Nicolas Cole said that a few days ago, and I wrote it down.

We're all learning how to get more out of the machine. That part is real, and it's happening fast.

But the people getting the most out of AI are not the ones chasing a better model. They're the ones building unique AI connectors into workflows.

And it isn't only about picking the right tools.

It's the sequence. Which tool goes first, what comes out of it, and what that feeds into next.

The other half is who's making the calls.

That's the half that gets skipped, and I think it's why so many capable people have had uneven results with AI. Not because they picked the wrong tool. Because they let the AI decide.

I call that cognitive surrender or a loss of personal agency. And it's one of AI's real dangers, one that gets a lot less attention than the others.

The opposite of that is a lot more fun.

When you keep your agency, you can start building the things you want.

Here's what I've been having fun building.

You're reading one of them. This email newsletter template is new, and I built it rather than picked it.

The other is Life by Decade, the personal history timeline web app that I've written about here before. It lets you lay out your life in milestones and photos, organized by decades, so you can gain perspective and share your life's narrative.

This app is only ten days old, and fifteen people have already registered. One of them is so enthusiastic that she's added 64 life milestone events and uploaded 191 photos.

I didn't expect this kind of quick engagement. It tells me the itch I was scratching was real, and not only mine.

Here's the part I actually want to give you.

Most people open one AI tool and ask it for output. Make me this. Write me that. Give me a template.

I don't open one tool anymore. I work in a workflow, and the work goes back-and-forth between me and a variety of AIs.

That's why I built this new email template in Lovable, an AI app-building platform, rather than in Kit's template builder. Kit's builder is good, and it would have let me customize a design. But Lovable gave me something different: a creative dialogue and recommendations for things I hadn't thought of.

That's a collaboration, and it's a different kind of workflow than customizing somebody else's design.

The tools execute. The judgment has to stay human.

Clients don't hire me because I use the latest AI tools. They hire me because I know which tools to use, and when.

That's the part that doesn't come from the software.

So here's my question for you.

What are you working on right now where you'd want a collaborator, rather than a menu?

I'd love to hear about it. Just hit reply.

And if you're curious about how I'm making logos now, like the Life by Decade logo above and The Connection Engine logo at the top of this email, both came out of a workflow I haven't written about yet. Please ask me, and I'll walk you through it.

Any questions?

— Jon