- AI with Alec Newsletter
- Posts
- AIWA "The One Thing" #02: This is what Tobi Lutke meant by "'reflexively' reaching for AI." Intuition developed through hands-in-the-dirt execution.
AIWA "The One Thing" #02: This is what Tobi Lutke meant by "'reflexively' reaching for AI." Intuition developed through hands-in-the-dirt execution.
Alec Coughlin
January 18, 2026
Tobi Lutke’s tweet about his MRI experience and what he meant by “‘reflexively’ reaching for AI” is everything.
Reflexive AI isn’t a personality trait or a natural talent. It’s a muscle built through repetition.
Tobi, founder + CEO of Shopify, didn’t wake up one day thinking “I should build an MRI viewer with Claude.” He’s been hands-in-the-dirt long enough that it was obvious to him and his AI intuition.
It also didn’t hurt that Tobi was the OG of the “AI-first memo” movement. (“Pretty sure the leaked memo from Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke is about to become required enterprise AI reading…” 04.07.25)
You don’t think your way into AI intuition. You build your way into it.
No question Chase Clark gets this.
As Lead UX Researcher at Calm, he helped 10X his team’s Product Innovation cycles by using Lovable, Supabase and Calm’s actual app logic to test real features with real users.
Based on performance data, pick the winners, throw the rest away.
No hypotheticals. Just reps.
The barrier to building this muscle just dropped.
Last week, Anthropic launched Claude Cowork.
Claude Code’s impact on engineering is already documented.
Anthropic’s own engineers report using Claude in 60% of their work with a 50% productivity boost, 2-3x higher than a year ago.
What if Claude Cowork does for everyone else what Claude Code is doing for engineers?
Claude Cowork just made the path to “Becoming an AI-First Company: Ontology Aware Intelligent System, GTM Use Case” May 2025 a whole lot easier.
What happens when ambitious companies light up their GTM teams with Claude Cowork at scale?
Even a conservative 25% productivity boost changes the top and bottom line.
The gap between AI-curious and reflexively-AI isn’t as wide as it feels. It’s just reps.
Claude Cowork is a good place to start stacking them.
Let’s go. You’ve got this.