Microsoft AI, model routing, and the move toward portable workflows

Microsoft AI, model routing, and the move toward portable workflows

Full Show Notes: https://www.theintelligenceagepodcast.com/845

Mark Smith and Joris de Gruyter, who has spent four years deep in the Microsoft AI ecosystem, discuss where AI has become useful recently and where the rough edges remain.

The conversation centers on model choice, vendor lock-in, local versus cloud inference, and how Markdown and open standards are becoming a portability layer for notes, skills, and AI workflows.

Key topics

• Joris says one of the biggest shifts has been the move from coding agents like Codex and Claude Code into non-coding work for information workers.
• He explains that tools like Microsoft Co-work and Copilot can be powerful, but users need enough technical savvy to get the most out of them.
• Mark and Joris compare cloud-first AI workflows with local, device-based workflows, especially for browser work, Playwright, and tasks requiring local access.
• They discuss Microsoft’s effort to make Co-work feel more like a first-class Microsoft product, with broader model support.
• Both argue that model choice matters less than before; skills, prompts, and workflow design are becoming the real intellectual property.
• They explore Markdown as a portable format for AI-era data, and why Microsoft supporting Markdown in SharePoint matters.
• Joris explains how OneNote, Obsidian, and Loop each solve part of the note-taking problem, but none fully combine syncing, portability, and API access.
• Mark describes using AI to clean up old data, emails, and archives rather than preserving everything indefinitely.
• They discuss vendor lock-in and the need for open standards that let people switch models and services.
• Joris makes the case for local inference as open-weight models improve and consumer hardware gets better.
• They close with a critique of major technology companies, arguing that strong hardware has not yet been matched by software and AI integration that meets user expectations.

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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith