The Great Unbundling of AI

We're finally moving past the AI party tricks. The most interesting tools launching right now aren't bigger chatbots, but smaller, sharper assistants that integrate so deeply they almost disappear.

Your Mac Just Became Your AI Meeting Assistant

A new wave of on-device AI tools is automating the boring stuff without spying on you.

Meetings are where good ideas go to die in a pile of forgotten action items. Radiant, a new AI assistant for Mac, wants to fix this by automating the entire post-meeting workflow. It works silently in the background, on-device, to draft summaries, follow-up emails, and tasks in tools like Slack, Notion, and Linear without a bot ever joining your call.

This isn't just another transcription service. Radiant represents a fundamental shift from cloud-based generalist AIs to specialised assistants embedded directly into our workflow. The focus on on-device processing is a direct response to the privacy concerns that come with piping sensitive conversations to third-party servers. What's actually happening is that AI is moving from being a destination we visit to a utility that works for us, privately and proactively.

For now, it’s a free beta for Apple Silicon Macs, but it’s a clear signal of where the market is headed. The real innovation isn't just listening to what was said, but understanding what needs to happen next and then doing the prep work. This is for anyone whose job involves turning conversations into action.

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Smarter Tools, Less Grind

A few new tools are aiming to automate the most tedious parts of a developer's day.

WhatsDiff: Finally, a sane way to handle dependency updates.

This CLI tool gives you aggregated changelogs and risk assessments right in the terminal after an npm or composer update. It’s about making dependency updates a confident, informed decision instead of a blind gamble.

RewriteBar v2: The AI wordsmith living in your menu bar.

A native macOS writing assistant with local AI model support that works across all your apps. RewriteBar is a prime example of AI becoming a deeply integrated utility rather than a separate, clunky web tool.

BilberryDB: Build multimodal AI without the headache.

A no-code vector database that handles everything from 3D models to sensor data, lowering the barrier for building complex AI. This is about moving AI development from pure code to pure ideation.

Escape The Subscription Treadmill

Two new email platforms are betting you'd rather own your tools than rent them.

Maillayer: Own your email marketing, not rent it.

A self-hosted email marketing platform with a one-time payment, freeing you from the tyranny of monthly subscription fees. This is a bet that businesses crave ownership and predictable costs over rented convenience.

Sidemail 2.0: The no-nonsense email platform for SaaS.

An EU-based, GDPR-compliant email platform for SaaS that focuses on deliverability without the bloat. It's built for developers who need a reliable service that just works, respecting user privacy from the ground up.

Quick hits

Pickle: Your secret-keeper for screenshots.
A smart macOS app that automatically organises and redacts screenshots, saving you from accidentally sharing sensitive information.

Dispersed: The treasure map for free camping.
Find free, off-grid camping spots on public land with community reviews and GPS coordinates, finally killing the need for endless forum scrolling.

Postbrew: The Letterboxd for coffee nerds.
A social network that treats coffee making like a creative practice, letting you log brew methods and share notes with other enthusiasts.

My takeaway

The era of the general-purpose AI chatbot is ending.

It's being replaced by specialised, embedded tools that live inside our existing workflows. These assistants don't just answer questions; they anticipate needs and automate tasks directly within our applications. This shift from cloud to device prioritises privacy and performance over the novelty of a universal oracle.

The next wave of value won't come from bigger models, but from smarter integrations that disappear into the background. We'll measure AI not by its conversational ability, but by the tedious work it silently eliminates. The real question is how long we'll put up with tools that aren't this integrated.

What part of your daily workflow are you still tolerating that a truly integrated AI could just fix?

Drop me a reply. Till next time, this is Louis, and you are reading Louis.log().