swyx
Writer and developer. He runs the Latent Space newsletter and podcast about AI engineering, and writes essays on software and careers at swyx.io.
swyx did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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America is a country that rewards first-principles thinkers and builders and encourages reinvention despite cynicism.
increasingly I see America as the place that rewards first principles thinkers and builders; that asks "why not?" instead of telling you why you cannot; that imperfectly supports optimism, reinvention and perseverance in spite of cynicism.
swyx.ioSaid 5 Jul 2026This on korrents
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The people who run the world are not smarter than anyone else, and even well-meaning ones often only offer paths not worth pursuing.
the world is run by people no smarter than you - and even people that genuinely mean well, end up only prescribing games that you don't want to win.
swyx.ioSaid 22 Apr 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
19 October
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24 September
18 August
7 August
3 August
2 August
9 July
5 July
From one piece What America has meant to me 2 beliefs · swyx.io
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korrents.com
The finance industry is built on false mathematical precision and prone to systemic collapse.Their words
Finance only to find that it is a house of cards built on false precision, as the world collapsed around us
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korrents.com
America is a country that rewards first-principles thinkers and builders and encourages reinvention despite cynicism.Their words
increasingly I see America as the place that rewards first principles thinkers and builders; that asks "why not?" instead of telling you why you cannot; that imperfectly supports optimism, reinvention and perseverance in spite of cynicism.
25 June
3 June
30 May
17 May
22 April
From one piece What you can do in a decade 3 beliefs · swyx.io
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korrents.com
A single year tends to look much like the one before it, but a decade can change everything about a person's life.Their words
In one year you'll probably mostly be thinking and doing what you think you'll be doing in a year today. In a decade, EVERYTHING can change.
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Their words
The only lasting path to satisfaction, happiness, skin in the game, maximizing learning, is to really study everybody's game, define your own, and then play it to the best of your ability.
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Their words
the world is run by people no smarter than you - and even people that genuinely mean well, end up only prescribing games that you don't want to win.
14 March
From one piece How to Thought Lead (2026) 3 beliefs · swyx.io
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Their words
players who are also commentators give better commentary than people who are just commentators. Stock analysts who never invest have zero skin in the game.
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korrents.com
People want to be the person their bookmarks say they are, not the person their feed reveals they are.Their words
People want to be the person their bookmarks reflect, not what their feed reflects.
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korrents.com
Real leverage in a negotiation comes from being genuinely willing to walk away from it.Their words
The true leverage in any negotiation is your true willingness to walk away.
27 February
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Their words
and then as things hit invisible asymptotes those same loud voices who write viral essays have curiously moved on to other things.
16 February
From one piece Take a hard game, and make it shorter 2 beliefs · swyx.io
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Their words
It's interesting that the Shorter hobby businesses all draft off superstars in the legacy hobby, but make their vast majority of their money from people who will of course never come close to the level superstars - you'd still go to pickleball and talk Nadal vs Federer, you'd still go to Top Golf and make Tiger Woods jokes.
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korrents.com
Shrinking attention spans are reshaping real-world business models, not just digital media formats.Their words
You may be less aware that this is affecting real world business models.
7 December 2025
From one piece How To Podcast 3 beliefs · swyx.io
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korrents.com
The best follow-up questions in an interview push back and challenge what the guest just said.Their words
The highest art of followup is disagreement - challenging what they said, pushing back on it.
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korrents.com
Promoting a cause builds audience loyalty.Their words
When you have a Cause you promote - whether relevant to your listeners' lives or work or sense of self, you have loyalty.
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korrents.com
Podcasting works best as edutainment, and fails when it becomes too highbrow or purely educational.Their words
Podcasting is edutainment. If you try to have too highbrow a view of yourself, and only do education, you will lose.
6 November 2025
20 October 2025
23 September 2025
8 September 2025
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 14 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
America is a country that rewards first-principles thinkers and builders and encourages reinvention despite cynicism.
increasingly I see America as the place that rewards first principles thinkers and builders; that asks "why not?" instead of telling you why you cannot; that imperfectly supports optimism, reinvention and perseverance in spite of cynicism.
What America has meant to me Said 5 Jul 2026
The finance industry is built on false mathematical precision and prone to systemic collapse.
Finance only to find that it is a house of cards built on false precision, as the world collapsed around us
What America has meant to me Said 5 Jul 2026
The people who run the world are not smarter than anyone else, and even well-meaning ones often only offer paths not worth pursuing.
the world is run by people no smarter than you - and even people that genuinely mean well, end up only prescribing games that you don't want to win.
What you can do in a decade Said 22 Apr 2026
Show 11 more
Lasting satisfaction comes from studying how others play, then defining and fully playing one's own game rather than someone else's.
The only lasting path to satisfaction, happiness, skin in the game, maximizing learning, is to really study everybody's game, define your own, and then play it to the best of your ability.
What you can do in a decade Said 22 Apr 2026
A single year tends to look much like the one before it, but a decade can change everything about a person's life.
In one year you'll probably mostly be thinking and doing what you think you'll be doing in a year today. In a decade, EVERYTHING can change.
What you can do in a decade Said 22 Apr 2026
Real leverage in a negotiation comes from being genuinely willing to walk away from it.
The true leverage in any negotiation is your true willingness to walk away.
How to Thought Lead (2026) Said 14 Mar 2026
People want to be the person their bookmarks say they are, not the person their feed reveals they are.
People want to be the person their bookmarks reflect, not what their feed reflects.
How to Thought Lead (2026) Said 14 Mar 2026
People who actively participate in a field give better commentary on it than pure observers with no stake in the outcome.
players who are also commentators give better commentary than people who are just commentators. Stock analysts who never invest have zero skin in the game.
How to Thought Lead (2026) Said 14 Mar 2026
Commentators who hype early exponential growth typically move on to other topics once the trend levels off into an asymptote.
and then as things hit invisible asymptotes those same loud voices who write viral essays have curiously moved on to other things.
Constance Crozier: Forecasting s-curves is hard Said 27 Feb 2026
Shrinking attention spans are reshaping real-world business models, not just digital media formats.
You may be less aware that this is affecting real world business models.
Take a hard game, and make it shorter Said 16 Feb 2026
Shortened versions of hard hobbies profit mainly from casual participants riding a legacy sport's superstar mythology, not from elite-level players.
It's interesting that the Shorter hobby businesses all draft off superstars in the legacy hobby, but make their vast majority of their money from people who will of course never come close to the level superstars - you'd still go to pickleball and talk Nadal vs Federer, you'd still go to Top Golf and make Tiger Woods jokes.
Take a hard game, and make it shorter Said 16 Feb 2026
Podcasting works best as edutainment, and fails when it becomes too highbrow or purely educational.
Podcasting is edutainment. If you try to have too highbrow a view of yourself, and only do education, you will lose.
How To Podcast Said 7 Dec 2025
Promoting a cause builds audience loyalty.
When you have a Cause you promote - whether relevant to your listeners' lives or work or sense of self, you have loyalty.
How To Podcast Said 7 Dec 2025
The best follow-up questions in an interview push back and challenge what the guest just said.
The highest art of followup is disagreement - challenging what they said, pushing back on it.
How To Podcast Said 7 Dec 2025
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 10 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Uses Raycast
my goal is to replace as many small utilities i used to use, with raycast plugins
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Liked uv
Recommends podman
podman instead of docker https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137525
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Show 7 more
Liked Beeper
the super messaging app. https://www.beeper.com/download (i know founder)
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Uses Arc Browser
Arc Browser: I tried Kagi but too many apps are incompatible with Safari so RIP. set to default.
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Recommends pnpm
Used to recommend yarn. now brew install pnpm as fast node package manager
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Uses Wispr Flow
AUDIO KEYBOARD - I used to use SuperWhisper but have now shifted to Wispr Flow
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
affiliate link
Mixed on SuperWhisper
AUDIO KEYBOARD - I used to use SuperWhisper but have now shifted to Wispr Flow
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Mixed on Warp
Install Warp (my normal terminal of choice, good for AI generated commands
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Recommends Video Speed Controller
Video Speed Controller ← VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
swyx.io 6 Aug 2025
Where they publish
Site swyx.io His essays on software, AI engineering and careers.
Recent
- What America has meant to me 5 Jul 2026 Every time I have given up on America, it has been a mistake. And yet, America has never, ever given up on me.
- AIE Singapore: The Agentic Nation 17 May 2026 i gave a little talk as closing keynote for the first AI Engineer Singapore. burned some bridges but said what i felt.
- What you can do in a decade 22 Apr 2026 I turned 40 today. For my 35th I did principles, but for my 40th, I wanted to offer perhaps more useful reflections.
Show 17 more
- How to Thought Lead (2026) 14 Mar 2026 I first started compiling "How To Thought Lead" in my notes 5 years ago, at first as an ironic parody and then slowly becoming sincere, and never published it, 1) because I don't
- Constance Crozier: Forecasting s-curves is hard 27 Feb 2026 There was a famous Covid era chart that I always struggle to find, showing how hard it is to estimate an S curve while living through it. in the early days it seems that
- Take a hard game, and make it shorter 16 Feb 2026 You are of course aware that attention spans are shrinking. YouTube -> Shorts, Instagram Reels, Tiktoks, etc have taken over the world.
- How To Podcast 7 Dec 2025 Through my 4 (!) podcasts I obviously have built up a lot of opinions on podcasting over the years. Here's some of them. The two outlier podcasts of our time are Dwarkesh and
- The Impossible Triangle of LLM Infra 6 Nov 2025 another talk I am giving at Mastra's TypeScript AI conf today https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NnQ3H5Bki3vWRRJdVXoCFJ5dsNKH9QrC-eEQ2Z8olck/edit?usp=sharing
- The only Permanent Underclass are the ones who believe it is permanent 20 Oct 2025 For a while now there has been a persistent "gallows humor" meme about missing out on the generational wealth that will result in AI:
- The Year in Agents - AI Engineer Paris 23 Sept 2025 I gave a short address for the first AIE Paris conference organized by Koyeb!
- Cognition: The Devin is in the Details 8 Sept 2025 My thesis for the future of software dev agents. This is a hastily written blogpost done on not a lot of sleep, so pardon poor pacing and structure and typos and mistakes but
- My 2025 New Mac Setup 6 Aug 2025 I set up a new Mac for work today. Here's everything I use on a Mac for fullstack web development.
- Becoming a High Taste Tester 25 Jul 2025 theres a specific reason why i'm writing this post i can't disclose yet. but am sharing my prep work in public
- Gemini Nano in Chrome 137: notes for AI Engineers 8 Jul 2025 at long last, Gemini Nano is almost here for all Chrome users (i was originally misinformed that it was in Chrome 138 - but i checked my own facts and since Chrome 137+ it is
- notes from Naval (2025) 6 Jul 2025 someone I resonate a lot with is Naval Ravikant - his classic "How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky" (henceforth HTGR) is formative to a lot of my thinking, including How to
- Elixir/Phoenix Liveview was a mistake 23 May 2025 I made an expensive technical decision on Phoenix Liveview for the Smol Talk webapp about a year ago that I now regret, and am jotting down some notes to self for why.
- 2025 Advice to my old selves 15 May 2025 I turned a birthday recently and it was so busy (DataCouncil + sg flight) that i never really got the chance to sit and reflect. a lot of things are going well, lots more could
- Supa Pecha Kucha 11 Mar 2025
- How to download YouTube Videos quickly 25 Jan 2025 I used to use yt5s all the time to rip and remix videos:
- Home Assistant Voice Preview is an unusable mess. 20 Jan 2025 I just got a Home Assistant Voice recently. I was so excited to try it out as a programmable Alexa.
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @swyx Day-to-day posting on AI engineering.
Recent
- "O Infallible one, why do the people not heed the sign we tap?" "My dear Parth, each believes he is the first to wish for an end to chat. On X we are cursed with the eternal September of the Thoughtless Mind." "But O Govinda, they yearn for what lies beyond it, and cast their votes by the thousands. Surely the people's wants must be made." *a wan smile* “O son of Kunti, observe what they applaud, and what they return to. They desire the end of chat as they desire the end of desire. They desire to leave X as they return in ever greater numbers. They will announce it many times. You shall learn… 19 Oct 2026
- Data engineers > AI engineers there's a big difference between a "RAG guy" and a "Data Intensive Applications" person like in this screenshot and there's never been a starker difference in demand in my entire career in tech (aka post search engine wars) if your blog / github is full of stuff like this, I have a fantastic mission/job for you (SF preferred, can relocate u, visas ok) (if you can name who's blog this is without even checking, you definitely are in the community. bonus points if you know where he ended up also without looking) jobs@latent.space and the team will reach out if you f… 19 Oct 2026
- i believe this essay i wrote 5 years ago is the closest i've ever come to @benthompson level of "nailing it" 18 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- If you loved our jev pod with @completeskeptic and are in the react/js/frontend community (especially if i've seen your work before), hit me up and i can refer you in to typesafe 18 Oct 2026
- fellow youtubers: at this point we currently own probably the highest volume A/B testing operation in tech youtube (publishing avg ~2-10 videos* a day this year of real technical content) is there any theory/tooling that you have that we should be testing? mostly i have fable/astra managing our channel but probably could use advice or ideas on what "next level" looks like some findings below: *yes seriously, every day, its a lot, we will probably cap it here for a few years in order to do justice to the speakers we already have, quantity is a nongoal for us despite appearances 17 Oct 2026
- ok i really need the prompt(s) for this video because this is near-kurzgesagt level clarity of explanation (not yet illustration) 17 Oct 2026
- i've been waiting to launch this show for almost a year! thanks to the Testers and to @NehallAgrawal @KaylinWardley for helping me put this together! some behind the scenes from the shoot of our latest show!! 16 Oct 2026
- proud to have welcomed @affaan and @absurdistphil to @aidotengineer NYC to launch the new Compute Trading industry and give both engineers and traders the definitive intro to what, why and why now 16 Oct 2026
- it finally happened, i'm in a zoom with 3 ai's golden age of solipsism 16 Oct 2026
- beautiful essay in this morning’s newspaper from Ben - read all about it 14 Oct 2026
- this is what talent density means at @aidotengineer - @SydneyScouts runs speakers at AIE!! 14 Oct 2026
- 🆕 How to Kill Your SaaS https://t.co/A0F60h1DcQ A lot of people talk about the death of SaaS but mostly in theoretical terms. We took a real $43,000/year SaaS we use and launched a global hackathon to clone it in a weekend, with both AI and REAL HUMAN evals, using any models any harness. 72 submissions, a lot of manual evals and ~100B tokens later, here are the results In this special @latentspacepod edition we share the data collected, what's still hard about killing nontrivial, midtier SaaS, and reveal the winners of the $10,000 Kill My SaaS contest with qualitative interviews! 13 Oct 2026
- I used to be a FICC trader so this announcement is absolutely freaking surreal — its not every year that we get to launch a NEW ASSET CLASS at @aidotengineer but this is finally public! ANNOUNCING THE COMPUTE TRADING MICROTRACK of AIE NYC - @evanjconrad: CEO SFCompute - Oliver Kennon: @dylan522p's Compute Trading star - @affaan + @absurdistphil: Jump's new heads of Compute Trading - @carmenli: CEO Compute Exchange + Silicon Data we're completely sold out so there's basically no reason to tell u about this apart from TUNE IN TO THE LIVESTREAM!!! https://t.co/HNbp0vyNTx live from new york! 13 Oct 2026
- one of the best parts of my job is bringing out the best in ai in each city i love new york ♥️ 13 Oct 2026
- world’s first full length workshop on claude flows @cjav_dev and Harrison Stall are kicking off @aidotengineer bright and early on a monday morning to a PACKED room, standing room only #AIEngineerNY @ricmac is on the case reporting for @latentspacepod and we’ll also publish asap. proud to work with @anthropicai to sponsor AIE NYC for the second year running! 12 Oct 2026
- reupping my talk tips thread for all our lovely AIE NYC speakers. see you tmr at speaker dinner! 11 Oct 2026
- aie nyc tix will sell out this weekend - last call to join us to the biggest ever technical conf in New York and our first with a finance mainstage - in some ways the final unification of both my careers: from investment bank to hedgefund, from bigtech to nyc startup. cya monday! 10 Oct 2026
- going rate for this role is between 5-50m comp package btw at the frontier agent labs 9 Oct 2026
- what is your default/workhorse coding agent today, Oct 2026? 7 Oct 2026
- btw dont forget the "one more thing..." theyve been working on dots for a while now 2 Oct 2026
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Podcast Latent Space The AI engineering newsletter and podcast he co-hosts.
Link verified 4 Sept 2026.
GitHub github.com/swyxio His code, including the source of swyx.io.
Recent
- New repoTeslaRoadster6 — An open-source multiplayer Bay Area driving sandbox on Cloudflare Workers. 19 Oct 2026
- swyxdotio — This is the repo for swyx's blog - Blog content is created in github issues, then posted on swyx.io as blog pages! Comment/watch to follow along my blog within GitHub 19 Oct 2026
- gh-action-data-scraping — this shows how to use github actions to do periodic data scraping 19 Oct 2026
Show 11 more
- skills — Agent skills for Claude Code and other AI agents 18 Oct 2026
- swyxio — readmeee 10 Oct 2026
- ls2026 — ls2026 24 Sept 2026
- codingcareer.com — Career Guides, Principles, Strategies & Tactics to build an exceptional dev career 18 Aug 2026
- swyxdotio-git-benchmark-20260807 — Disposable Forge versus GitHub transport benchmark mirror, 2026-08-07 7 Aug 2026
- devtools-angels — active angel investors in developer tools! 3 Aug 2026
- buying-domains — useful data and advice for buying domains. 2 Aug 2026
- claude-code-internals — Evidence-linked reconstruction of Claude Code internals from the native Bun executable 9 Jul 2026
- wtf2025 — wtf 25 Jun 2026
- spark-joy — Archived — Spark Joy now lives on Forge. 3 Jun 2026
- swyxstack 30 May 2026
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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