Field Notes
The only PM blog written by someone who still ships code every week. Failed experiments included. Agent recipes you can fork.
Featured reads
Hand-picked by Falk, not an algorithm
The Product Builder Was Never About Coding
LinkedIn replaced its APM program with Product Builder and framed it as generalists. The real shift is collapsing the distance between deciding and making.
Stop Calling Yourself an AI PM
The PM role is fragmenting into AI-native, growth, monetization, platform, and GTM labels. Most of it hedges an org-design decision. Name the outcome you own.
The PRD Was Already Dead. Slack Proved It in Public.
Slack is running tiny cross-functional squads that prototype continuously instead of committing to fixed roadmaps. The org-chart version of the PRD collapse.
AI Can't Understand the User. That User Is Disappearing.
The best defense of the human PM is that AI can't understand the user. But that user is a departmental role, and agents are dissolving the departments.
Writing for Machines Is the New Writing for Executives
Half your readers are now agents. Writing that executes faithfully is its own craft: specs as eval sets, prompt hygiene, GEO basics, and the cold-read test.
Is This Product Bet Group Stage or Knockout? Reversible vs. Irreversible
The World Cup is two tournaments bolted together. Knowing whether a product decision is group stage or knockout is the same question as downside exposure.
Stage Wins or the Yellow Jersey: You Don't Win the Tour by Winning Stages
The rider with the most stage wins almost never wins the Tour. A model for AI product management: cumulative outcome over heroics, on a team you never see.
Judgment Reps: How PMs Train Decision Quality Deliberately
Judgment is trainable, but only with reps and a scorecard. The decision log, calibration habit, premortems, and a 4-week plan to train PM decision quality.
Stop Calling Yourself an AI PM
The PM role is fragmenting into AI-native, growth, monetization, platform, and GTM labels. Most of it hedges an org-design decision. Name the outcome you own.
The Product Builder Was Never About Coding
LinkedIn replaced its APM program with Product Builder and framed it as generalists. The real shift is collapsing the distance between deciding and making.
Comment With a Frame: The Only Move That Compounds
Applause adds nothing and dunking loses the room. Concede the strongest objection, then add a frame the thread did not have. Two exchanges show how.
The QBR Deck Template That Forces Decisions, Not Applause
A 9-slide QBR deck template: scoreboard vs plan, decision review, kills, next-quarter bets with confidence and reversibility. Outline plus PowerPoint.
Financial Fluency for PMs: Own the Margin Before It Owns You
Financial fluency is now a PM job requirement. The five numbers to know cold, the finance working session agenda, and a 4-week plan to own your margin.
The PRD Was Already Dead. Slack Proved It in Public.
Slack is running tiny cross-functional squads that prototype continuously instead of committing to fixed roadmaps. The org-chart version of the PRD collapse.
Stop Picking Winners. Design the Tournament.
Cheap prototyping did not kill product judgment. It moved the decision from picking the winner to seeding the bracket of what gets prototyped at all.
The Resume Is Dead. Here Is What Replaced It.
If you hire PMs off resumes in 2026, you screen for prompting skill, not product skill. What still correlates: published thinking a model cannot compress.
The Exec Update Template: Five Numbers, Three Calls, One Ask
An exec update template read in 90 seconds: five-number scoreboard, three decisions with evidence, one ask. Plus the agent prompt that drafts it.
Rank AI Features by Downside Exposure, Not Engagement
Engagement rewards features people fiddle with. Rank AI features by downside exposure instead: how fast a silent 20% quality drop would cost you customers.
GTM Is Not Someone Else's Job Anymore
PMs are absorbing pricing, activation, and positioning. The PM who stops at requirements is describing half a job in a market that pays for the whole one.
Storytelling for PMs: The Skill That Decides Whose Evidence Wins
Storytelling for PMs is not polish, it is how decisions get made. Three frameworks, the retelling test, and a 4-week practice plan to win the room.
Falkster's Messaging Gateway: A Prototype-First Ship Story
Instead of three integrations for Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram, we bridged through one Matrix homeserver. What building it taught that a PRD could not.