A symbolic split-scene illustration showing the evolution of creative work. On the left: a designer/developer in the early 2000s deeply focused on mastering a single tool. Photoshop palettes, Dreamweaver windows, FTP apps, and thick manuals surround them in a cluttered office. On the right: the same person years later in a clean futuristic workspace orchestrating multiple AI agents through lightweight prompts and skill files. Instead of mastering one application, glowing “recipes” and workflow diagrams float between AI systems. The transition visually represents moving from software expertise to orchestration expertise. Detailed cinematic composition, realistic textures, thoughtful and slightly philosophical tone

Losing My Loyalty

5 min read

I distinctly remember my first HTML editor: CoffeeCup. It was the first thing that I used outside of the Windows text editor and I loved it. It took a very long time and a bunch of posts and screenshots from people using Dreamweaver to get me to switch from it. I’ve repeated that a few times with text editors, graphic design apps, FTP apps, and so on. I used Photoshop for web things for around 15 years and had some other long-running editor loyalty.

Now, my days are filled with generative tools and I’m almost refusing to be loyal. It seems like a mistake to lock yourself into one harness, model suite, agent flow, etc. I pay for all the big frontier model companies and use their product harnesses: OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Plus, I’ve had a free year of Cursor and a handful of other tools, like Warp.

I bought a Mac Mini, set up OpenClaw, and even shared what I did in blog posts and a webinar. Hermes got popular and I’ve been using that and OpenClaw for a few weeks. Now, Codex shipped its remote option and Claude also has a remote option on my plan.

I don’t think there’s a reason to have the agents anymore, so I’m going to try a week of using the frontier modals in their harnesses directly. However, I won’t remove the old things like I did with software. I still want to see what OpenClaw is shipping and try it out, same with Hermes and the others.

I also saw this workflow that I may want to try, where I have Hermes orchestrating handoffs between Claude and Codex.

Nothing is “Over” or “Dead” or the “Thing killer”

We’re in the pioneering stage of agentic workflows. I roll my eyes and almost don’t want to click on every article or video that describes one thing’s latest release as being the end for everything else. But, I know they do it just cause it increases engagement, so I still read and listen.

Companies are shipping at an insane pace. Nearly every day, something drops that is worth trying out in my workflows or evaluating for replacing them. The limits to me are primarily budget related. I have the budget allocated for things I use now, but I hope to reduce that even more. One of the few things I’ve fully removed is Midjourney. Nano Banana 2 and now OpenAI images are on par for my needs and I’m already paying for them. In that way, maybe one thing is “over” for me, but if something amazing shipped in Midjourney I’d still grab a sub and try it out. No loyalty.

Skills > Expertise

With a lack of loyalty, you lose on growing expertise with a tool, but I think that’s ok. There was a time where being expert-level with your editor or Photoshop was very important. I believe that time is mostly gone, at least for the work that I do. Orchestration feels like the new expertise that you want to grow and everything else is about both kinds of skills. Growing your personal skills with orchestrating multiple tools is one, but what I’m really talking about is creating skills for agents. At Nash AI Week recently, Chris Thomas shared a great quote. He prefaced it with an example of how his Nan knew how to make wonderful biscuits and the entire process was in her head. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like:

Every team has people with recipes in their head for completing tasks. Your job is to get it out of there and into a skill file.

Creating skills is my primary focus now, both in my personal projects and at work. It’s a new way of thinking for me, but somewhat feels like how it always should have been. Even before generative tools, it seems like a short document on how to perform certain tasks would’ve been valuable. Now, we get the dual benefit if it being documentation and instructions for an agent to do the work.

Change Management Can Be Hard

A few months ago, I was talking with a teammate about the lack of change I was observing with existing workflows. He is a team lead and had a sobering response “Change management is hard”. I’ve since seen that a bunch of times since, in discussions with teams figuring their way through all of the changes surrounding us.

I think it’s easy, but only at an individual level. Trying to change others can be an exercise in futility, but you can make small changes for yourself right away. Not be hokey, but “be the change you want to see”. Be disloyal to your tools, improve your orchestration expertise, create and update skill files for agents. At least, that’s what I’m trying!