Libbie Frost

A few months ago Surya (@kickingkeys), a designer at Websim (@websim_ai) in New York, posted a project that went viral: “You can just RL a coding model to paint with javascript btw.” We sat down with Surya and were shocked to learn that he only wrote his first line of code in 2024 and had not heard of RL before January. We wanted to know how someone with that background goes from zero to training models in under two years, and whether anyone else could do that too. Our top 2 lessons from Surya: - Anyone can learn how these systems work if you are curious and willing to put in the time. - The best way to learn is to spend less time asking what AI can do to serve you and more time asking what it can do to serve the people around you. Some of Surya’s recent projects include training models to paint, setting up AI for a coffee shop owner so he has more time to write, and having agents watch him in the art studio and turn the footage into a reality-TV-style story. Surya is doing this for the love of the game. Read our full interview in the thread! cc @thisisrayouf

Having a “let’s talk about design” dinner tonight in nyc with lots of talented amazing people eek I’m so excited. cc @jackieberardo

Before founding @tldraw, Steve (@steveruizok) was an artist in Chicago painting landscapes and writing for magazines. After moving to England, he decided to bring his analytical and creative sides together, teaching himself to design and code and working through roles at @framer and Play. Five years after closing his studio, he was raising money for a company of his own. That company is tldraw, and if you have used an AI product recently, there is a good chance you have used it without knowing. tldraw is an infinite canvas, the deceptively simple whiteboard surface that lets you draw, arrange, and connect ideas in open space. Building one well is famously difficult, involving years of work on problems like selection, multiplayer sync, and the exact feel of an arrow or a stroke of ink. Today the canvas sits inside products from @Replit to @autodesk to @BlackRock, usually as the place where people do their more advanced, visual, and collaborative work when the chat window falls short. We admire Steve for his charming simplicity behind the engineering. The product only allows twelve colors, four sizes, and rectangles whose corners are ever so slightly, deliberately wonky, all in service of a clear idea about what a good creative tool should and should not do. In our conversation, we trace the arc of his career, the thinking behind the brand, his bet on the canvas as a natural home for AI agents (including a detour into fairy lore 🧚), and his newest experiments letting coding agents work directly on the canvas. cc @thisisrayouf

thank you jacob / @pierrecomputer for sending me down a very fun rabbit hole on MTV's iconic brand and their constant re-inventiveness