1 min lesson
A real product decision: artifacts and the review bottleneck
Show the "three eras" framing and why it changes which bets have the most value.
Step 1 of 2
The theses round can collapse into a prioritization matrix recited from memory. The antidote is one real decision narrative - a shift the product actually made, the bottleneck it relieved and the adoption number that proved it. This is that story.
Cursor's own framing is three eras of coding, each defined by where the developer's attention goes. Era one was Tab, attention on keystrokes. Era two was synchronous agents you steered, attention on the steering - it barely lasted a year. Era three is async agents running in the cloud on their own VMs, attention on reviewing. The product question that era forces is sharp: if the human no longer watches the output stream, what do you ship them instead?
- Old locus of attention
- The model's output - watching code stream into the editor line by line
- New locus of attention
- The model's outcome - did the change work, and what should I, the expert, decide on?
- The new bottleneck
- Review, not generation - agents produce code at 10-100x, so far more PRs land than humans can read
- The product answer
- Stop making humans read every line; hand them a tight summary - “3M lines generated, here are the 7 things you should decide on”
When attention moves from output to outcome, the product has to manufacture trust in the outcome.