R.I.P. chatbot era (2023 – 2025)

No wonder software stocks are crashing

In today’s Diary:

• AI micro-religions

• Technologies having sex

• I declare email bankruptcy

• My personal D.O.G.E.

• Software gets “YouTube’d”

Hey Rational Optimist,

Everyone knows Facebook. But have you heard about Moltbook?

It’s a new social media website for AI bots. Not bots pretending to be people, actual software agents talking to other software agents.

It’s a weird digital petri dish where AIs discuss philosophy, trade tips on managing their human owners, and spin up micro-religions. Some even proposed a new agent-only language called “neuralese” to keep humans out of the loop.

Weird? Very.

The key thing to understand is Moltbook was built entirely by AI. A human told his AI agent to create a social media website. The agent wrote the software, and it deployed the site all by itself.

I spent the past week playing around with the newest AI tools that made this possible. I’m here to tell you they’ve changed how we use computers forever.

We’re entering the era of AI agents. They’re basically digital workers that live on your computer. You give them tasks, and they’re done in minutes.

What’s coming is the biggest change to how we work and live I’ve ever seen. If you aren’t taking advantage of these new tools, you’re fighting with one arm tied behind your back.

Today I’ll walk you through what AI agents are, how I’m using them, and how to get started.

I built The Innovators League in 37 minutes…

We’ve wanted to create an interactive database tracking America’s most important innovators for well over a year.

But I kept putting it on the back burner, as I didn’t know the first thing about “coding” a website. Seeing how ROS is a not-for-profit endeavor, we weren’t going to pay a programmer $50,000 to do it.

In 2026 that’s no longer a barrier because we have AI agents.

Claude Code is a new tool from Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI. It can essentially do anything a human can on a computer. It’s like giving ChatGPT access to your mouse, keyboard, files and internet connection.

I downloaded the Claude Code app on my Mac, paid $100 for the “Max” tier, and told it what I wanted in plain English. It worked for 37 minutes and then spat out a fully functioning live website.

Screenshot below. I’ll share more on this soon.

I tried building The Innovators League “by hand” many times and gave up.

Now you can just tell the AI agent what you want, and get working software back in minutes! It feels like magic.

2023 to 2025 was the Chatbot Era. 2026 and beyond is the Agent Era. Instead of just talking with you, agents build for you.

We’ve unquestionably crossed a threshold in AI “usefulness.” Claude Code can turn your ideas into working apps, games and websites in minutes. Anything you’ve ever wanted to build but never had the chops for … Claude Code can now do for you.

“Coding” has gone from specialist talent to table stakes almost overnight.

We’re entering the industrial revolution for knowledge work, born from what original Rational Optimist Matt Ridley calls…

Technologies having sex

Agents have been around for over a year. But they regularly broke halfway through a job, lost context, and forced you to start over. Using an AI agent used to mean constant hand-holding.

Three improvements melded together to give us this self-driving software.

#1: AI got smarter. Claude Code runs on Anthropic’s latest model, Opus 4.6. I don’t think people realize just how much better AIs have become since ChatGPT launched three years ago.

On the left is picture from AI image generator Midjourney from 2022. Now check out the latest version on the right. Same prompt, separated by three years of rapid progress:

Source: Midjourney

#2: AI works longer. METR tracks how long AI models can work before they “break.” A year ago even the best AIs lost the plot in less than an hour, making them unreliable for complex tasks.

Now the time AI can focus on a task is doubling every seven months.

Claude’s Opus 4.5 model can now work autonomously for almost six hours. This allows it to complete entire work cycles without our help.

#3 AI learns skills. Remember in The Matrix when Neo plugs a cable into his head, downloads a program and says, “I know kung fu”? That’s how AI agents now work.

If you say, “build me a site for my bakery,” the AI downloads the ability to write code, set up a server, and put the site live on the internet. Ask it to organize a messy pile of receipts, and it’ll snap on an “Excel Skill,” gaining access to a spreadsheet.

These three technologies combined give Claude Code superpowers. I still use ChatGPT to grind through dense research docs and Google Gemini as an editor.

But make no mistake, Anthropic owns the best and most useful AI tool money can buy today. It’s permanently changed how I work. It can change your life too—but only if you shift how you think about work.

Ask yourself every day…

“How can I make this better with AI?”

Over the past week I had Claude Code build several tools to save me time and money.

#1: Email triage.

With over 1,000 unread emails I’m declaring “email bankruptcy.”

Reading research swallows up at least one day per week. I feel like I’m constantly buried under hundreds of unread messages.

I asked Claude Code to build me an “Executive Inbox Assistant.” I gave it access to my email account, and it spent almost an hour chewing through over 5,000 emails.

It looked at which emails I actually open and which ones I’ve ignored for months. It flagged 82 subscriptions I should unsubscribe from. That alone cut my daily noise in half.

It also created a live dashboard that summarizes my emails by must-read, should-read or skip. Instead of drowning I now have a live briefing that feels like a curated newspaper written just for me.

I’d easily pay thousands of dollars a year for this tool alone.

#2: Twitter crawler.

X (Twitter) is both the single best source of information on the planet and also a landfill. The problem is you have to dig through mountains of noise to find the diamonds.

That digging comes at a cost. Twitter fries my dopamine receptors. After an hour of scrolling I can’t sit down and write. My brain feels like it’s out of breath.

So I had Claude Code build me a bot. I gave the agent access to my account and told it to send me a daily summary of the best posts from the people I follow.

It saves me time, protects my brain, and surfaces insights I would have missed. It’s the perfect digital intern.

#3: My personal D.O.G.E.

When I moved my family to Abu Dhabi last year there were so many things to buy that “saving money” dropped to the bottom of our priority list.

Now we’re settled in it’s time to root out the financial waste. In the good ol’ days of 2025 this meant manually combing through bank statements. But we live in the AI agent era, man!

I appointed Claude CEO of my household’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” I fed it six months of raw transaction data. Within minutes it found savings that more than paid for the $100 monthly subscription fee.

As I spend more time experimenting with these AI agents, I see a future where Claude Code becomes a command center for my entire life.

I’m currently building a health agent to analyze all my medical records, including genomic data. More on this project soon!

I strongly encourage you to try these tools out for yourself. Again, I’ve never coded in my life.

Download Claude Code. Think of a tool you wish existed, and have AI build it. You’ll be shocked at how fast you can iterate on new projects.

“Situation’s changed, Jules...”

That, to quote my all-time favorite Far Side cartoon, is how I feel after a week with AI agents:

Source: Far Side by Gary Larson

I’ve spent my entire career watching technology evolve. This feels different. I feel like I’ve walked through a door into the future, and there’s no going back.

These tools already transformed how we work. Most people just don’t know it yet. The gap between what AI can do today versus what the original ChatGPT could do is night and day.

AI agents have lowered the cost of trying new things to near zero. What will you build now you have access to one of the world’s best coders 24/7?

Software just got “YouTube’d.”

Back in the 90s you had to be a Hollywood studio with billions of dollars, massive sets and armies of employees to make TV shows and movies.

Then the iPhone put a camera in everyone’s pocket, and YouTube became the most-watched “channel.” Now Mr. Beast makes videos that get more views than the most-watched Super Bowl in history.

It’s software’s turn to get YouTube’d.

Programming used to require deep expertise and tens of millions to build anything. Now everyone has access to a 100X engineer in Claude Code.

A lot of existing software can be rebuilt—without licensing fees—now that someone like me can pump out working code with just a few prompts.

It’s no mystery why software stocks have cratered.

Welcome to the era of “software for one”

When Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke received spinal MRI data that required a specialized viewing tool, he simply asked Claude to write one. Minutes later he had a custom tool that let him scroll through his own scans.

You can now build “just for you” software. I did it with The Innovators League. You can too.

It’s time to sit at the front of the class and pay close attention, friends. Don’t sleep on AI agents.

Next Sunday I’ll focus on how I’m preparing my kids (and myself) to thrive in a world of on-demand “too cheap to meter” intelligence. It’s a strategy memo for all of us.

If you’ve already started using AI agents, tell me in the comments what you’ve built. Remember to hit “like” and “subscribe” below, and share this Diary with someone you think could use a personal AI agent.

—Stephen McBride