Vamsi Narla

Working with agentskills.io and skills.sh reminds me of the “Not yet” line in The Matrix. Trinity is on a rooftop, in the cockpit of a helicopter she’s never seen. Neo asks if she can fly it. She says “Not yet” and gets a download of a pilot program (skill). A few seconds later she is airborne. I bring this up because recently as I code, I’ve been religiously adding skills to the code base and somehow that act of finding the right skill for work I’m doing — working with gemini live API, composio.dev or supabase postgres tables — reminds me of this scene from the Matrix. ...

A few months back a friend shared Steve Yegge’s Welcome to Gas Town post with our group and asked where everyone is. The post lays out a ladder for the AI coding process - eight stages, from “barely using it” to “running your own orchestrator.” Stage 1: Zero or near-zero AI Stage 2: Coding agent in the IDE, permissions on Stage 3: Same agent, YOLO mode Stage 4: Wide agent in the IDE - code is mostly diffs Stage 5: CLI, single agent, YOLO Stage 6: CLI, multi-agent, YOLO - three to five in parallel Stage 7: Ten-plus agents, hand-managed Stage 8: Building your own orchestrator When my friend shared the original post, I was transitioning to Stage 6/7 so this post is a bit delayed because I wanted to share the state only when I’m comfortable where I’m at. For me each step was a process, way of working and ultimately a mindset leap. ...

When an AI product produces good output, three things had to go right. When it produces bad output, the cause is almost always in one of those three things. The model itself, Claude or GPT or Gemini or whichever, is the most visible variable. It’s rarely the most consequential. ...

A few years ago I developed EFQ, a prioritization framework for deciding what to build. It stands for Effort, Frequency, Quality risk. I’ve been applying it to automation and agentic builds. It translates directly. What is EFQ? EFQ is modeled on the ICE scoring approach where you score ideas to quantitatively determine which to pursue. The difference: all three factors come from the customer’s perspective, not yours. Effort — How much time does this task take the customer? Minutes = 1, hours = 3, a full day = 5. ...

As a leader of a portfolio of products and areas, director or VP, the breath and depth of what you lead and with the team size you lead it is important to have the right structure in place to support the team(s) and the business. While right team structures are not a guarantee to success getting this part wrong can definitely create obstacles towards success. Recently adopted this model framework and thought it’s worth sharing. ...

There’s something that happens when the microphone turns on. You’ve read the articles. Watched the videos. You “know” what to say. Then the interviewer asks “Tell me about yourself” and your mind goes blank. That’s the gap between knowing and doing. Between theory and pressure. Here’s what actually builds confidence Practice 1: Rambling. Forgetting half your points. Realizing reading about STAR method ≠ using STAR method. Practice 5: Starting to structure answers. Still second-guessing. But at least finishing thoughts. ...

This NPR episode on AI job interviewers had one finding that stopped me cold. When given a choice between a human interviewer or AI, 78% of candidates chose AI. The economist running the study said he was “quite shocked.” Here’s what they measured Candidates interviewed by AI: ✓ 12% more likely to get job offers ✓ 18% more likely to start and stay in the job ✓ Half as likely to report feeling discriminated against Why the better outcomes? The candidates performed differently. More interactive responses. Richer vocabulary. Fewer filler words like “um” and “uh-huh.” ...

I’ve been watching a quiet movement against subscription software. The cost of building new products is approaching zero. AI tools, no-code platforms, and cloud infrastructure mean a solo founder can ship production-grade software in weeks. Competition for every utility category is exploding. And something interesting is happening with pricing models. My frugality mindset made me seek out lifetime alternatives for tools I knew I’d need long-term. When you’re cost-conscious, you do the math: $15/month = $180/year. For a social posting tool, a screenshot tool, a voice dictation? ...

After a talk I gave at NewTech NorthWest, someone asked: “Why interview prep? Why this problem?” Fair question. There are a lot of problems to solve. I had 5-6 different ideas that were energizing to solve. So I pulled up Maslow’s hierarchy and started mapping where each would sit. Most products optimize for one or two levels. Fitness apps touch physiological needs and esteem. Social apps hit belonging. Then I looked at jobs and careers. ...

AI coding has 10x my ship velocity. I’ve crossed a threshold where the bottleneck isn’t writing code, it’s knowing what code to write. This changes my job to be a reviewer and architect, for the most part. The new skill: iterative interrogation until you reach the simplest working solution. Here’s what I’m seeing in practice An agent’s first solution typically optimizes for completeness. It builds the general case. New tables, abstraction layers, API endpoints—all “technically correct.” ...