Good ideas don’t build strong businesses. Execution does.

Sometimes all you need is an initial implementation for someone else to come along, learn from your mistakes, and win. Having the good idea first doesn’t mean you’re going to make it.

Previously I wrote about my experience with Beads - a tool that genuinely changed how I think about agentic workflows, but also one the internet is calling a “virus.” That got me thinking about the bigger pattern playing out across the entire AI tooling space right now.

The Pattern

Beads had first mover advantage in the agent memory space. Steve Yegge shipped something revolutionary - persistent memory for coding agents, dependency graphs, task tracking across sessions. Tens of thousands of people used it. The concept spread.

But execution debt accumulates interest.

Every invasive behavior, every config file overwritten, every daemon that starts without asking - that’s debt. Users tolerate it for a while because the value is real. But tolerance has limits. And when someone comes along with cleaner execution, the first mover advantage evaporates.

This isn’t unique to Beads. I’m watching it play out in real-time with something I use every day.

Claude Code → OpenCode

Claude Code is my favorite coding harness. It’s close to flawless - persistent conversations with Claude, seamless command execution, file editing, codebase understanding. Anthropic nailed this. The tool just works, and it works well. I use it constantly.

But OpenCode is catching up fast.

It’s open source. It’s scrappy. The rough edges are smoothing out at an impressive pace. I’m not ready to switch - Claude Code still has the edge - but I can see the trajectory.

What’s interesting is how they’re building. They just shipped thinking support (ctrl+T to cycle through thinking levels). Sounds simple. But instead of bolting on the feature directly, they built a “variants” primitive first - the ability to run any model under different configurations. Then they built thinking support on top of that.

Make the experience great out of the box, then make it configurable. That’s the philosophy.

You can create your own variant with custom thinking budgets if you want. Or just use the defaults and never think about it. The primitive exists either way, ready when you need it.

“This is what guarantees that OpenCode is not something you’ll ever grow out of - because there’s always a lower level that you can tap into and customize however you want.”

This is the kind of execution that erodes first mover advantage. They’re not just copying features - they’re finding the right abstractions underneath. Give it six months and we’ll see where things stand.

Claude Code had first mover advantage. It defined the category. But first mover just means you showed everyone what’s possible. It doesn’t mean you’ve locked in the win - even when your execution is excellent.

Cursor’s Slide

Take Cursor. It defined what an AI-native editor could be. First tool that made me think “okay, this is actually useful for real work.” Smart autocomplete, inline chat, context-aware suggestions. They had first mover advantage in a big way.

But Claude Code came along and changed the paradigm entirely.

Instead of retrofitting AI into an editor, it went CLI-native. No IDE overhead. No plugin conflicts. No fighting VS Code’s opinions about how you should work. Just a terminal session where you think through problems with Claude, run commands, edit files, and ship.

The workflow difference is stark. Cursor keeps you in VS Code, which sounds like a feature until you realize you’re context-switching constantly - editor mode, chat mode, terminal mode, back to editor. Claude Code gets out of the way. You’re in your terminal, in your flow, working the way you already work.

I’ve watched people quietly migrate from Cursor to Claude Code over the past few months. It’s not that Cursor got worse - it’s that Claude Code showed there was a better paradigm. CLI-first beats editor-plugin. Direct model access beats proxied inference. Simple beats clever.

That’s the danger of first mover advantage. You define the category, but you also define the constraints. Someone comes along and asks “what if we threw out those constraints?” and suddenly your moat looks smaller.

The Moat Illusion

Look at what these first movers thought their moats were:

Cursor bet on VS Code. Millions of developers already live there. Muscle memory is real. The extension ecosystem is massive. That’s a moat, right? Except Claude Code ignored all of it. Went CLI-native. Turns out the moat was actually a wall - keeping Cursor inside the editor paradigm while the competition walked around it.

Beads bet on the concept itself - persistent agent memory, dependency graphs, the whole framework. But concepts aren’t moats. Anyone can implement persistent agent memory with markdown files and a bash script. The 470,000 lines of Go aren’t a moat, they’re weight.

Real moats are switching costs, network effects, ecosystem lock-in. Being first doesn’t automatically give you any of those. It just gives you a head start - and head starts expire.

Being first means you get to define the problem space. It doesn’t mean you get to own it forever.

Why This Matters Now

We’re at a watershed moment for agentic workflows. Nothing is going to be the same from here.

The tools are evolving so fast that what’s dominant today might be irrelevant in six months. The ideas matter more than the implementations. Beads’ concept of persistent agent memory will outlive Beads itself, regardless of whether the tool survives. Claude Code’s model of CLI-based agentic coding will persist even if everyone switches to something else.

Someone will get this right. Might be an existing player that cleans up their execution. Might be a newcomer that learns from everyone’s mistakes. Might be something none of us have seen yet.

The point is: you might have first mover advantage. Doesn’t mean you’re going to win.

What wins is sustained execution. Listening to users. Fixing the annoying stuff. Not letting debt accumulate faster than value.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Here’s what I keep coming back to: the people who pioneer new categories deserve credit. Steve Yegge deserves credit for Beads. Anthropic deserves credit for Claude Code. They showed us what was possible.

But credit and winning aren’t the same thing.

The pioneers take the arrows. They make the mistakes so others don’t have to. They validate that the idea is worth pursuing. And sometimes - often, actually - someone else comes along and executes better.

That’s not unfair. That’s just how it works.

If you’re building something new, the lesson is clear: shipping first is necessary but not sufficient. The real work starts after launch. Every user complaint is a chance to either build loyalty or bleed users to whoever’s listening better.

If you’re watching from the sidelines, the lesson is different: don’t dismiss the first movers just because they’re messy. Extract the ideas. Learn from their mistakes. And if you can execute better, maybe it’s your turn to try.

Execution Wins

The ideas are out there now. Persistent agent memory. CLI-based agentic coding. Orchestrated multi-agent workflows. These concepts aren’t going back in the box.

Someone will win. Probably whoever executes best, not whoever shipped first.