#23 Build With Intention | The One Thing AI Can't Give You

Hello Reader,

The barrier to building has collapsed.

You can have an engineering team in an afternoon. Launch a business over a weekend. Ship a product in a few days. AI has flattened the line between technical and non-technical, junior and senior.

So here's the uncomfortable question that follows.

In a world where everyone has the same tools, what makes us different?

If you'd rather watch than read, I covered all of this in a video this week:

Intention

I've been thinking about this question for months. Watching builders, founders, and engineers. Noticing who breaks through and who blends into the noise.

This week, I put my thinking into a video. Seven principles for standing out in the age of AI. You can watch it here.

But there's one principle I want to sit with you on today, because I think it's the one that matters most.

Taste.

Not skill. Not speed. Not knowledge. Taste.

Building is no longer the hard part. AI agents are shipping reasonably good apps in minutes. The code works. The UI is fine. The features are there.

What separates the work that gets noticed from the work that gets ignored is the taste behind it. And that's the one thing AI can't give you.

Insight

Let me try to define taste, because it's a word that gets used loosely.

Taste is the accumulated judgement of someone who has shipped real work and paid attention to what happened next.

It's the sense of why a button feels off. Why a sentence reads wrong. Why a product feels cheap even when nothing is technically broken.

Taste isn't an opinion. It's a trained instinct, built from years of getting things wrong and noticing what worked instead.

A killer demo isn't built by AI. It's built by a person with taste, using AI.

And here's the part: Taste doesn't come from study. You can't read about it. You can't take a course. The only way to build taste is to do the work, ship it publicly, and pay close attention to what you make.

Notice your own reactions. What do you like, and why. What do you hate, and why. Critique your own work honestly, not cruelly. Study the people whose work you admire and try to figure out what they're doing differently.

I'll be honest with you. I'm still building mine. Every product I've worked on has taught me something I didn't know I needed to learn. Every piece of writing has sharpened how I see other writing. The work is the school.

Action

Here's what I want you to try this week.

Pick one piece of work you've shipped recently. A product, a post, a feature, a piece of code, anything. Sit with it for ten minutes. Not to fix it. Just to notice it.

Ask yourself two questions.

What feels right about this?

What feels off, even if I can't say why?

Don't rush past the "I can't say why" part. That's where taste lives. Sit with the discomfort. Try to put words to it. You won't always succeed, and that's the point.

Taste isn't a gift. It's a habit.

If you want the full picture, check the link below. Taste is principle 3 (total of 7)

​Watch it here ↓​

If you find it useful, please subscribe to the channel, which would mean the world to me.

Hope this gives you something to carry into the week ahead. What are you building with intention?

Build well.
Sahil