The Temporal Tangle Worm
We'll build it when the next model comes out
The Temporal Tangle Worm doesn't live in your codebase. It lives in your roadmap. It slithers through time, coiled around past decisions you cannot easily undo and future promises you have not earned yet. It captures roughly half of the projects currently developing with generative AI.
- Symptom
- Sprints spent planning for future capabilities instead of building current ones. 'When the next model comes out' is the most common phrase in planning. The roadmap changes with every AI lab blog post.
- Why it matters
- The Worm's core trick is making tomorrow's possibilities feel like today's obligations. Teams plan around hypothetical future releases instead of shipping with the tools they have. The cost of waiting is just as real as the cost of committing to the wrong thing.
- What the chapter gives you
- How to ban future-tense planning from sprints, the prototype discipline that anchors roadmaps in reality, and why immovable ship dates are the Worm's natural enemy.
From Volume 1 of The AI Developer's Field Guide
Read the full chapter in The AI Developer's Field Guide.
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