Getting past the "ooo shiny" stage of AI and building for real

Why is it important?

Every few weeks, a new model drops or a new feature makes its way into your favorite chatbot, and suddenly you can plan, design, launch, and maintain your MVP in one place. The internet goes crazy, and suddenly there are competitors releasing their version. Then a few weeks later, everyone is back to the same problems they had before. Yes, the tools got better, but ultimately these are just tools and the real problems are still there to solve.

What this shows is that the tedious steps to creating things have now become a commodity. Keep in mind, though, that this "creation" is merely an iteration of existing things and not necessarily something new.

Once the cool and wow factor wear off, we're left with a tool upgrade and now need to figure out how to use those tools.

What this actually means for you

I visited a Brooklyn tech expo event a few months back. It was genuinely interesting, real founders aiming to solve problems they cared about. But one experience stuck with me.

A founder was demoing a product that did meeting scheduling, trip booking, and a handful of other things. These are real tasks. But the sheer lack of focus in his solution made it clear: he had found that AI could do cool things and decided to package what AI can do into a product. He was not solving a defined problem. He was building a house of cards on top of AI capabilities, letting the tool lead instead of the insight.

That is the "ooo shiny" trap in its purest form.

Instead of stepping back to use AI as a research and discovery tool, to find legitimate gaps, validate real pain, and identify underserved audiences, he packaged what AI could do and called it a product. Built by AI, for AI. Not for humans.

How does this help you?

Understanding that AI is a tool, and not a replacement for humans and genuine human interactions, is critical to understanding how to position yourself in this ever-changing world.

As an entrepreneur, founder, co-founder, and creator, it's imperative that you remember human-centered design in everything you create. Creating solutions just because AI can do it is just adding to the token economy and not the human economy.

What does this look like when founders get this right?

One of our clients has very deep knowledge of their users and has leaned on us for mobile development. Over the last several months, we helped them set up their development harness, establish best practices, and learn how to use Claude Code effectively. With that foundation in place, they used their understanding of their customers to completely revamp their platform and deliver a mobile application. It took three to five months of real iteration and debugging. But the work was rooted in problems their audience actually needed solved. They are now fielding multiple acquisition offers early in the process because they used AI as the tool, not the founder.

Another client used AI tools to iterate on UI and UX choices. They maintained the vision, direction, and north star while AI helped to produce documentation and mockups. The key was that they held the wheel. We worked closely with them to align the output to their brand voice, style guide, and roadmap. The result was a product that spoke clearly to their audience, not one that reflected AI's generic interpretation of what a product in their category should look like.

Both of these founders used AI as a tool. They brought the domain expertise, the creative energy, and the human judgment. AI brought the execution support.

Quick checklist (yes/no)

Before you ship your next AI-assisted thing, run through this honestly.

• Are you building something that is guided by you or are you following AI's direction?
• Does your solution solve problems or add value to humans?
• Are you separating the supportive role of AI from your authoritative role?
• Are you aware of the various ways you can structure your AI tools? For example, as a critical thinking aid or as a devil's advocate?
• Are you aware that AI is NOT creative but rather derivative of historical information and that creativity and novelty come from you?

How can we help?

We constantly go through regular "oooooh shiny moments" due to the constant release of new models, tools, and approaches to using AI. We find that aligning on AI as a tool really helps to mitigate fear, and reducing overdependence leads to quicker mastery. From our AI tooling to the setup of review and editorial pipelines that work on our creative and development work, we have learned, and are still learning, how to box AI into the right lane and keep it there.

If you or your team are struggling with leaning on AI without losing your identity, we can help to ensure you're set up and using AI effectively without giving away the essence of who you, your company, or team are.

Run through the checklist above. If two or more answers give you pause, let's talk.