Cowork Builds Apps Now, and ‘Acquired Skills Will Appear Here’ w/ Garett Medlin

Garett Medlin just got the official title for the job he was already doing: AI Practice Lead at P3. He’s also the person responsible for Rob trying Cowork in the first place, despite Rob’s very reasonable question: “Why the hell would I want Cowork if I already have Claude Code?”

Then Rob accidentally proved Garett right.

He made an offhand comment about needing a better way to track feedback on book graphics. Nothing dramatic. Just the kind of annoying little process problem everyone complains about and nobody fixes. Two days later, there was a Slack bot reminding him to review images, a web app with approve buttons, surrounding context from the manuscript, and a clean way to send feedback without creating a Slack archaeology project. Built by a non developer. In Cowork.

Which makes Microsoft’s Copilot Cowork story… awkward.

Garett came with the field report. Yes, it can make PowerPoints. Yes, it talks to OneDrive. No, it doesn’t have memory. No, it doesn’t have custom instructions. No, it doesn’t have projects. The section where those capabilities are supposed to live is called “Acquired Skills,” and it currently says they will appear here. Which is a choice.

At the same time, companies are getting top down mandates to spend $20 million a year on AI with absolutely no idea what they’re supposed to spend it on. IT gets handed the problem, Copilot gets treated like the answer, and somebody nearby is always trying to sell a very expensive fear of the tools that already work.

This episode is really about that gap. Between what’s shipping and what’s still “coming soon.” Between the people waiting for enterprise permission and the people already building useful things on a Tuesday afternoon. Turns out, the scariest part of AI might be realizing the non developers got there first.