Hand-Picked Content
Website Traffic Crisis
Article, 24 min
Website traffic is going down across the board. Every site on the web is influenced by the rise of AI assistants and LLMs. Just like in the early days of the web, people try to game the system. Examples: Researchers discovered they can manipulate AI answers by adding fake publication dates to signal content freshness. Others spam Reddit with 500 posts hoping AI will surface their brand. Some create endless listicles optimized for AI consumption. This blog post is a breakdown of these tactics and shares real examples.
AI Can’t Freelance (Yet)
Article, 5 min
A new benchmark tested AI agents on real-world freelance tasks. Across industries like coding, data analysis, and game dev, no model managed to complete more than 3% of paid work at an acceptable level. Despite bold AGI claims and layoffs driven by “AI-first” strategies, this research suggests today’s agents still struggle with basic productivity, learning on the job, and long-term execution.
For now, the reality of replacing human labor looks far more limited than suggested.
Hack your workflow
Turn Glass Off
This one is for Apple users: The new Glass design isn’t boosting productivity; it’s doing the opposite. The effect requires more visual effort to parse, making it harder to find what you need quickly.
Apple won’t let you revert to the old style, but you can at least disable the Glass effect.
Tools & Apps
Claude Code for the Rest of Us
Productivity
CoWork brings the way developers use Claude Code to non-technical work. It lets Claude operate inside a folder on your computer, handling files directly instead of responding in chat.
You can ask it to organize downloads, turn receipt screenshots into a spreadsheet, or draft something from scattered notes across files. It runs through tasks on its own, which feels closer to delegating work than prompting line by line.
Clear instructions matter since it can edit files, but when scoped well, it already saves time on the kind of work most people put off.
It’s currently in research preview and only available to users on the highest tier plan ($ 100/month), but the demo video already shows how Claude envisions this.
Turn Thoughts into Graphics
AI Visuals
MyLens AI turns content into editable mind maps, timelines, tables, and flowcharts right in your browser. It extracts key points, links back to sources, and lets you expand or adjust visuals as you explore the information.
It’s especially useful for breaking down dense articles, reports, or videos, and the interactive layout makes spotting connections easy. The free tier has daily limits, and complex topics often require a bit of cleanup, but overall it feels like a flexible visual research partner rather than just a static summary tool.
- Another tool in this category is Napkin
Fresh Reflections
How Tos, opinions, thoughts.
How AI Overviews Impact Fresh van Root website traffic
In this LinkedIn post I share how the traffic in 2025 declined across the board. It’s not all because of AI, but it is the driving force of this trend.
Vibecheck
We updated our huge list of vibecoding tools.
From our work
Alongside the curated content, we share perspectives from what we’re actively working on. To stay up to date with what we’re working on next, make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Classifieds
No-Nonsense Web Analytics
For too long, installing Google Analytics on a new website was the default option for many webmasters, but for most projects, it’s overly complex. Meet Fathom, privacy-first, cookie-free web analytics. We ditched GA for Fathom a long time ago.
The Smart Email Marketing Alternative
EmailOctopus is the email software perfect for creators and small businesses. Simple, intuitive, world-class support – all at a fair price point. And this newsletter also runs on EmailOctopus.
Wispr Flow really boosts productivity
Talking to computers instead of typing has been a decade-old dream. Now, thanks to AI, it finally works with Wispr Flow.
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Off-Topic Links
Passionate Drummer
Music Video
The drummer takes the show in this Korean music video (wait for it).