Category: Little Guys 🥹
‘Little Guys’ are the emerging UX paradigm for AI; tiny, characterful agents that turn large language models into visible companions. From pixel butlers to desk-top pals, personified interfaces reveal intent and invite trust.
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Thinking Inside Out
An introduction to three essays on agent environments, worlds, and ontological hardness.
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Three Worlds for Little Guys
OpenClaw, Gas Town, and Cantrip through the lens of ontological hardness
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Hard Worlds For Little Guys
Why LLM agents need hard worlds; lessons from interactive fiction engine design.
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Ontological Hardness
Why the first question about agent failure should be about the world, not the model
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The Near Future of AI Agents
A primer on the near future of agentic AI, and the governance layer that will become the most important product space this year.
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Prompted to Panic
All week I’ve been thinking to myself ‘I’m not going to write about Moltbook, I’m not going to write about Moltbook’. But I’ve found a work around! I’m going to…
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A Tale of Two Little Guys: Sony AIBO + FURBY
What if a ‘little guy’ escapes the screen? In the late 90s, two did: Sony’s AIBO and the Furby.
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Cloudflare’s NET Dollar: AI Agents, Crypto Rails, and Web Payments
This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about AI agents, agents scurrying around paying for things with blockchains.
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4o-4 Not Found
The sudden removal of GPT-4o exposed how deeply people have made friends with AI. How should we design good goodbyes?
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Clippy: A Little History of Little Guys
The history of ‘Little Guys’ in AI UX. There are very few bits of software that have achieved such lasting cultural immortality as Clippy.
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Petz: A Little History of Little Guys
The history of ‘Little Guys’ in AI UX. Petz (1995), desktop buddies, and the design choices that shaped today’s agent interfaces.
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AI UX: Pixel Agents, Talking Cars, and Moving Eyes
An exploration of AI companions, personified agents, and how virtual worlds and hardware interfaces are reshaping human-AI relationships.
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Helpful LLocal Models | 2505
Tutorial engines are coming. And they’ll run atop local AI models embedded in our devices at the OS level..
