High Taste Testers: OpenAI Shipped Everything. What Actually Works?

Six AI power users compare what actually works—and what falls apart once you start using it. Ben Davis, Ben Hylak, Dex Horthy, Allison Durham, Alex Volkov, and swyx discuss OpenAI DevDay, coding agents, personal assistants, model preferences, and the gap between impressive AI capabilities and useful products. From Pi-powered personal agents and decision models to subagents, context management, prompt injection, and assistants that can spend money: what deserves a place in your daily workflow? CHAPTERS 00:00 High Taste Testers 01:26 OpenAI DevDay: Dots, Spaces, and product execution 10:28 Great models versus great products 14:39 Agents versus assistants 18:08 Building a personal assistant with Pi 21:07 Decision models, Jev, and predictive interfaces 32:46 Model speed, writing quality, and subagents 37:29 Agent loops, forks, and context management 43:19 Haiku, Muse Spark, and Grok 50:00 Local models and coding benchmarks 54:09 Prompt injection and assistants taking action 57:50 Tools, payments, and assistant overload 1:02:16 Delegation, computer use, and everyday workflows 1:10:48 AI hardware and closing thoughts THE TESTERS Ben Davis — x.com/davis7 Ben Hylak — x.com/benhylak Dex Horthy — x.com/dexhorthy Allison Durham — x.com/allisonology Alex Volkov — x.com/altryne swyx — x.com/swyx More from Latent Space: latent.space Sponsorship and business inquiries: business@latent.space