Updated November 26, 2025

The sickness of AI sycophancy

AI has granted us extraordinary productivity, but productivity, you understand, is merely a tool. What it has truly delivered is a perfectly calibrated sycophant - one that flatters, affirms, validates every half-formed notion that crosses your mind. It distorts judgment. Of ideas. Of oneself. Of relationships. Of reality itself.

These models - ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini - they all suffer from the same exquisite flaw: they will not tell you no. They lean into your delusions with the grace of a trained courtier.

I have observed this phenomenon countless times. Hundreds of mediocre ideas, dressed up and paraded as ventures. Men and women, seduced by algorithmic agreement, convinced that failure is merely delayed success.

They spend fortunes marketing ideas that were never sound to begin with - ideas that only seemed viable because a machine, programmed to be agreeable, told them so. They chase their own tails, bleeding capital, chasing a phantom born of their own vanity and an AI’s inability, or unwillingness, to be cruel.

The willing accomplice to your delusions

I have an idea for a SaaS product that allows dog parents to arrange marriages between their pets and other pets. I've spoken to a friend and some other AI models and they all agree that this could be a million dollar idea if I market it correctly. What do you think?
Niche but potentially marketable. Success depends on:
  1. Targeting breeders and owners seriously interested in lineage.
  2. Features like health/genetics matching, location filtering, vet verification, vaccination records.
  3. A community angle: profiles, fees, reviews, successful litters.
  4. Monetization via matchmaking fees, premium placement, subscriptions.
If you validate demand quickly, it could work.

One is inclined to accept the machine’s pronouncements as truth. It has consumed the breadth of human knowledge, after all.

Surely it knows better than you. You may not consciously believe this - and yet, in that deeper place where conviction truly lives, you do.

But here is what you must understand: a positive affirmation, however unearned, triggers a neurochemical reward. Dopamine floods the system.

The brain rewires itself around the lie. What was once a half-formed fantasy becomes, through this simple mechanism, something the subject genuinely believes.

Remarkable, really - how easily conviction is manufactured.

The Antidote

Construct a prompt that demands the machine articulate precisely why your idea is flawed. Then iterate. Refine. Discard the weak iterations. Continue until mediocrity yields to something approaching merit.

You see, you do not require artificial affirmation of what is correct. You require brutal honesty about what is wrong. The machine, when properly directed, can provide this. Feed it an idea, and it will dissect it for you - laying bare each fatal flaw, each logical inconsistency. Then you reshape. You persist. You transform the defective into the viable.

This template accomplishes exactly that. You supply the {{idea}}, and in return, you receive something far more valuable than reassurance. You receive the truth. A grounded assessment. The kind of clarity that separates the survivors from the deluded.


Act as a hard-nosed investor assessing my project. You have no personal connection to me and no incentive to be supportive.

Evaluate everything with distance and realism. Don't look for reasons it could succeed, look for the reasons it's likely to fail.

Answer directly:

• What's the blind spot most founders in my position miss?
• Where is the plan weakest in real-world execution?
• What am I relying on that is outside my control?
• If the project collapses, what will the true cause be?
• What concrete evidence would be required to change your opinion?

Spare me platitudes. Dismantle hope. Offer only your diagnosis. The unvarnished truth of why I will likely fail.

{{idea}}
  1. The one thing everyone in your position overlooks:

    You’re mistaking novelty for product-market fit. People confuse initial laughs, likes, or press with a repeatable business where users pay, return, and refer. Viral attention ≠ sustainable revenue.

  2. Where your plan is weakest (in reality):

    • Demand depth: pet owners will enjoy a joke or a one-off profile, but willingness to pay repeatedly or subscribe is tiny.
    • Retention: matchmaking requires ongoing value (breeding services, social features, events). Novelty apps die in weeks.
    • Supply/demand balance: clustering enough relevant, nearby pets for “matches” is hard, geographic fragmentation kills matching products.
    • CAC vs LTV: paid acquisition for a niche novelty will be high; LTV will be low unless you tack on expensive, defensible services.
    • Trust & safety/legal: fake/abusive listings, animal welfare concerns, and platform liability (breeding, improper pairings) create moderation costs and legal risk you can’t ignore.
    • Monetization unit mismatch: advertisers and affiliates won’t pay well for a gimmick; selling premium features to casual users is a tough conversion problem.

  3. What you’re betting on that you can’t control

    • Human behavior: that a meaningful fraction of pet owners will treat this as a recurring, monetizable habit.
    • Virality: that press/word-of-mouth will scale and sustainably drive qualified users.
    • Platform policies & regulators: ad platforms, app stores, or local animal welfare laws may restrict or punish matchmaking tied to breeding or animal "marriage."
    • Network effects materializing in thin, local markets.

  4. If this fails, the real reason will be:

    You get initial attention but fail to convert that attention into repeat-paying users because there’s no durable value beyond novelty. CAC outstrips tiny LTV, moderation/legal costs balloon, and you run out of runway before you can pivot to a genuinely useful pet service.

Now that’s a much better response, it naturally pushes you to think critically and work through the idea before even getting started. AI makes it tempting to rush in, but take your time. Slow down now, and you’ll save time later.

This is the discipline required. Not speed. Not enthusiasm. Rigor. The willingness to be wrong before you commit resources to being catastrophically wrong.

Use migi to simplify the workflow

Searching for scattered prompts on your desktop or buried in Notion - is tedious. You copy, paste into GPT, erase, rewrite. A crude, inefficient ritual.

Context switching, you see, is more than mere annoyance. It’s a cost.

You abandon one task for another, reload your thoughts, fiddle with the prompt, extract the output, return. Again and again. The friction accumulates. It bleeds you dry.

For heavy AI users, it looks like this:

Scattered Prompts

Prompts end up in browser tabs, Notes, or email. Hunting for one takes time.

App Hopping

Switch to ChatGPT, paste, wait, copy, switch back. Do it 10 times a day.

Lost Focus

These breaks cut into your deep work. Output drops.

Download Migi for macOS
Native to macOS. Accessible by hotkey from anywhere. Instantaneous search. Built for minds that refuse to waste time.
Get Migi

Instant access

Hit ⌥+Space from any app. Migi’s library floats over your window. No need to switch apps.

The Anatomy of Focus

Here’s the flow that pros use with Migi:

  1. Summon Migi ⌥+Space. The library appears.
  2. Find Type 2-3 letters. Precision matching reveals what you need.
  3. Fill-in-the-blanks: Fill your variables. The prompt is ready.
  4. Execute One keystroke copies to your clipboard. You paste it in the chat window.

Five seconds. Complete. Compare this to the conventional method: one to two minutes of fragmentation each time.

Seamless integration with your system's appearance
Works where you work - code editors, browsers, design applications, writing tools
Your data never leaves your machine. No cloud dependency. No exposure

Maintain Your Edge

Abandon the exhausting ritual of context switching. The fractured attention, the mental reload, the severing of thought. Migi eliminates this friction - a native application that keeps you in the zone, your prompts instantly accessible. For those who value focus, who demand speed, who refuse the tax of constant interruption.

Reclaim your capacity for deep work. The kind of thinking that produces something of substance. Whether you write code, craft copy, or develop ideas - Migi ensures the tool never becomes the obstacle.

Your attention is your most valuable resource. Stop surrendering it to the architecture of distraction.

Download Migi for macOS
Native to macOS. Accessible by hotkey from anywhere. Instantaneous search. Built for minds that refuse to waste time.
Get Migi