Thanks for the assumption of good faith. We had no intent to astroturf. Some of the students from cohort one were discussing the negativity of the HN thread on the course discord server. It seems that several took it upon themselves to come share their experience. From the comments whose names I recognize, I can assure that these are all real people who have first-hand knowledge of what they're posting about.
but, honestly, I hope that list makes you see why we had a hard time figuring out how to summarize what solveit is. For example, I use it for research and writing all the time, but you'd have a hard time seeing why a notebook plus a private VPS would do much for that use case. But it does! Having a general-purpose computing environment is just very, very useful in a wide range of situations.
I think if you give it a try, you'll be surprised. It is a course and a tool and a way of thinking. We often struggle to find concise language to describe something that is fundamentally new. Maybe after you've tried it, you'll be able to help us explain it better.
I'm deep in category creation myself, so I know exactly where you're at.
But as I'm sure you know, you need to get the language right in order to create the desire to try.
I don't personally have AI fatigue. Nor do I have the time to spend 5 weeks taking a course to use a tool that I don't have enough context for.
Being in Australia timezone wise, and launching a start-up doesn't help.
This doesn't mean in any way that I'm not rooting for your success. But as you know, the language of understanding something new is a long iterative process.
I thought it might be helpful to post a link to one of my favorite writeups from the beta cohort for solveit (last year). It's written by Chris Thomas:
Being among the first 1000 people to experience SolveIt has felt like witnessing the early days of a significant shift in how we work with AI. As someone who is a seasoned programmer, I have seen many programming paradigms and the advance of AI coding tools. What makes SolveIt different is not just another tool or framework - it is a fundamental rethinking of the human-AI relationship.
As I look at my experience with SolveIt, I think this is a better more sustainable approach to AI-assisted development. The current trend of ever more powerful models generating ever larger blocks of code feels unsustainable. SolveIt offers a different path. By maintaining human agency, working in comprehensible increments and building genuine understanding at each step, it creates a positive feedback loop where both human and AI capabilities grow stronger over time. This represents a partnership model that builds competence over time rather than creating dependence.
The implications extend far beyond programming. Whether I am implementing computer vision algorithms, exploring culinary science, or writing technical articles - the same principles apply. Small steps, continuous understanding, iterative refinement and always keeping the human as the agent in the process.
Hey everyone, Eric Ries here. solveit is the AI environment I personally have been using every day for months, not just for code but for writing and research, too.
it’s solved all the problems and frustrations I’ve had with both vibecoding and the limitations of the chatbot interface for doing deep work that requires concentration + the ability to understand the artifacts you are producing
and, as a special bonus, people in this course will get a sneak preview of the new book I’m working on. we’re going to use it both to teach some of the concepts from it (on how to create mission-driven long-term companies) and how to use solveit for longform writing projects
happy to answer any questions here, for folks that want to learn more,
(For those that don't recognise the name, Eric is the creator of The Lean Startup, and also founded the Long Term Stock Exchange. He's the co-founder of Answer.AI, which has built the solveit platform, and which fast.ai is now part of.)
And this prompted me to record a video showing some of my random non-work usage recently, to give a feeling for what the app looks like :) https://youtu.be/Y2B27hdKMMA
Here is a video showing off using solveit for creating a web app. https://youtu.be/DgPr3HVp0eg?t=3120 To reiterate other comments, this is more about the methodology than the tool, but it is fun to see the tool in action too.
Thanks Eric (and Jeremy and Johno). The course details are a bit sparse on the sign-up site. What's the expected time commitment for the course over the 5 weeks? And how useful would the course be if you missed a few of the courses and had to catch up later?
Everything is recorded so it doesn't matter at all if you catch up later. Some people in the preview course didn't start until we finished! Obviously you'll get better interaction with the community if you're following along at the same time, but that's the only real issue.
I'd say budget a minimum 4 hours homework + 3-4 hours lesson watching time.
Prescient, really. Almost all of us knowledge workers today work in factories where the production lines are invisible. It's why we struggle so much with concepts (like work-in-progres inventory or product development flow) that are relatively easy to understand when there is a physical factory to look at.
As some of you probably know, I spent a number of years working with GE, which included plenty of time at the legendary GE Research lab in Niskayuna. So it was a special thrill to see this piece connecting Answer.AI to the long history of R&D labs. Our ideas about R&D are kind of out of fashion in our current age, but I hope this says more about the age than it does about the quality of the ideas. Happy to answer questions in this thread, if there are any fellow R&D-lab-enjoyers here.
I've never been a big fan of patents as they've historically applied to software. But this is a public policy issue, not something an individual company can fix. So I've always been content to follow patent best practices, even when they aren't the most logical.
In terms of tech transfer, Jeremy has quite a bit of experience with collaborating with the best academic labs, especially in machine learning, so I expect we will do a lot of that kind of partnering.
Makes sense. We have to work within the system as we find it. Would be great to see the system evolve in a way that would support efforts like yours though!
