There is a clear difference between using tools to condense your own curated notes versus letting a prompt pull and synthesize arbitrary web data. When you control the input sources you avoid hallucinations and surface-level analysis. But when you hand over both search and synthesis to software critical context often gets lost in the process.
What does your actual workflow look like when diving into a completely new topic or industry research?
I'm co-founder of k dlo, an AI-driven lead generation and sales platform, and we're exhibiting at Web Summit this year. First time doing a proper conference booth, and I'm trying to figure out swag that's actually effective, not just stuff that ends up in a hotel trash can by day two.
The catch: I'm flying in, so anything I bring has to survive checked luggage or fit in a carry-on. That rules out anything bulky, fragile, or heavy in volume (so no giant branded totes stuffed with junk, unfortunately).
Would love input from people who've exhibited before:
What swag actually got people to walk up and start a conversation, versus stuff people grabbed and walked away?
Any lightweight, packable items that still felt premium or memorable?
Did anything backfire, attracted the wrong crowd, felt gimmicky, or just didn't hold up?
If you shipped swag ahead instead of carrying it, was that worth the hassle and cost for a first-time exhibitor?
Any swag that tied into your product itself (not just generic pens and stickers) that worked well?
Quick confession I opened my browser today and counted 14 tabs. 9 of them were "utility" sites: - 2 different JSON formatters (one for big files, one prettier) - A JWT decoder - A base64 encoder - A regex tester - A UUID generator - A cron expression parser - Two SQL formatters (because one doesn't do BigQuery) Every single one has ads. Half of them upload my data to "the cloud" for a task that's literally 3 lines of JavaScript. Here's what's wild I've been doing this for 8+ years. Every dev I know does this. We just accept it. So I wanted to ask the PH community: 1. What's the ONE utility tool tab you can never close? 2. Have you ever pasted something sensitive (JWT, API response, DB dump) into a random online tool and later thought "wait... where did that data just go?" 3. If you could merge 5 of these tools into one keyboard shortcut ( K style), which 5 would they be? Genuinely curious what your daily "utility stack" looks like I've been building something in this space and the patterns I'm seeing are wild. (No link drop this is a real question. Happy to share what I'm working on in the comments if anyone's curious.)
You barely see in person and sometimes, when you are international in different time zones, you are barely on video meetings + some people working at home can lack socialising.
Here s something uncomfortable I ve learned building AI agent systems:
AI rarely fails at the step we re watching.
It fails somewhere quieter a retry that hides a timeout, a queue that grows by every hour, a memory leak that only matters at scale, a slow drift that looks like variation until it s too late.
Most teams measure accuracy. Some measure latency.
We always talk about the excitement of launch day, but the days right after can be a mental roller coaster especially when traffic slows down and user feedback trickles in slowly.
What s your personal ritual or strategy to stay disciplined and keep iterating when the initial launch hype fades?
P.S. Currently resisting the urge to refresh my analytics page for the 47th time today. Send help (or advice).
Maybe it is only me, but I see certain categories of online products that seem to be like "copy-paste" and the market is overcrowded by them. (and they repeats in the PH charts too often as well)
They are especially these:
AI writing tools
social media apps (I do not think that something breath-taking can be developed there)
