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#129: The challenges of working with AI in single-player mode | Andrew Somervell (Co-founder @ Hamster)

Dela

When every individual on your team can suddenly move ten times faster, what stops them from moving ten times faster in ten different directions?

In this episode of Supra Insider, Marc Baselga and Ben Erez sit down with Andrew Somervell, co-founder of Hamster, an AI-native workspace for product teams. Andrew and his co-founder built Taskmaster, the open-source tool that shipped plan mode before the major coding tools had it, and the question that kept coming back from users was how to take it to work. He explains why that pointed at a team problem rather than a tooling problem, and why he doesn’t believe PMs want to live in a CLI.

They explore the artifacts Andrew thinks a team actually needs, why he killed the PRD and what he ended up building in its place, the three meetings his team runs every week, and Ben’s repeated pressing on the harder question underneath all of it: what genuinely changes when AI becomes multiplayer rather than a set of people each working alone with it.

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In this episode, we covered the following topics:

* (01:33) How Taskmaster led to Hamster: solving context locally, then hearing “how do I take this to work?”

* (05:55) The Cursor Cafe conversation, and why he let go of the open-source moat

* (12:41) Marc and Ben walk through their own clunky brief workflow, and Andrew’s verdict

* (15:35) The three artifacts: a brief for stakeholders, a spec for engineering, a plan for delivery

* (21:52) Killing the PRD, and the graveyard of draft briefs that followed

* (23:28) Their three meetings a week, and why discovery is the one he loves

* (25:27) Treating ideas like pets, and what happens when anyone can ship a huge PR

* (28:03) Direction setting: strategy on a page, tied to live metrics

* (32:14) Ben presses on what’s actually different about multiplayer versus single-player

* (35:33) Andrew’s answer: alignment first, then speed and cohesion

* (40:35) The nine challenges that surfaced from 70-plus calls with product leaders

* (55:43) Ben’s takeaway on why two co-founders stay aligned, and what breaks when you add people

* (1:05:09) Gratitude Corner: Andrew thanks his co-founder Eyal and his Supra group

* And more!

Links:

* Hamster: https://tryhamster.com/

* Hamster community Slack: https://tryhamster.com/slack

* Eyal Toledano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyaltoledano

* Andrew Somervell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsomervell/

* Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaselga/

* Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benerez/

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