What Changed Since Internet Menace V1

The big changes since July 2024:

Coding agents went from "neat trick" to "primary tool." Claude Code, self-hosted models with code-specialized harnesses, and IDE-integrated agents (Cursor, Anti Gravity, others) can now turn well-specified requirements into working software. The bottleneck moved from "writing code" to "specifying what you want."

Local models got good. A Mac mini with enough unified memory can run models that two years ago required a data center. NVIDIA's DGX Spark and Jetson Orin lines made local AI compute accessible to small teams and hobbyists. You can do real work without paying anyone a subscription fee.

Frontier models got expensive but cheap. Claude Max at $200/month is real money, but for someone whose alternative is hiring a contractor at $150/ hour, it's a bargain. Knowing when to spend the $200 and when to use a $0/month local model is now a core skill.

Voice-to-text got useful. Tools like Wispr Flow let you talk to your computer at ~150 words per minute instead of typing at 60. For people who think faster than they type (most of you), this is a serious productivity multiplier.

Specifications became the work. The thing engineers used to skim and ignore (the spec doc) is now the thing the machine reads, line by line, to build your software. Bad spec, bad software. Good spec, working software. That's the new equation.