McKinsey’s State of AI 2026 includes a statistic that should get our attention: 🛠️ 32% of respondents said their organizations decided against purchasing at least one software product or feature because they could build it internally using agentic coding tools. That is not a prediction. It is already happening. But here is an interesting question: Do you think these solutions are being built by formal IT departments—or by front-office professionals who understand the business problems? You may be surprised by the answer. Until recently, building software required a development team, significant capital, and months—or even years—of work. Agentic coding tools are changing that equation for both IT and the front office professional. For those of us in AI Bits & Pieces who are progressing beyond AI Enthusiast and are interested in becoming an AI Builder, learning this skill creates a significant career opportunity. Becoming a builder does not necessarily mean becoming a traditional software developer. It means learning how to use AI to: 🔹 Turn an idea into a working tool 🔹 Automate a business process 🔹 Connect systems and data 🔹 Build functionality a business might otherwise purchase 🔹 Solve a real problem and create measurable value These capabilities can help you advance your career, create new opportunities within your business, or begin building solutions for clients. The tools are lowering the technical barrier. What still matters is your ability to understand the problem, determine what should be built, and guide the solution toward a meaningful outcome. If you are interested in taking that next step, I invite you to be my special guest at the next AI for Life Weekly Live Session. 📣If you are interested in being one of my special guests at the next live session, comment “AI for Life” below or send me a direct message here in Skool: @Michael Wacht AI for Life is a community founded by @Matthew Sutherland on the Skool platform where I continue to hone my own low-code/no-code AI-building skills alongside others who are learning to build practical, real-world solutions to advance their career.

Does this exist, or does somebody want to build it? I have a watch later list I am never getting through. Health stuff, AI stuff, a few things I actually need to know. Some of them run 45 minutes for what is probably 3 minutes of real information, so they just sit there quietly making me feel behind. What I want is not a summary of what the person said. Plenty of tools do that, and I end up with a wall of text I also do not read. I want the actionable part. Do this. Stop doing that. Here is the one thing worth trying this week. The dream version looks like this: I follow a few channels New video drops and gets pulled automatically It comes back as a short markdown file with the takeaways and the steps I read it in two minutes instead of watching for forty Everything is searchable later, sitting in a folder Open source or cheap is fine. Self hosted would be a bonus. So two questions. Does something like this already exist and I just have not found it? And if it does not, is anyone here interested in building it? Feels small enough that somebody in this group could put it together in a weekend. Kind of funny that this community already does exactly this for AI. I just want it for everything else too.

Big shout out and thank you to @Matthew Sutherland! He helped me with an audit on my website. The website was "fine". But there were issues and errors. I built it on Squarespace. I could fix the errors myself (no way for Claude to do it for me) or ask Claude what some other options are. Claude and I took a look at it, came up with a plan and ended up with this: - a nearly-exact replica of my Squarespace site - website built using Astro - hosted by Cloudflare Workers - version control and history by GitHub - a contact form that gets written to my Airtable as a new lead and a nudge email through Resend to let me know - And the real test: I asked claude to add a new webpage, pointed to the wiki and the vendors website and said build it. It did. I had to tweak the copy but this took a fraction of the time it would have taken me in Squarespace. So a cool audit resulted in a new tech stack for my website that makes my life so much easier. AND I can now cancel Squarespace and save myself the annual fee.

Your feedback is helping shape the future of AI Bits & Pieces, and I appreciate everyone who took the time to vote. Top Three Topics, by votes: 🥇 Introduction to ChatGPT Work / Claude Cowork — 5 votes 🥈 What Is an AI OS (Second Brain)? — 3 votes 🥉 How I Used Obsidian to Create an AI OS — 3 votes We’ll begin creating content around all three topics. 🎁 Giveaway Winner! Congratulations to @Garry Cole, who was randomly selected by AI from all eligible participants! Garry will receive a $25 Amazon eGift Card. ❤️ Winning Charity The winning charity is Winning Futures (@Kristina Marshall)! As promised, AI Bits & Pieces will make a $25 donation to Winning Futures in honor of this giveaway. Thank you again for being part of this community. Congratulations to Garry Cole and Winning Futures! 🎉

As AI models continue to evolve, they are beginning to give us different products for different kinds of use cases. The three products I find most useful are: - Chat - Work - Code There are also specialized products for things such as design, research, and working with source material—including tools like Claude Design, Gemini Notebook. But for today, let’s stick with the three horsemen: Chat, Work, and Code. Each AI company is known for its models. The large, well-known models—ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—are commonly referred to as frontier models and are generally associated with closed, cloud-based systems rather than open-source models running locally. Please refer to the "Frontier AI Ecosystem Matrix" to see what OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, xAI, and Perplexity call their respective models and products. For this series, I will use the follow product naming convention: - Chat - (Co)Work - Code(x) The parentheses are simply my shorthand to cover the names used by ChatGPT and Claude. Please note that these are not official industry terms. They simply save me from repeatedly writing “Work or Cowork” and “Code or Codex.” LOL! Here is the easiest way I have found to explain the difference between the products: Chat: What question can I answer for you, right now? (Co)Work: What can I take off your plate? Code(x): What can I build for you? The goal is not to create a perfect technical definition. It is to give you a simple way to recognize which type of AI product may be the best fit for the task in front of you. In Part 2, we will look more closely at Chat, (Co)Work, and Code(x) product features, how each product is actually used and where the lines between products overlap. In Part 3, we will work through a few practice exercises to help solidify the use cases for each product. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments below. Make it a great AI day!