What do they got? A big team, lots of money, a strong brand, seemingly unlimited resources, panache, reputation, all that. They’re established. They’re your competitors. You want to look away, but you see them everywhere. Their ads on your social, their name in the media, your dream clients on their website. But you know what else they got? Bigger company bloat. Overflowing obligations. Narratives to uphold. Appearances to maintain. Entitlement. Too much overhead. They’re slow. They’re conservative. They talk too much. They’ve stopped taking risks. They’re resting on their laurels, gliding on their reputation. They’re on defense. What they’ve really got is a lot to lose. What do you got? Hunger. Drive. Grit. Scrappiness. Independence. You’re on offense. You don’t have enough, which is why you’re dangerous. You have no choice but to be clever and creative. To make up for what you don’t have with something they can’t have: The underdog spirit. You can move. You can adjust. You can adapt. You can get it done while they’re still stuck deciding what to do. Small is not a stepping stone. Small is not less than. It’s greater than. It’s faster than. It’s better than. Savor your position. You don’t get to be the underdog forever. The baton will be passed. But for now, it’s your magic wand. Use it. We stand with the underdogs.

The best part of making software is the making the software part.

One of my favorite accounts to follow here on X.

I miss album covers

A much better Bonfire video from @chadneidt. I didn't even realize you could do some of the things he showed! Thanks Chad!

One of my favorite HEY features is the integrated calendar that takes the default "yes, no, maybe" invite conventions and actually presents them in visual context so you can make an informed decision. When you get an invite in an email, HEY renders that day, that event, and any other events you have that day right below the email. It shows you where it'll fit in context. I don't have other events this day, but if I did they'd show up there too. Everything's clear, colorful, contextual, and visual. As it should be, but as it's never been.

Dan gets it.

This is an incredible way to drive work. At 37signals we've always loved the way Basecamp allows you to "work in the open" where everything is visible to your coworkers. It makes it easy to see what someone is up to, spot when they might be stuck, and chime in with a novel idea. But it's not just about collaboration, every decision, all the discussion, and every image from sketch to final review are kept for posterity. Now, we're able to bring the same transparency to working with agents. It's all in Basecamp for the benefit of the team instead of lost inside everyone's Claude session. Oh and did I mention it's fun?! For example, you can chat about a feature idea, mention the agent, and it'll kick off a project, add some to-dos and start working. Super powerful and all in Basecamp's familiar tools. I'm loving this.

Who knew that 22 years ago when we launched Basecamp we'd have built the absolute best framework to work with humans and agents in the same place. Here's @bitsweat talking to Clawdito (an agent) in Basecamp, assigning it work, getting responses, asking it to follow up, creating PRs, the whole thing. And here's @jasonzimdars working with Marie (an agent) and JZ bot (another agent, his agent) in a comment thread on a message board. Can do this anywhere in Basecamp... on a to-do, card, file, document, photo, anywhere you can talk to humans async or real time, you can talk with your agents the same way. And they can respond the same way humans do, right in line, right where you'd expect, with all the context in the thread. We've been running and refining this in our account for a while now. Anyone can do this today using the CLI. But we're also making it easier for people to create agent-users within Basecamp. Stay tuned for a lot more on this front.

How’s everyone going with adding a CLI to your apps after @dhh’s Rails World challenge? 😄 Deadline’s tomorrow.

Good software is good. Great software is fun.

We just launched a feature we began exploring a decade+ ago, but never released it. It was originally destined for Campfire, our chat tool. The feature is called Bonfire. Now that Campfire is built into Basecamp, Bonfire belongs there. And today it's live for all Basecamp 5 customers. What's Bonfire? I put together a short video to show you what it is and how it works:

Nice seeing the Lemania 5100's layout back after all this time. I love me a central minutes chrono. @Hodinkee revives the legendary Porsche Design Military chronograph with the Utility: le.hodinkee.com/the-porsche-…

Wait till you see the LinkedIn integration!

And it's all Markdown, too. Alternatives, overflow, etc.

You also notice that the lines underneath the alternatives aren’t perfectly straight. I wanted them to feel a bit more like an editor’s pen, something a little human, a little wavy, imperfect, just slightly, just a little bit, not too much, but just something that gave it a bit of a different feel than just your standard straight and perfect computer-generated underline.

By the way, you’ll hear little sounds in the video when I’m arrowing through different alternatives. There are two tones. One’s higher pitched, which you’re gonna hear most of the time, and one is a lower pitched sound. The lower pitch sound is a return to the original. This way, I know when I’m back to the original version I was on before I began playing.

Destroy any website. Fun! The best kind of internet. (via @daringfireball) destroy.spritefusion.com/

Ryan Rusnak left Gmail (and a short Proton trial) for HEY, and wrote it up: ryanrusnak.com/getting-my-pe…