More or Less · Topics · Episode #164
Email Is the Best Agent Interface (and Jess Builds an App in One Email)
Clip from the full recording, 2:50–6:38 · download mp4 · watch at this point on YouTube
Sam argues email beats texting or calling your agent, and Jess, the self-described least agentic of the four, ships a password-protected headline-scoring app for The Information's editors from a single email sent before she got out of bed.
The episode opens on how each host actually works with AI agents. Brit runs five or six at a time across two displays and routes one agent to another. Sam says he doesn’t count them at all: they’re “a cloud of things being done,” and he talks to his over email. That kicks off a fight about interface. Sam’s case is that email’s multi-threading is what makes it the best agent channel, and that anyone texting or calling their agent “doesn’t get it.” Brit has multi-threading in every harness she uses; Dave shrugs that everyone should manage it however they like.
Jess then tells the story that defines the segment. Annoyed at The Information’s headlines getting less care as the news cycle speeds up, she emailed her agent, trained on the publication’s archive, and asked for an app that suggests three headlines per story and scores an editor’s own headline out of five. Twenty minutes later it was live and password-protected. She demoed it at the 9:15 editorial meeting, took three rounds of feedback from opinionated editors, and had it updating while the meeting was still running. Editors keep the final call; the tool is theirs to override. Her takeaway for listeners who aren’t a Dave, Brit or Sam: help is on the way, and it prompted an audit of how inconsistent AI tooling is across her company ahead of a negotiation with Anthropic.
Key points
- Sam: email is the best agent interface because it multi-threads naturally; texting or calling your agent is the wrong model.
- Brit runs five or six agents at once, hands work from one agent to another (Claude to Grok, not just Claude to Claude), and waits for agents to become invisible.
- Sam doesn't count agents at all: they're a cloud of work being done, not things to manage.
- Jess built a headline-suggestion and scoring app for The Information's editors from one email, live in about 20 minutes, iterated during the editorial meeting.
- Policy stays with humans: editors can override the tool at any point.
- The win exposed how inconsistent AI tooling is inside The Information, teeing up an Anthropic negotiation.
Where they landed
Quotes
“Email's by far the best. The multi-threading of it is so good. Anyone who's texting with their agent doesn't get it.”— Sam
“I didn't check my phone again for 20 minutes. I have a full-on app that is live, password protected. I demo it to my editors at a 9:15 meeting that day.”— Jess
“For those of you listening to this pod who think you're not a Dave, Brit or Sam, help is on the way.”— Jess
Suggested tweets
“Anyone who’s texting with their agent doesn’t get it.” — Sam Lessin on why email beats every other agent interface
Tweet this →Jess didn’t check her phone for 20 minutes. When she did: a live, password-protected app for The Information’s editors — built from a single email
Tweet this →Brit runs 5-6 agents at once and hands work between them. Sam doesn’t even count his anymore — “a cloud of things being done”
Tweet this →All topics · Full episode #164 + transcript · Subscribe on YouTube · Spotify