I have a question before your coffee kicks in.

When was the last time you asked for more money because of something AI helped you do?

Not a vague "I use ChatGPT sometimes." I mean a real, named skill you'd put on a resume. Most people can't answer that. And this week, the numbers came out that say it might be costing you a lot.

— Khadin

In today's issue:

Hit reply with the AI thing you're actually good at. I read every single one.

Mintlify analyzed 790 million requests across its documentation platform. The finding: AI coding agents account for 45.3% of all traffic, nearly tied with traditional browsers at 45.8%.

Two tools are driving almost all of it:

The rest of the field, OpenCode, Trae, ChatGPT, and NotebookLM, is showing up but nowhere close.

One caveat: OpenAI's Codex doesn't send an identifiable user-agent header, so the real agent percentage is likely even higher.

The takeaway for anyone maintaining developer docs: your documentation now serves two audiences. Structure and machine-readability matter as much as clarity for human readers.

Try Mintlify today!

The Scoop: Workers with real AI skills now earn a 56% wage premium over people doing the same job without them, up from 25% a year ago (PwC, 2026).

Think about that jump for a second. The gap basically doubled in twelve months.

So if you and the person at the next desk have the same title, same years, same boss, but you can actually wire AI into your work and they can't, the market now says you're worth half again as much. That's not a someday number. That's right now.

Here's the catch though, and almost nobody says it out loud. Fast Company found that AI skills get you more job offers, but weaker salary leverage once you're in the room. Everyone wants you. So companies feel less pressure to stretch on the pay. Wild, right? You're in demand and getting squeezed at the same time.

So what do you do with that? You stop being vague. "I'm good with AI" is worth nothing in a review. "I cut our weekly report from three hours to forty minutes using a Claude workflow" is worth a raise.

So what for you: Name your AI win in numbers before your next review. Specific beats impressive.

→ Run the 5-minute "am I underpaid for my AI skills" prompt

The Scoop: Meta starts companywide layoffs next Wednesday, May 20, cutting roughly 10% of its 78,865-person workforce. The reason cited: AI efficiency. Meta's actual 2026 commitment to AI infrastructure: $115-135 billion.

Here's the math nobody on TV is showing. Meta is laying off about 8,000 people next Wednesday. Meta is also committing $115-135 billion to AI infrastructure in 2026 alone. Even if every laid-off employee carried a full-loaded comp package well into six figures, the savings would still come out to a small single-digit percentage of the AI budget.

The cuts aren't paying for AI. They're branding for AI.

Once you see that distinction, every "AI efficiency" layoff letter from the next six months reads a little differently.

So what for you: If your company says "AI efficiency" and the layoff size doesn't fund even a fraction of the AI bill, you're seeing optics, not productivity.

The Scoop: AI has been tied to roughly 50,000 of 2026's job cuts, but the quieter hit is hiring that just… stopped, especially for junior roles.

You've seen the headlines. Intuit cut 3,000. Meta started letting 8,000 go. Those sting.

But here's the part that should actually shape your year. Goldman Sachs says AI has been quietly shaving about 16,000 jobs a month off payroll growth, mostly by companies not hiring rather than firing. The door isn't slamming. It's just opening slower.

And get this. Harvard Business Review found a lot of these cuts are based on what bosses think AI will do, not what it's actually done yet. So the fear is moving faster than the tech.

What that means for you is simple. The safest spot right now isn't "untouchable." It's "obviously more useful with AI than without." Be the person who makes the team faster, and you stop being a line item.

So what for you: If you manage or mentor anyone junior, this is the year to teach them one real AI workflow. It's career insurance for both of you.

SpaceX just filed for an IPO valued at up to $1.75 trillion. When that much capital becomes liquid all at once, where it goes next is the big question.

Meanwhile, spring art auctions in NY cleared $2.5 billion, with 15+ new artist records.

Prized, physical assets with fixed and scarce supply. When the ultra-wealthy get liquid, it’s one of the markets they reach for to diversify.

Masterworks lets you into that art market without needing the nine figures. Its members invest in shares of blue-chip artwork by artists like Banksy, Basquiat and Warhol.

The track record to-date?

Skip the waitlist to join Masterworks.

^{*Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.}

The Scoop: Lindy lets you build AI assistants that read your inbox, book meetings, qualify leads, and run support across 4,000+ apps. No code required. Default model is Claude Sonnet 4.5, the same one that recently hit 77.2% on SWE-bench coding tasks.

What makes Lindy different from a generic AI assistant:

→ Try Lindy free for 7 days. Full access to inbox management, meeting scheduling, and the Gaia voice agent.

Five minutes. Before Friday. Here's the exact prompt to find out if you're leaving money on the table:

Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT. Read what comes back. That's your raise script, basically written for you.