Episode 363

Every week there’s a new “AI is about to kill X” headline. This week it was Thomas Dohmke — GitHub’s former CEO — launching Entire, a distributed Git network built for the AI-agent era. It lets developers mirror their GitHub repos to regional servers so AI coding agents can pull code without hammering one central repo. But here’s the nuance the headlines skip: GitHub stays the system of record. This isn’t a GitHub killer, it’s infrastructure solving a real scaling problem AI agents are creating.
Same week, Business Insider covered Scape — a YC-backed startup layering AI on top of your existing Gmail or Outlook to handle drafting and triage. Not a Gmail killer either — it’s built to work with Gmail, not against it.

What both stories miss is that momentum is hard to overcome without real pressure. HEY.com is my go-to example. Basecamp built a genuinely better email product — mobile-first, thoughtfully designed — and it still hasn’t dented Gmail. Two reasons: Gmail is fine, not great, not amazing, just fine. And Gmail is free; HEY costs money.

I want AI to force incumbents to rethink legacy products. But whether the pressure that finally does it comes from scrappy new entrants or from Gmail/GitHub just bolting on AI features themselves — jury’s still out.