x.com/mitchellh/status/2041566958681014418

main claim: the way to get massive adoption now isnt a polished mainline app, its building blocks that let others build lots of stuff on top, quantity over quality

• libghostty, pi mono, nextjs, tailwind
• ghostty (the app) took 18 months to hit 1M daily updates, libghostty (the building block pulled out of it) hit millions of daily users in 2 months

why?

• agents write most code now, and agents drive what software gets used and downloaded
• agents are meh at building from scratch, but really good at gluing building blocks together
• agents prefer
  1. high quality
  2. well documented
  3. proven components
     • they pick these by default unless you prompt them otherwise, even more than people do

issues

1. security
2. instability
3. lack of maintenance

benefits

1. lower quality bar: core apps hit customers directly so they have to work, building blocks dont
2. higher awareness: users appreciate building blocks more than core apps
3. lower maintenance burden: its easier to say no to requests as its a building block not a core app
4. outsourced R&D: code is so cheap that you get way more open source suggestions and contributions

so what?

1. a better ecosystem?
2. issues in commercialisation
   • models often pick free alternatives over commercial software
   • so does this mean any closed source software can just be copied?