AI News & Strategy Daily with Nate B. Jones

Build a Token Burn Dashboard to Track What Your AI Actually Does

For deeper playbooks and analysis: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/ What's really happening when people brag about burning AI tokens? The common story is that token burn is waste, a status flex, or just another confusing AI metric - but the reality is that it can become a feedback loop for delegated intelligence, better AI habits, and faster learning. In this video, I share the inside scoop on building a token burn dashboard and what it taught me about using AI well. Why more agents and more tokens can lead to better answers How a usage dashboard turns scattered work into a learning loop What top token days reveal about real AI fluency Where public charts and shared accountability make people better together Why the next edge is not just using AI, but studying how you use it If you are an operator, builder, marketer, executive, or anyone trying to get more value out of AI, the shift is simple: stop treating usage as a vanity metric and start treating it as evidence you can learn from. Subscribe for daily AI strategy and news. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Opus 4.8 Won Our Benchmark. I Still Wouldn't Use It For Everything.

For deeper playbooks and analysis: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/ [https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/] What's really happening with Opus 4.8, Claude Code, and the AI model race in 2026? The common story is that a stronger model automatically becomes the default tool — but the reality is that harnesses, compute, reliability, and workflow design now matter just as much as raw model capability. In this episode, I share the inside scoop on why Opus 4.8 is a strong but complicated release, why it is not automatically my daily driver, and why Codex currently fits certain long-running agent workflows better. * Why Opus 4.8 reads more like a checkpoint release than the Mythos moment people expected * How reasoning effort can become unpredictable when a model overthinks * What a harness is, and why it now decides daily-driver behavior * Why Claude Code's /workflows command is a real agent-pattern innovation * Where knowledge workers and engineering leaders should focus in the second half of 2026 This matters for builders, executives, CTOs, CIOs, and operators trying to decide where to place AI budget. The practical question is not which model wins forever. It is how you architect your work so you can route tasks to the model and harness that best drive the outcome. Subscribe for daily AI strategy and news. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Prove Your Value at Work in the AI Era: Judgment Artifacts

For deeper playbooks and analysis: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/ [https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/] What's really happening when AI makes everyone's work look polished? The common story is that AI makes people more productive -- but the reality is that it also makes old evidence less trustworthy. In this episode, I share the inside scoop on how to prove you are good at work when outputs are easier to generate than ever. * Why portfolios are no longer enough on their own * How whiteboard-style conversations reveal judgment * What situation, decision, risk, and change show about real work * Where Talent Board-style evidence fits into careers and hiring * How to make your reasoning visible without over-performing If you hire, manage, build, or are trying to grow into a new role, the shift matters: the scarce signal is no longer just what you produced. It is whether people can see how you understood the problem, handled tradeoffs, and improved the work. Subscribe for daily AI strategy and news. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

How I AI: My Weekly Codex Experiments

For deeper playbooks and analysis: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/ [https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/] What's really happening when AI stops being a chat box and starts becoming a working context system? The common story is that better prompting is about clever wording — but the reality is that the work is moving toward cleaner context, better task shape, and agents that can stay oriented through long runs. In this video, I share the inside scoop on how I'm using AI this week: assembling context windows, using Codex on local files, and shifting from prompt engineering into collaborative task definition. Why local folders can become clean context windows How Codex changes long document, spreadsheet, and code workflows What changed in prompting after agentic workflows got better Where Claude still fits for polish, salience, and design Why multi-threaded drafting now feels practical For operators, builders, marketers, and executives, the important shift is not just which model wins. It's learning how to structure the work so the model can help you think, execute, review, and iterate. Subscribe for daily AI strategy and news. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Product Management When Software Creation Is Cheap

For deeper playbooks and analysis: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/ [https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/] Product management is changing as AI makes first versions cheaper. The obvious advice is that PMs should prototype more, but the deeper shift is about judgment: deciding what should exist, what should be deleted, who a product is for, what standard it needs to meet, and what the company is willing to rely on. Nate walks through the move from rationing scarce engineering to classifying software abundance, including the Prototype Commons, production class ladders, and why promotion and demotion become core product work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.