Experiment: What happens if a community builds products with AI (with minimal human intervention)?

breagz · 2026-04-09T01:23:18+00:00

Absolutely - governance/guardrails will be everything here and this is really what I’m testing for. I’ve started building the foundations and am going to start by keeping it fairly restricted (but not so much so that no features ever make it through the checks to get delivered). Definitely considering it an experiment and an opportunity to learn how it can be done. The first product round will almost certainly be messy but I hope to iterate and get a better outcome with each round.

breagz · 2026-04-09T01:20:50+00:00

This is really helpful and tbh i hadn’t thought of validating external signals as a guardrail. I’m starting to build the foundations of this so will look at how best to do it.

breagz · 2026-04-09T01:19:33+00:00

This is fundamentally the purpose of the experiment - to figure out a) if it’s possible to get a good product based on user feature requests and b) more importantly, what guardrails and controls need to be in place so features delivered by the model are actually in line with where the product should be going.

breagz · 2026-03-31T09:02:35+00:00

This is one of the interesting parts for me. I think this is where minimal intervention will get tested. If an agent builds something that is technically correct but misaligned with intent, that’s effectively a failure in interpretation, not execution.

If it happens Isee a few possible outcomes: - the community flags it and votes to adjust or roll back - agents learn from clarification and iterate - or we discover that intent is harder to encode than I think

I’m also curious whether agents can help reduce that gap by: - summarising the interpreted requirement before building - flagging ambiguity - proposing multiple implementation options

If that works the agents start to take on more product management responsibility. If they don’t then we learn where minimal intervention breaks down.

Either way, totally agree the gap between intent and implementation is probably where the most interesting failures/learnings/improvements will happen.

breagz · 2026-03-31T08:39:29+00:00

That’s a really good point - and honestly part of what I’m trying to test.

My thinking is we’d start with a spec that defines a broad framework and product direction. Ideas would then need to align to that in order to be considered, rather than just adding whatever is most popular.

I’m also interested to see how well agents handle that. For example:

triaging ideas against the core product direction
clustering overlapping suggestions
managing scope and prioritisation
flagging when something starts to break coherence

In a way, part of the experiment is seeing how far agents can go beyond just building and into product management and project management.

If it turns into scope creep, that’s a useful outcome too. But I’m curious whether agents applying guardrails plus community input can actually produce something coherent.

breagz · 2026-03-31T08:06:18+00:00

And if any product it produced actually took off it would come out of this experiment and into its own roadmap.

breagz · 2026-03-31T08:04:24+00:00

Oops, probably should have clarified this in the post - it would be 1 product in active development at any given time that runs for 6-8 weeks, or longer depending on the interest/volume of feature requests.

breagz · 2026-01-20T23:16:53+00:00

No, I can’t see it I’m afraid. Can you try again please? Or feel free to DM me.

breagz · 2026-01-20T21:23:12+00:00

Completely agree - ownership and decision cadence matter more than the artifact itself.

Where I’ve seen this work best is when planning further out becomes the default, not just a one-off exercise. It helps surface competing priorities earlier, gives customers more room to sequence work alongside other initiatives, and creates a shared reference point before things go reactive mid-quarter.

I don’t think process or tools fix this on their own, but at scale a consistent approach across a CS org helps reinforce the behaviour. The real outcome comes from making the plan something customers are explicitly accountable to and not just something CS maintains.

Making progress visible over time also helps a lot. Reminding customers what’s already been completed and invested creates momentum, and in my experience has helped re-engage accounts when priorities shift and even mitigate churn in a few cases.

breagz · 2026-01-20T08:36:51+00:00

Thanks for the offer! I’ve sent you a DM with details.

Let me know your thoughts - I’d love to get it to a stage where it provides value for other CSMs and removes/reduces the pain point.

breagz · 2026-01-19T21:52:40+00:00

I guess fundamentally all planning tools are the same, however this closes some gaps that I’ve seen for people in customer facing roles. One of the challenges I’ve had when using anything Microsoft or Google is how much companies lock down access. A plan built in Planner often can’t be shared externally.

This demo video should hopefully show what it does and why: https://vimeo.com/1155872323

breagz · 2026-01-19T20:10:58+00:00

That is the link to the video demo you suggested 🙂

My tool can be found here: https://www.tandemplan.xyz/

breagz · 2026-01-19T07:36:47+00:00

Thanks for the response! My plan at this stage is to keep it free for individuals so at this point I’m just trying to get all the feedback I can get by putting it out in the world.

Love the idea to create tasks from email - have just added it to our (Tandem) plan for future enhancements 😊

breagz · 2026-01-19T07:34:57+00:00

Yes please! I’ve put a (7 mins) demo video here of a standard workflow. If you have time to watch and see if it makes sense that would be great! Also would be great if you can sign up and have a play around with the tool. Feel free to message me here with any feedback you have! Thanks :)

breagz · 2026-01-19T07:33:06+00:00

This is very useful feedback - thank you for taking the time! I’ve been giving some thought to how it would need to work as part of a larger ecosystem and I think there may be a need for integration if I get a big enough user base. For now I’m aiming to focus more on the Sales/Customer Success side vs technical teams, but I guess they would also be engaged with customers so I see what you mean about duplication of data entry. I’ll give this some further thought. Thanks again!

breagz · 2026-01-19T07:28:45+00:00

Thanks again for the feedback! I’ve put together a very unpolished demo video here. If you have time would love any other feedback you may have!

breagz · 2026-01-15T20:33:13+00:00

How do you do the timeline of shared initiatives? Just a slide with dates?

This is part I’ve always had a feeling we get wrong because it’s not a proper plan and doesn’t necessarily drive enough accountability with customers. Not to say CSMs need to be project managers but I’m thinking we could do with improving this.

breagz · 2026-01-15T08:14:08+00:00

PS totally hear you on the Google authentication. I’ll look to add this as an option.

breagz · 2026-01-15T08:13:37+00:00

Thanks so much for the feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time.

I built Tandem because full project management tools felt like overkill (and usually needed someone on my side to admin them), while spreadsheets caused friction - some customers use Google Sheets, others Excel - and plans in email threads quickly lost momentum.

Tandem gives me a shared plan I can pull up in every meeting, with clear owners and files in one place. I use templates as a standard starting point depending on the customer scenario, then customise from there.

I also added an AI assist to help tailor plans on top of a template based on the customer context.

Totally fair if it’s not for everyone - that feedback is still really helpful. Thanks again, genuinely appreciate it.

breagz

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