Craig Mod used to pay Campaign Monitor roughly $7,000 a year to send his newsletters. After rebuilding the tool himself with AI, his bill is closer to $150. It’s the kind of thing that convinces him we’re about to enter a “golden age of tool building”—one where anyone can build tools specifically suited to their needs, instead of settling for software from incumbents that are slow to innovate.

Mod is the writer and photographer behind the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and books like Things Become Other Things and Kissa by Kissa—as well as a lifelong technologist. He’s rebuilt the tax software Quicken, created a private alternative for Twitter for his members which he calls The Good Place, and used AI to build an archive for his pop-up newsletters. But while Mod is an advocate of using AI to build, he draws the line at using it to write.

Mod talks to Dan Shipper about using AI as a research assistant, why he keeps a tech-free zone in the mornings for deep thinking, and why he’s resisting the pull of the “mainlining” AI era.

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Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction

3:51 Rebuilding Quicken and Campaign Monitor with AI

6:24 Building The Good Place, a private Twitter alternative for Craig’s members

10:39 Why we’re entering a “golden age of tool building”

12:17 Why AI could help writers build audiences

17:35 Using AI to build a newsletter archive and a searchable board-meeting Q&A library

27:58 Creating a technology-free buffer to protect deep thinking

30:31 Why Craig is resisting the temptation to “mainline” AI for ten hours a day

39:44 Why anthropomorphizing AI is “psychotic,” and why Apple got Siri right

47:42 Being adopted, and making peace with humanity’s fragile place in an AI future

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Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

Craig Mod’s website: https://craigmod.com

Roden (Craig’s monthly newsletter): https://craigmod.com/roden/