Adam Wiggins
@_adamwiggins_
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Working to make computers better. Cofounder of @inkandswitch, @heroku, @MuseAppHQ, and @LocalFirstConf.
Joined October 2007
My thoughts on the emerging ”tools for thought” community. ↓.
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Wow, just wow. @localfirstconf was a big success—I'm still reeling from the experience. .A few takeaways:..We had several demos of super-fast UIs. Each one was strangely shocking: we’re used to “fast” in non-game software meaning <200ms. @overtone_app, .
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Four years of my life, $2M invested, thousands of customers, and a product+team+brand I couldn't be prouder of. A retrospective on my time building Muse:
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It's been almost exactly a decade since Salesforce acquired Heroku. Good time to share a few reflections, especially in light of the Slack acquisition.
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I'm on the @browsercompany team this month!. Two reasons I'm excited for this one:.• The web (meaning web apps, cloud, HTML/CSS/JS, etc) has become a sort of universal operating system. The browser is the main affordance and touchpoint most people have with this OS. Lots of
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making computers better.part 4 ‣ how we interact with our tools.
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I just finished my first article for @elicitorg as their “internal journalist”. Aiming to publicly document the impressive work this team is doing!
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Thrilled to be part of the team launching Muse 2.0 with local-first sync. The journey that led here stretches back almost a decade….
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tldraw sync is a fast, production-ready library for collaborative whiteboards built with tldraw. I got to help with docs and the launch blog post (linked below), but first a few observations.
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⚡️ Come work with me at @browsercompany ⚡️. Are you good at product thinking and understanding users via support feedback and analytics? Can you wrangle structured data formats such as spreadsheets/CSV/JSON/YAML?. And are you dabbling in AI-related skills including prompt.
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This is a bittersweet day: I’m moving on from my role as CEO of @MuseAppHQ. My longtime colleague @adamwulf will be taking over.
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Part of the auth dance problem is so many layers. Open computer → Touch ID → visit website → you must log in → activate password mgr → type master pwd → autofill login → need 2fa auth → open phone → Face ID → authenticator app → Face ID again → transcribe auth code.
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I'm starting a project with @elicitorg!. Elicit is an AI research assistant—like Google Scholar meets Perplexity.
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3a/ (I put a bunch of the proceeds from this into the 2014 Colorado campaign to legalize recreational marijuana. So I guess you can partially thank Salesforce for that legal weed you've been enjoying during lockdown).
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Muse for Mac is shaping up nicely. Really excited to share this with you all next year.
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I'm doing a short project with the wonderful team at @tldraw!. (Now just need to level up my tweeting by approximately 100x to keep up with the likes of @steveruizok and @TodePond)
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For me, tools for thought is about seeing computers as having untapped potential for helping humans be more thoughtful, creative, and fulfilled in their intellectual pursuits.
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✅ Native Mac app. ✅ Local-first sync. ✅ Team I feel honored to be a part of.
Our team has been working on the design and engineering of Muse 2.0 for over a year. Today we’re delighted to unveil the beta:
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[ANN] Ink & Switch begins a new chapter with @pvh at the helm!. Anyone who's been part of the Ink & Switch community this past year knows that Peter is the obvious choice, but for those that haven't here's the backstory….
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2024 is a year of wandering exploration for me—working with new teams on novel problems!. • Just wrapped with @inkandswitch on universal version control.• Continuing as a co-organizer for @localfirstconf coming up in May.• And starting something new tomorrow :-).
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making computers better.part 1 ‣ why all this is important.
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Undo/redo is a core interaction—it deserves keyboard real estate!.
YES clicky undo / redo wheel ready for action. feels so good!
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We need to reinvent our OSes. Not clear how we can get there with current institutions unfortunately.
The modern operating system only implemented 2 metaphors for builders to extend: the file and the application.
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Projects completed so far in 2024. ☑️ Sync library launch with @tldraw.☑️ Writing about AI tech+design with @elicitorg.☑️ Conference organizing with @localfirstconf.☑️ Universal version control with @inkandswitch. And something new coming Monday. .
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After a few months of rest following the end of my time at Muse, I'm ready to get back in the game!. First up: going “back to the lab" with an exciting new Ink & Switch project ↓.
Recently kicked off a new project at @inkandswitch w/ @mschoening @paulsonnentag @_adamwiggins_ @pvh @orionspeaks !. We're researching universal version control -- here's a bit more about what that means and why we think it's worth exploring: 1/.
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16/ I'm glad Heroku exists and continues to be good. I never needed to learn Kubernetes or whatever, and I get to deploy my web apps with git push and zero configuration. So in the sense of stewardship and longevity, Salesforce has been a good home for Heroku.
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Unlike some other communities which seem to be all-in on capitalism (e.g. Silicon Valley) or all-in on public goods (e.g. open source, academia), tools for thought blends both. I like that.
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It's @MuseAppHQ launch day. 3 years in the making, counting time in the research lab and subsequent spinout. What's the German word for "a maker's sense of satisfaction that comes only from giving your heart and soul to a project over an extended period" ?.
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Thoughtful guide to designing CLI programs: Long live the command line!.
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Tools for thought overlaps heavily with HCI (human-computer interaction) academia, independent research, and open source. But also has its commercial component in products like @NotionHQ, @figmadesign , @RoamResearch, @mymind, @MakeSpaceTeam, @rem_note (and my own @MuseAppHQ).
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Sprout is an exciting alternative to Zoom because it inverts the model:. Instead of videochat with optional screenshare, you start with a shared workspace and optionally layer in videochat. Excited to keep watching this team's progress!.
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More current reads to get started learning about tools for thought:. ▸ How can we develop transformative tools for thought? by @michael_nielsen and @andy_matuschak . ▸ Computers and Creativity by @mollyfmielke.
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Here’s a @MuseAppHQ board I made as part of my writing process. The text cards, images, and videos are initially scattered all over. Eventually I find the flow of the piece, as indicated by the arrows.
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Another break from old-school productivity software is vibe. TfT software and its creators project their own unique vibe. There was only one vibe of these older tools (Word, Photoshop, etc): utilitarian.
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Projects completed so far in 2024. ☑ Universal version control with @inkandswitch.☑️ Co-organized @localfirstconf.☑️ Internal journalism with @elicitorg. More in the pipe, will share soon. .
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Semantic search is a new domain for me, so it was really fun to work with Panda (infra engineer @elicitorg) on this piece. More details in the thread:
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More subtly, TfT differs from classic productivity software which tends to focus on organizing. Calendars, todo lists, email, group chat, project management—all important, but these things are not directly helpful with thoughtfulness or creativity.
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making computers better.part 6 ‣ how we pay for software.
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The Tools for Thought label comes from Howard Rheingold's 1985 book: — and the visionaries referenced here (Engelbart, Kay, Licklider) are heroes for this community.
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making computers better.part 5 ‣ how we manage our attention.
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That points to why I'm joining and what my role is. There's a portfolio of high-risk, high-reward technical bets required for the new product. As GM (general manager) of Platform, I'll help manage that portfolio in collab with CTO @hursh and others.
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It's been six years since my last product launch. Excited to share Muse—and the philosophies behind it—with the world.
Muse will be launching publicly on Aug 27. 🎉. We'd like your help:.
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I got to work with @james_elicit on writing down Elicit's hiring practices for AI skills!. Some surprising takeaways:.• Language models are a medium that is fundamentally different from other compute mediums.• But AI engineers are not ML experts, nor is that their best.
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Writing is important work. Books, news articles, and science papers often involve many stakeholders and complex workflows. That's why we've chosen writing as our first domain for exploring the @inkandswitch vision of "version control for everything.".
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14/ The things I am most proud of making at Heroku shipped well after the acquisition. That is: the Cedar stack including multi-language support, arbitrary processes, streaming logs, and buildpacks. Plus So empirically seems like it was a good decision.
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Imagine if there was a page like Pitches developers on building fast, native apps for the Mac. Video and audio editing, writing, spreadsheets, 3D modelers, etc. Includes a gallery of real-world examples.
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17/ Hoping the same will be true for Slack i.e. continuing to exist and be good over the longer term. The Heroku precedent seems to indicate that's a plausible outcome.
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Pricing is one of the hardest problems I've faced in my career as an entrepreneur. At Heroku, for example, I consider it my personal failing that we didn't build a culture of price experimentation & iteration early on.
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8/ That's not a knock on SFDC or Heroku: values aren't right or wrong, they just are. But it created some collaboration friction. See also:
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Thinking about having a little less Google in my life. Chrome → Brave.web search → Duck Duck Go.Google Docs → Notion, Ulysses.Google Analytics → Fathom Analytics.Gmail → FastMail or ProtonMail?.Google Calendar → iCloud I guess.Firebase → ?.
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Short but sweet mini-interview with me. We cover origins of Heroku, Ink & Switch, and Muse, plus some zoom out on general technology trends.
We really enjoyed this episode of Coffee with Developers with Adam Wiggins (@_adamwiggins_), co-founder of Heroku!. We're releasing audio versions of the show every Monday and Thursday on @Buzzsprout, so check this out at 🙌
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Great technology, big vision, real customer needs. The startup magic happens when you have all three. http://t.co/TOuLtIMsbB.
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Being on an indie software team means I sometimes get to indulge my hunches on weird/cool projects. This experiment in filmmaking was a lot of fun:
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Muse alumni off to the next adventure!.
Welcome @juliaroggatz to @browsercompany ❣️. Julia was a cofounder & lead product engineer at @MuseAppHQ – one of the most finely crafted apps in the Apple ecosystem. Can't wait to bring her touch to Arc so soon👌 – and we're till hiring Senior Product Eng & EMs (swift/ios)!!.
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I'm tickled that this role seems to touch on many of my past experiences:. — Assembling cutting-edge technologies into a holistic product that works like magic for the end user is similar to my time as CTO at @Heroku. — Managing a portfolio of risky technical bets is much like.
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Why yes, attending the tldraw Monday planning meeting and watching @steveruizok sketch out the roadmap in realtime on a massive virtual whiteboard is every bit as fantastic as it sounds.
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Delightful article by @andy_matuschak on developing a design language for his mnemonic tools research: Since it’s only visible to patrons, a brief summary 👇🏼.
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I knew nothing about language model evaluations when I started working with the @elicitorg team. I got the chance to help with an early draft of their article on the topic (link below), here's a few observations I made during that process:. • Evals are like unit tests for.
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making computers better.part 3 ‣ how we store and collaborate on our work.
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Exactly why I think subscriptions are the right model for commercial software. Unlike a film, a book, or other creative outputs: software is never done.
"How can curl be that much code?" and "How can you keep doing so many bug-fixes after 23 years?" are two common questions that I think prove that we manage to keep an appearance of relative simplicity and consistency on the outside users see. A small win in itself I think.
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Document Context = like a ghostwriter that (1) helps flesh out the topic initially and then (2) runs integration tests against the resulting writing to make sure it makes sense for your audience.
Big Lex news!! 🥳. We totally redesigned our editor. You don't have to choose between "pretty but overly minimal" and "powerful but clunky" — @lexdotpage gives you the best of both. We also built a new custom instructions feature called "document context"
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What >50 person companies are successfully doing all-remote teams? Some I know of: Gitlab, Automattic, Elastic, Zapier.
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Berlin is “poor but sexy” — which makes it the perfect substrate for startups: http://t.co/lOvJFgAMq1.
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making computers better.part 7 ‣ how we create and deliver software.
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It’s a bit of a disaster for pro apps that there’s no golden path for native Mac app development. SwiftUI and Catalyst aren’t mature and aren’t fully native to Mac. AppKit is languishing. So any wonder that 1Password and others choose Electron?
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Johannes and I debrief on our experience organizing @localfirstconf. We discuss:.— Sync engines and next-frame UIs.— The high density of technical pioneers at the conf.— Revisiting the definition of local-first. Listen:
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Powerful piece on what's wrong with the API model for building software
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But the bar is incredibly high with this team. Hoping I can make a meaningful contribution in helping continue to make Arc the best power-user browser, and helping to bring the new product into the world. Exciting times ahead! ✨.
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4/ Also—and this might seem hard to remember looking back—Y Combinator was financially unproven. They had built a huge about of prestige the the Valley, but IIRC at the time they were still in the red. (@paulg correct me if I have that wrong).
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Read the full article: This piece came out of the unique set of design and engineering challenges related to Elicit's document type, which resembles a large spreadsheet but under the hood is more of a batch LLM workload manager. A few notable points. .
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Linking is a core feature for today's tools for thought. Here's the Muse take on links+backlinks:
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Shape Twitter into a more focused tool for idea discovery: a browser extension by the incomparable @geoffreylitt.
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2/ The decision to accept the acquisition was made by me, the two other founders, and the CEO. (With input from our investors, of course.). We saw it as a big funding round: never need to raise money again, and in the meantime get legitimacy for enterprise sales.
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You might know @inkandswitch’s work in areas like CRDTs and spatial interfaces. But this new publication is the first in a fresh area of research: programming that doesn't feel like programming.
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The last few episodes of Metamuse have been 🔥. You should subscribe:
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I’ve been using Mastodon as my Twitter replacement for the last couple of months. Here’s my review for other folks on tech/product/design Twitter who might be curious about making the leap.
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Muse 2 is right around the corner!. In the meantime, enjoy this lovely diagram by @seaofclouds.
······ 4 days until 2.0 ······. The creative process begins with raw inputs. And ends with a production output. Muse is for the messy middle: active thinking.
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Dropbox and iCloud both had the opportunity to be this, but aren’t. Innovating here is incredibly hard for structural reasons:
I'm super impressed by the approach @craftdocsapp is taking to data ownership. At the same time, I think they're hitting the limits of modern data storage platforms, and hinting at precisely why we need a new kind of "collaborative filesystem". Quick thread to explain:.
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