#076: Make Your Own Robotic Hand, Karpathy Vibe Codes, What High Agency Looks Like

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week, we will take a look at how to create your own low-cost robotic hand, how Andrej Karpathy has started to vibe code, the future of companionship content, and more.

Let's dive in:

Make Your Own Robotic Hand

I have always dreamed of making my own robotic hand. Maybe it was from seeing Anakin Skywalker's synthetic limb at a young age or other exposure to sci fi, but my goal is now within reach thanks to engineer Dima Yanovsky.

A student at MIT, Yanovsky claimed to have made a "detailed beginner-friendly guide on how to assemble a low-cost dextrous robotic hand for ~$450 using parts available entirely on Amazon." When I read this, I thought it was too good to be true.
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Yanovsky provided official documentation along with a seven-party assembly guide featuring step-by-step videos, images, and instructions to streamline the build process. The steps are as follows:

1) Procurement
2) Assembling the Fingers
3) Palm Assembly
4) Wrist Assembly
5) Forearm Servos
6) Electronics
7) Putting it all together.

The entire initiative was created to make it more accessible for people to experiment with robotics learning. Thank you Dima, I couldn't imagine a better place to start.

Karpathy Vibe Codes, Here's How You'll Learn

​Andrej Karpathy, previous Director of AI at Tesla and part of the founding team at OpenAI, is now an official vibe coder. He recently shared how he vibe coded his first Swift-coded iOS app in about an hour. He claims he "didn't even read any docs at all...just opened a ChatGPT convo and followed instructions".
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Karpathy shares the exact conversations he had with the GPT and a look at the finished app. Many might look at this and say, "Well, I expect the previous director of AI at Tesla to know a thing or two about coding", but a few days later, he chimed in on how challenging it was, even for him, to make web apps in 2025. It's a great reminder that even the most impressive among us are still human and that this frontier has a learning curve.
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One person who agrees that vibe coding and this way of approaching product building is the future, is CEO of Replit, Amjad Masad. Pretty crazy that he flat out stated, "I no longer think you should learn to code." A statement to say the least, this approach will be something worth paying attention to over the next year or two especially.
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It will obviously still be beneficial to know how to code, but Replit is now offering a free course to learn how to vibe code with DeepLearning. It's an hour and 34 minutes, specifically aimed at beginners, and I can't wait to check it out.

Where Are the Young Geniuses Being Celebrated?

Stripe founder and CEO Patrick Collison recently asked the following:

Patrick Collison @patrickc In which domains are elite practitioners celebrating the kids being better than ever before? Would love to read about a few instances. (Not just where there's one particular genius, such as Ashwin Sah's recent success, but where "the kids" as some kind of aggregate appear to be 6:50 PM • Mar 23, 2025 107 Retweets 1540 Likes Read 242 replies

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I found this to be an interesting question. There's an element of pride in the way things were done in the past and an overestimation in the remembrance of how good they actually were. The entire thread of replies is fantastic, but here are a few that stood out to me:

• ​Young startup founders, from Paul Graham
• ​Big picture thinkers, from Dwarkesh Patel
• ​Chess, from Tyler Cowen
• ​American wrestling, from Eric Gilliam
• ​Classical music, from Ulkar Aghayeva

Companionship Content

In the wake of increasing AI-image-generating hype, I often think about what comes after we become desensitized to the novelty of instant artistic gratification. There are those that say dead internet theory will win. That 'timelines will be so much slop that everyone will default back to the real world'.

​Others say, "if it's not already obvious: the most valuable items in the future will be the old and beautiful...all of text will become ai slop, all of art will become ai slop or a reaction to ai slop. the vast majority of genuine human beauty that will exist has already been created."

It's a nihilistic view on what the future of art, especially digital, will become. It's exciting to have complete artistic freedom to emulate the styles of those we love, but at what cost? Will we eventually scoff at the technically precise, yet archaic old ways? Will the democratization of art generation allow more compelling thoughts to come forward?

Once AI becomes unavoidable on social media, where will people turn? Will it increase the value of non-AI media? How will that social void be filled, in an increasingly online world?

The brilliant Anu Atluru discusses this in her 2024 piece, companionship content. The essential thesis is this: current social media platforms are optimized for short-form content. It's the ultimate way of capturing attention at the moment, BUT, short-form video will cannibalize itself and lose due to its ephemeral nature in the long run. The true winner, will be something with no limit, and extremely human: companionship content.
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This is the type of content you watch for the next hour hypothetically, not necessarily the most entertaining and hyper-optimized for retention. This long-form engagement will allow people to form deeper parasocial bonds and understanding of a creator. Talk-based content feels more casual, and the larger macro trends of loneliness and remote work will make this an important part of our everyday lives. Anu discusses all the stats to back up the claims of how big this will become.
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This article could turn out to be one of the most important pieces on the 'creator' space ever written. She even acknowledges how well its aged since its release in 2024. Anyone who wants to see a glimpse into the future should read it.

High Agency by George Mack

​George Mack is one of my favorite writers and thinkers on Twitter. Last year he was featured on a couple episodes of My First Million, where he discussed topics like "Kale phone vs the Cocaine phone", the obsessiveness of Lee Kuan Yew, life as the Midwit meme, and more.

During that interview, he also spoke about having high agency. What is high agency? Mack describes it as having the combination of three traits:
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1) Clear thinking
2) Bias to action
3) Disagreeability
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Consider the following hypothetical situation: You wake up in a 3rd world jail cell. You’re only allowed to call one person you know to get you out of there. Who do you call?
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​Usually, our answer will be whatever person we know who has the highest agency. And using the above three traits, Mack offers a further explanation as to why those would be the characteristics of someone helping you escape your situation:

In addition to the podcast, he recently shared his full essay on high agency, declaring it as potentially 'the most important idea of the 21st century'. He originally planned to write it over the course of a few weeks, and the result ended up being closer to seven months. The result is well worth the wait.
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The world bends to those who shape it according to their will, and oftentimes those with the strongest wills also have the highest agency. Be sure to read the whole essay, and think about how you can incorporate more agency into your life:

Nick @nickcammarata i hate how well asking myself "if i had 10x the agency i have what would i do" works 3:56 PM • Jan 7, 2025 965 Retweets 15999 Likes Read 125 replies

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