Jeroen Sangers

Currently reading: Letters from a Stoic by Seneca 📚

This weekend, a post by Matt Webb kept appearing in my feeds, shared by Simon Willison and others. It discusses something Matt calls “context plumbing” in AI systems.

This context is not always where the AI runs (and the AI runs as close as possible to the point of user intent).

So the job of making an agent run really well is to move the context to where it needs to be.

But I think we’ve got this backwards.

The real question: Where should AI live?

Instead of moving context to the AI, we should move the AI to where the content already lives. This isn’t just a technical distinction. It’s a fundamental difference in how we think about AI’s role in our work.

The big AI companies want to create “everything apps.” They’re building platforms that pull all your content, all your context, into their systems. And the motivation is clear: they’ve made enormous investments and need to avoid AI becoming a commodity with razor-thin margins.

But what actually benefits you as a user?

AI as feature, not platform

Having AI incorporated into the tools you already use makes more sense than abandoning those tools for an AI platform. Apple may be lagging behind in the AI race by some measures, but their vision resonates with how people actually work. Apple Intelligence in the Mail app is one of my most used AI features precisely because it’s where I already spend time managing email.

Or consider my workflow in Tana, where I manage my work and knowledge. I can run AI, any model I choose, right on my task list. On my meeting notes and transcriptions. In my journal entries. The AI comes to where my thinking already happens, rather than forcing me to export everything to a separate AI platform, or, as Matt Webb calls it, create a plumbing system to get my context into the AI.

This is the difference between AI as infrastructure and AI as destination.

The platform trap

When AI becomes a platform, you face a choice: either duplicate your work across systems or abandon your existing tools entirely. Neither option serves you well. Duplication creates synchronization headaches and version conflicts. Abandonment means losing the specialized features and workflows you’ve built over time.

The alternative is simpler. AI becomes a feature that enhances the tools you already trust. It’s there when you need it, invisible when you don’t, and it never asks you to restructure your entire digital life around it.

I see AI as a feature and have no intention to use it as a platform. The question isn’t whether AI is powerful or useful. It clearly is. The question is whether that power serves your workflow or disrupts it. Whether it meets you where you work or demands you come to it.

The answer shapes not just which tools you choose, but how you think about the relationship between your work and the technology that supports it.

Finished reading: Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl 📚

Second time I read this book, but still impressed.

November is the month in which I massively unsubscribe.

My personal rule is simple: if you send me a Black Friday offer, I unsubscribe immediately.

Why such a drastic rule

It’s not that I hate offers. It’s that Black Friday has become something that goes far beyond a day of discounts. Now it’s an entire month of constant bombardment, artificial urgency, inboxes saturated with messages screaming “LAST CHANCE!” when we know there will be another “last chance” tomorrow.

When a brand I trust decides to participate in this circus, it’s telling me something about its priorities. It’s telling me it prefers noise over value, the quick transaction over the lasting relationship.

And I prefer silence.

The hidden cost of attention

Every email I open, every notification I read, every offer I evaluate costs me something. It costs me attention, that resource we all say is limited but treat as if it were infinite.

The brands I respect understand this. They don’t abuse my inbox. They don’t confuse frequency with relevance. They don’t assume that more communication equals better communication.

Those that participate in Black Friday have made a decision: they prefer volume over precision. And that’s fine, it’s their strategy. But I also make a decision: I prefer less noise in my life.

A way of voting with attention

Unsubscribing isn’t an act of rebellion. It’s simply coherence.

If I say I value my time and attention, but allow any brand to interrupt me whenever it suits them, I’m lying. I’m letting others decide what deserves my attention, instead of deciding it myself.

Every time I unsubscribe during November, I’m voting. I’m saying: “I prefer brands that respect me over brands that chase me.” I’m choosing quality over quantity, intention over opportunism.

What really interests me

I don’t need more offers. I need fewer things that truly matter.

I don’t need discounts on products I don’t want. I need clarity about what I do want.

I don’t need artificial urgency. I need space to think.

The brands that understand this don’t need Black Friday. They build value every day of the year, not just when the calendar gives them permission to shout louder than everyone else.

And those are the brands that stay in my inbox.

I’m part of a Slack group that I check every now and then. I usually just open it in my browser because I don’t like installing apps for sites I barely use. But since last week (maybe after the latest iPadOS update?), all I see is a blank screen on my iPad. I’m not sure what happened, but it basically forced me to install an app I didn’t want.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We all have different ways of processing our thoughts. My wife thinks by talking; whenever she needs clarity, she starts a conversation with me or whoever’s nearby. It’s her version of the programmer’s “rubber duck debugging” method.

In contrast, many personal knowledge management experts insist the best thinking happens through writing. Their standard advice: “To think clearly, write it down.”

My mind works differently from both approaches. I’m not effective at thinking while speaking. When I try, my speech becomes awkward, filled with hesitations and lacking structure.

My process is sequential: first I think, then I speak. I need to mentally prepare what I’m going to say. Only then can I express myself with clarity and organization.

With writing, something similar occurs. Before writing any text, I construct it completely in my mind. I review ideas, identify inconsistencies, and refine the structure. When I finally write, the text is already essentially finished in my head.

I don’t think while writing; the thinking has already happened. My mental clarity doesn’t emerge from the act of speaking or writing, but from the time I dedicate to processing ideas internally.

This doesn’t mean my wife thinks better by talking or that experts think better by writing. I simply recognize that my best thinking happens in silence, within my mind, before any external expression.

An Outliner tool is a key digital list making aid (even if they all have their limitations). A good Outliner allows you to put making lists ‘on rails’ as Dave Winer put it.
Moving an item up or down, to the top or the bottom. Nesting a thing under another, or deeper still. Moving a nested item up a level of hierarchy. Hide the subitems under a thing, or revealing them. Make a connection with an element elsewhere in an outline or with/in a different outline. Turn lines into bullets into numberings and back. Switch between different types of visualisation, one of which is the outline. All made seamless with keyboard shortcuts.

This is one of the (many) reasons I prefer an outliner-based notes tool like Tana over a notes-based tool like Obsidian.

Do you really think your job is just copying and pasting text in and out of AI chats? Because that’s what you’re doing all day. 🤔

I just checked my Now page and wow: two months was all it took for everything to feel completely outdated. I’ve updated it, so it’s fresh again.

Currently reading: Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl 📚