This week we talk about Google's new CC agent for managing family tasks, some techniques to control image generators when you want to constrain certain elements, and a deep article on planning with AI agents.

Show Notes

• https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/18/googles-new-cc-is-an-ai-agent-that-helps-families-run-their-households/
• https://trpevski.com/blog/image-model-decide-everything
• https://maggieappleton.com/planning-agents
• Mai Lee Chang, Alicia (Hyun Jin) Lee, Nara Han, Anna Huang, Hugo Simão, Samantha Reig, Abdullah Ubed Mohammad Ali, Rebekah Martinez, Neeta M Khanuja, John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Aaron Steinfeld. 2024. Dynamic Agent Affiliation: Who Should the AI Agent Work for in the Older Adult's Care Network? In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1774–1788. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3661500

ShiftUX workshop: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/workshops/designing-ai-for-humans

ShiftUX talk: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/program/day-2-turing-machines/

Dan's ShiftUX Discount Code: SAFFER-SHIFT26

In this episode, Dan and Nik unpack Apple's big announcements from its latest event, starting with Siri AI: now a dedicated app with personal context indexing, on-screen awareness, and in-app actions, launching in beta with iOS 27 . They dig into the promise and limitations of Apple-only app integration, the EU regulatory lockout, and what daily usage caps signal about Apple's services ambitions. The conversation gets more charged around Audio Intelligence, Apple's new always-on listening features for the Apple Watch, including live audio rewind and Siri Recap summaries of real-world conversations. Dan and Nik wrestle with the surveillance implications, the absence of any on-device indicator, and whether this crosses a line — particularly in two-party consent states like Pennsylvania and California.

The back half covers Runway's Project Solaris, a generative UI concept that uses its video model to render fully interactive, pixel-based interfaces with no underlying code. Dan sees echoes of Microsoft's Bob-era skeuomorphism and questions whether it misunderstands fifty years of HCI; Nik finds more to like in its challenge to the sameness of modern app design. They then turn to the surprise sale of Miro to Bending Spoons for $1.36 billion — a 90% haircut from its 2021 peak valuation — and what it means when a profitable, hundred-million-user company gets absorbed into a portfolio known for maintaining but not advancing its acquisitions.

The episode closes with a discussion of Benedict Evans' essay "AI, Tools and Transformation," which argues that the Silicon Valley vision of everyone rolling their own SaaS tools misunderstands how most people think about their work.

LINKS

Introducing Solaris
https://runway.com/news/research/introducing-solaris

Bending Spoons to buy collaboration tools maker Miro for $1.36B, 90% less than its 2022 valuation
https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/10/bending-spoons-to-buy-collaboration-tools-maker-miro-for-1-36b-90-less-than-its-2022-valuation/

AI, Tools and Transformation (Benedict Evans)
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/9/3/ai-tools-and-transformation

This week on AI and design, we highlight the release of Mobbin's MCP, Perplexity and NVIDIA's local AI agent, and the concept of design ledgers. Dan also has some new speaking engagements you can join coming up.

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction to AI and Design
• 01:11 Upcoming Speaking Engagements
• 04:44 Mobbin's MCP Release
• 11:34 Perplexity and NVIDIA's Local AI Agent
• 23:54 The Concept of Design Ledgers

Show Notes

• https://mobbin.com/mcp
• https://venturebeat.com/infrastructure/perplexity-partners-with-nvidia-to-launch-portable-computer-a-fully-local-ai-agent-with-zero-token-costs
• https://www.proofofconcept.pub/p/the-ledger-of-design

Dan's Speaking Engagements

ShiftUX workshop: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/workshops/designing-ai-for-humans
ShiftUX talk: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/program/day-2-turing-machines/
Dan's ShiftUX Discount Code: SAFFER-SHIFT26

Chicago Camps' Leadership by Design: https://chicagocamps.org/event/leadership-by-design-2026/