crazy things. How do you help people? [24:05] instead of them building this thing, maybe the AI agent does this thing. Um, [24:10] And say for cursor, it's like [24:12] that common layer is even lower, which is code.

And it's so generic. It means you can actually do anything. [24:20] Is truth universality? [24:22] Is it the same thing? Kind of. Or like, it's like... [24:26] Given this constraint... [24:28] what is that ultimate answer? Or what is that simplest configuration of our system that does everything? [24:35] the most beautiful... [24:38] state. [24:39] You have another idea about inevitability. You said the best future solutions seem almost retroactively inevitable. The philosopher who said that the truth is what never had to be said might as well have been talking about a product so perfectly aligned with its context that no competitor can propose a simpler alternative.

[25:00] is... [25:01] - Thank you. [25:02] That, I mean, it obviously connects to the truth and the universality of [25:08] Maybe really what you're pointing to there is what you said earlier, which is there actually is some objective... [25:14] Final... [25:15] at least final for right now form. Mm-hmm. [25:19] How do you design towards inevitability? Yeah. [25:25] Yeah, you kind of project... [25:27] It's like you always design... [25:30] There's a set of fundamentals that don't change. [25:34] And then there's like an ideal future that you want to go to. [25:38] Then you figure out...

[25:40] What are the... [25:41] deltas between that. That future, sorry to interrupt you. [25:46] You could certainly think, take Notion example. Yes. We are going to take a really, really simple set of very flexible building blocks. Some of that... [25:57] You, when you were working on it five years ago, or Ivan, when he was working on it 10 years ago, may have had some sort of future conception. I've seen some of the early decks Ivan had. There's crazy stuff in it. It's amazing. But on some level, of course, he didn't fully know.

And so I'm curious how important it is for the specificity of that inevitable future outcome. Right. It's more like... [26:18] It looks retroactively [26:20] inevitable. But when you get there, it's very ambiguous. Like you actually don't know. Like you start with you actually don't know. And then you're, you're looking at what do I have? [26:33] Hmm. [26:34] What do I want to do? Or like, you know, my future state, my ideal. You can just imagine it. [26:41] Like, [26:41] Don't limit yourself. And then you start thinking, hmm, [26:46] Maybe there are [26:48] These kind of big changes I need to do, these are the little steps that I need to take.

The closer you are to the present, the clearer the step is, the further out, the muddier it is. But then the only way you can start doing or start... [27:04] going towards it as you [27:06] Do things. You build, you know... [27:09] Stups or I kind of like [27:13] Thank you. [27:14] say like prototypes were like pieces of it. And then as they... [27:21] Get built, get used, get feedback. [27:24] you kind of clarify the thing and you move forward. [27:28] obviously a lot of this is philosophical. Um, [27:32] Someone might listen to this, and this combination of complexity and simplicity, it's really appealing.

Most designers, most people making things along a long road... [27:43] are forced to compromise somewhere along the line. And so it almost feels like maybe one of the things getting in the way of getting to trueness or inevitability is practical compromise. You're also very practical. You're sort of just pulling this thread in many ways. Yeah. How do you sort of fend? I'm sure there are a million compromises Notion could have made along the way. I'm sure there will be many compromises Cursor is faced with. Yes. How do you relate to that?

[28:06] Yeah, it's like... [28:09] I don't want every single thing to be perfect. [28:12] I [28:12] Or like there are certain things that are like say... [28:16] they're actually okay to be... [28:18] a little divergent or [28:21] Like you kind of let it go a little bit. [28:24] Let it roam a little bit. [28:26] And then... [28:28] see what people feel, see how the thing does. [28:32] And then... [28:35] You're on this constant loop of... [28:39] re-examining what you have in your system. [28:42] um [28:43] all the things you add.

[28:46] See how they're perceived. [28:48] Thank you. [28:48] And then you're trying to [28:51] Maybe now we need to unify these things together. Maybe now we need to clean this part up. And then once you do that, then you maybe open up... [28:59] Boom. [29:00] I don't know. [29:01] this amount of like people can use it now or you make this [29:05] Thank you. [29:05] part of the experience better. [29:10] And it could... [29:12] It's not a future-level thing anymore. It's more like... [29:17] all these things together... [29:19] Because they make a better system [29:22] because the system is more flexible or extensible.

[29:26] And you also like... [29:28] increase its capabilities, then that can do a lot more for a lot more people. [29:35] And it's not just about... [29:37] Yeah. [29:38] Uh, let's make this feature A and then see how it does and then run some numbers on the, I don't know, like adoption, retention, whatever. It's, it's, I, it really kind of feels like it goes back to the swan. It's like, um... [29:52] or maybe use another metaphor, it's like, [29:55] you seem to be constantly taking stock of both, like, what is this pixel and also what is the picture of the clock.

You need to, like... [30:03] Go... [30:04] around these layers of abstraction. Yeah. If you really want to make something truly simple. It's like a lot of people also think, ah, simplicity is about removing things, or let's just get rid of all the... [30:18] I don't know, any feature that gets used less than 5% of users. And then you're like... [30:26] Removing something that maybe the 0.1% power user really loves and depends on. [30:33] Maybe the better way is to just like... [30:36] You just... [30:38] Marie Kondo it. It just cleaned up a little bit or reorganized it so that most people get the...

[30:46] Thank you. [30:48] the most easy path. But there are still, like, little pathways for others. You don't have to take things away. You just... [30:55] Tuck them away maybe Or like you build like elevators [31:00] What do you say to, it's funny you bring up movie condo. [31:04] I think for many people that's very aspirational. For other people they're like, "How unrealistic. She doesn't live in the real world. She spends all her day cleaning." [31:14] You've written and talked about minimalism, which maybe is a little bit [31:17] I think minimalism may be...

[31:19] People take it too far, it gets a bad rap. [31:22] How do you relate? [31:24] It doesn't seem to – you present – you're very refined. You clearly care about aesthetics. And yet, Rio OS, like, it has, like, a little lived-in messiness almost. Uh-huh. [31:38] I don't know what my question is there, but like, do you... [31:42] and [31:42] How do you have that sort of tidy, thoughtful, careful, and also like alive – [31:49] in a system. [31:51] I think it's like a lot of people think these attributes is like...

[31:57] you have to have this or this, when you can actually have both. So like... [32:04] Should it be simple or should it be complex? Should it be flexible or should it be rigid? [32:11] Um... [32:12] Thank you. [32:14] To me, that's almost like... [32:16] Because software is... It's almost like a life form. It's like it runs. It can... [32:22] mutated, it changes itself. [32:25] You don't have to be... [32:28] So, opinionated. [32:29] Like your opinion is actually taking the stance of I don't have... [32:34] Too much opinion. [32:35] I [32:36] But you always make things start really simple.

[32:40] Um... [32:42] And then you let people play with it. You let people discover what they want or [32:48] the way to do things. [32:50] what is their way to do things. [32:53] That's not my way. [32:56] I don't want to force my... [32:59] Like my way of thinking, or this is how you do it, one, two, three. [33:03] unto you. [33:04] I [33:05] I just kind of give you [33:09] Like... [33:10] pathways and elevators and the tools to do the thing you want. [33:15] Yeah, you have a line somewhere you say, no point solutions, always spectrums.

Yeah. Which I think captures that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like... [33:22] Like fundamentally all these tools are the same things. [33:26] So, [33:27] Like if you're... [33:29] Okay with that. [33:31] then you don't have to really pick, like, ah, do I want to do this, like... [33:35] Cursor for salespeople. Or a cursor for... [33:41] Coding. [33:42] It might be the same thing. Mm-hmm. [33:44] Thank you. [33:45] I want to talk about that kind of process of making. And you started to get a little bit, you have this metaphor of sort of like sculpting or finding what's in the stone that is really powerful.

That's not totally intuitive for how people think about creating. Yeah. You say there's a quiet, almost mystical art to starting with something so unrefined that you're unsure if it's mud or marble and patiently revealing its shape until others recognize its beauty. In the end, they'll say, of course, it's so obvious. Yes. Yes. [34:14] Why can't greatness... [34:17] Why must it be emergent? [34:20] Thank you. [34:23] Because you haven't seen enough, you haven't tried enough. [34:26] you think this first idea [34:29] I have this perfect. [34:31] And then you throw it out there.

[34:34] And they realize, hmm... [34:35] Maybe only I think like that. [34:40] Maybe people like it, but they don't really understand the words or the nuance in there. [34:48] then you need to keep tweaking and keep getting input. [34:51] and [34:51] It's like... [34:53] You never start with something that's... [34:57] like the [34:57] The ultimate answer. You always start with shit. [35:02] And then you make a better and better. Is that the case for every medium? I think so. [35:06] Like even when you're painting. Yeah. Yeah. [35:10] You start with like the pencil sketches.

[35:13] And then you layer on top the paint. Or like you're sculpting. You start with just... [35:19] like a blob of clay. And you're like... [35:23] making the high-level shapes good enough, and then I start... [35:28] Working on the details. It's the same thing. [35:30] Like you never... [35:33] You never get... [35:34] The first shot rate. [35:36] Even more true with like AI. [35:39] Yeah. Um, [35:40] But with AI, it's like... [35:42] Or like, say, with Cursed Composer 1, because it's so fast, it's like... [35:49] It's a different way to do things now.

[35:52] Like you're building as you're seeing things, as you're thinking. Right. And as you're designing, and it's all... [35:59] together. Yeah. I wonder, like you, you referred to software earlier as almost like an organism. Um, [36:06] And maybe that's something that's true about software inherently, but it feels especially true with AI now. [36:14] And one of the things you said to me when we met, you talked about sort of how you used to work being much more like painting or drawing and now much more sculpting or finding something new as stone.

Yeah. [36:25] That way of thinking is intuitive to people, even people who make software. [36:30] And so, [36:31] maybe one question I'd have would be like, [36:32] Have you started to think about it in a fundamentally different way with AI, or is this actually just a continuation? [36:39] I think it's almost like going backwards... [36:42] It's like I started building things myself and designing everything... [36:48] A lot of times I do not use like... [36:50] Pixel tools. I just coded it. [36:53] And then... [36:56] I became like a professional product designer.

Yeah, capital D designer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then... [37:02] Oh, interesting. Now I just make mocks and fancy animated prototypes. And then I would drop that mock into my PMS PRD. And I'll wait for things to happen and things don't happen. [37:19] And then now it's like going backwards, meaning like, [37:23] I have an idea. I'll just prototype it out. [37:27] Like a kid. Or like, uh... Like a kid with a piece of glass. Oh, yeah. Or... [37:30] Oh, there's a bug. [37:32] Okay, I'll just... [37:35] make a screenshot... [37:36] And then circle the thing up.

[37:39] Add cursor, fix this. And then it'll get fixed. It's like... [37:44] Instead of waiting, instead of getting stuck in pictures or words. [37:48] You actually make the thing. [37:51] where you use software or use code as a tool. [37:55] to communicate your ideas. [37:57] better. [37:58] And because we're software makers... [38:01] The best tool is code. [38:04] I interviewed early on, I interviewed a couple of designers, like industrial designers, physical designers, Sele and Taylor. And one of the things that they feel really strongly about is they hate renders. It's like make the prototype.

Oh, yeah. And I almost feel like this is the digital version of that. It's like get it down in the metal code. Exactly. You have to play with the material. [38:24] Like our material as software makers is never the pixels. [38:29] It is the code itself that renders the pixels. [38:33] Thank you. [38:33] Yeah. [38:35] Yeah, you have a line I love. You say, but it existed, and because it existed, it could be improved. [38:42] which so captures the like power of working with actual material. Uh, uh, [38:48] I do wonder, like...

[38:52] You... [38:53] When we were first talking, you said... [38:56] I use Figma when I want to go into my old way of thinking, which obviously relates to what you just said. [39:02]. [39:03] Thank you. [39:03] I'm curious today, and maybe part of it is that you're designing [39:07] cursor, which is [39:09] especially conducive to it's less about the pixels already. Mm-hmm. [39:14] But [39:14] When do you find yourself sort of like, [39:17] Tempted towards the old way of thinking and like is it a yo-yo is it a? I [39:21] will you be using Figma at all in a year?

Oh, yeah. [39:25] Thank you. [39:26] It's like they're just tools... [39:29] And... [39:30] Like sometimes we think in words. Sometimes we think in pictures. On podcasts, we definitely think in words. Yeah. [39:38] Making videos too. [39:40] Some people do that. Yeah. [39:43] Or like slyes or whatever. [39:46] Like those are just, you know... [39:50] Different artifacts were like forms. [39:52] to help us think. [39:54] And I think... [39:57] Like I don't want to take them away. [40:00] Like, [40:01] Different people have their preferred form. [40:05] To think. [40:07] Maybe some people are more like linear.

They just write text. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [40:12] I like Bullitt's [40:14] I think I got the disease from Notion. It's like... [40:19] All I do now is I go out [40:22] And the Night Walk. [40:24] I have ideas out [40:26] Open Notion Dock and the [40:29] But in a list. [40:31] and then once I'm done with my walk, I'll go back. Ha, maybe now draw some pictures. [40:39] Then maybe I'll do Figma. [40:41] Because it's so... [40:44] Because I've been doing those for so long. It's like water to me. Like I don't think.

Yeah. When I make more artboards or when I do the Figma like shortcuts. So when they change shortcuts or like they move around my things, I get mad. They keep doing it. I saw you were really mad that they had changed the. [41:03] checkbox. Oh, for notion? To-do box, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's for another thing. [41:09] That's more for like... [41:11] It's like I feel like... [41:12] Thank you. [41:14] Like every piece of software is almost like a person. It has a vibe. It has like a... [41:19] history has some [41:22] Character essence like you don't want to lose that yeah, you don't want to water everything down to like a [41:28] border radius for pixels.

[41:31] Sometimes it's good to keep that. Keep a lineage and [41:36] Keep a thing that's maybe a little weird. [41:40] But it's so characteristic. Yeah. [41:43] On the note of sort of your thinking time, [41:46] And you talked about thinking and... [41:48] using different tools, you're thinking using Figma, [41:52] you've talked about your walking and the value of this sort of idle time, the space between... [42:00] thinking time isn't wasted time. Hmm. [42:02] Are you... [42:04] and maybe this is running against what you just said about it feeling like water, but are those like different modes?

Like watching you use cursor, at least on your phone when you're hanging out, [42:15] it didn't seem like you were doing very much thinking. You were just like, you were just throwing like paint at the canvas. Right. And then when you write about your walks or like that, that feels like a very structured. Is that maybe a template for how? That's more for the longer term things. Ah. Yeah. Or like vague ideas, ambiguous. Dreaming. Or like, ah. Ah. [42:34] Maybe we should do this. I'm not sure. Maybe we should do it this way.

What are the components in there? How do I break it down? [42:42] What are the things people care about [42:45] da da da da da da da da [42:46] Whereas when you're using Figma, you're using Cursor, you're... Those are more for maybe like Figma... [42:52] Just like... [42:53] Thank you. [42:55] There are still some, say, like difficulty where... [42:59] Let us just take [43:00] It just takes more time to say, build a really crazy prototype in code. [43:07] If you want to just communicate ideas into the space really quickly, draw some pictures.

That's fine. [43:12] And then when the thing gets... [43:15] to the state where... [43:17] I think I know what it is. [43:19] I want to figure out how they fit together, how they work together, what are the... [43:26] you know [43:28] especially with building AI stuff, there's so many... [43:32] Like... [43:33] both like procedural and like non-deterministic things that you need to think about. It is really like really hard to simulate in Figma. [43:42] Or like in... [43:44] Static pictures. Yeah, and you're not with the material. You're not up close to the material.

Like you actually need to [43:50] glue it up, and then see how they fit together, see how the states transition. If I get this, like, error, what happens? Or if... [44:00] The return gets too long, what happens? [44:03] Like you'd never get that in Figma. [44:06] I want to talk a little bit about real OS, both because I know you're very obsessed with it. And it does feel like the perfect embodiment of this sort of working with clay. [44:20] And I think it's, I would strongly encourage people listening or watching to go.

[44:24] to poke around with it, um, [44:26] As I understand it, RyoA started as a soundboard app you made for your friends when you were leaving Notion. And it sort of feels like... [44:34] it's this just infinite thread you keep pulling or this piece of clay. You just kind of keep turning over in your hand. Yeah. Um, [44:41] For people's contact, when we first met, you had your phone out, and we were just talking, and you were literally making apps as we sat there and talked. [44:51] What have you learned about [44:55] making things and maybe even about yourself from this crazy project.

Uh-huh. [45:01] I learned that [45:03] Oh shit, I can't do all of this? [45:06] I think that's the biggest thing. [45:08] And it's like... [45:10] Thank you. [45:14] It's all like little ideas piling up on each other. [45:17] Um... [45:19] You start with like... [45:21] something simple small [45:23] Um... [45:26] And you just keep building and building and building and building and see it grow. [45:31] And then when it grows to like a size where it's like... [45:35] Thank you. [45:36] There's some constraints. I actually started the thing in V0.

[45:40] Not cursor. Like the soundboard thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [45:44] Um... [45:45] Like I ran into some errors. Then I'm like, hmm, I need to do it in cursor. [45:50] Thank you. [45:51] And you used cursor much prior to that? [45:53] Not really. I tried three times, I churned three times. [45:57] Oh, interesting. Why? It's like the first time... [46:01] It was like... [46:02] Oh, cool. New code editor. Let me try it out. [46:06] I type some lines. It completes like five lines of code instead of one line of code versus like GitHub Copilot.

Then I turn. [46:15] Because you felt like it was trying to do too much. No, it's like, it's just completing code. [46:20] With more likes. Yeah. And the second time it was the chat. [46:25] Yeah. [46:26] It's like chat GPT next to your code. It can read the code. It can answer some questions. [46:34] I can't do much. [46:35] So I tripped. And then the third time was like... [46:40] discovering the agent. [46:42] Is this post using V0 or pre-used? After. Okay. [46:46] So [46:47] I needed some tool that can let me do anything.

[46:52] Then I found cursor. [46:54] - [46:55] and I'm like hooked. [46:57] Yeah. [46:58] Thank you. [46:59] And you start from simple things and then... [47:04] You just ask them maybe a little crazier idea. [47:07] And then... [47:09] you see it getting built. [47:12] And... [47:14] So now with PlanMo, you actually see how the models think. [47:19] and you can change. [47:21] You can be part of every step. But it's still your clay. [47:25] Yeah. [47:26] But it's like the model now handles all the parts that I don't really care about.

[47:31] I actually studied computer science because I love... [47:36] computers and software. [47:39] I think that's a good thing. [47:40] But I hate it. [47:41] writing code or like all the algorithms and stuff we learned that's like kind of useless and yeah [47:49] What I care more about is like... [47:52] Like what are the ideas... [47:54] How do people, you know, [47:56] Feel. [47:57] How quickly can I make this thing I thought of? [48:01] Exactly. It's like the thing, the idea, the concepts, I want to play with the concepts. Mm-hmm.

[48:07] You mentioned it. Like, real OS... [48:09] It doesn't really seem like something like that could be... [48:14] should be able to be built by just [48:16] throwing more paint at the canvas. Like it feels like the type of thing that should have needed to be more planned. There is a lot of things that say like it's not just throwing. [48:25] So it's almost like it's a constant throwing things and cleaning up shit. [48:31] Okay, same one. It also happens there in ReOS. What is the cleaning up? That's what we're not seeing, I think.

Yeah, you don't see that, but you can see it in my commit logs. The maintenance. Yeah, it's like... [48:42] The more things you add, the more things you realize, hmm... [48:45] That's the same thing that I just talked earlier. It's like... [48:49] Haa. [48:50] All these apps need, say, [48:53] Some AI endpoint and some auth. And like they need to store their states. They need to write or read into the file system. Da-da-da-da-da-da. Like... [49:07] Maybe I started, you know... [49:09] Doing the file system part... [49:11] from the TexEle lab.

[49:13] but then now I want all the other ones that [49:18] that can use the same ideas. [49:24] to use the thing [49:25] then I need to kind of abstract the system. [49:29] Thank you. [49:29] Like, put that part out or... [49:32] unify some... [49:34] you know, state management things, [49:36] Um...