Taste is the edge

When a capability becomes cheap, the advantage moves.

Computation got cheap, and the constraint moved to data. Distribution got cheap, and the constraint moved to attention. Building is getting cheap, and the constraint is moving to taste.

Not taste as decoration.

Taste as the ability to know what is worth keeping.

That matters more now because generative tools can produce almost anything. Text, code, layouts, screens, flows, names, options. The output is no longer scarce. The judgment is.

The question is not who can make more.

The question is who can recognize what is good.

Abundance makes judgment visible

AI raises the floor quickly.

It can make an idea look real before anyone has decided whether it is useful. It can generate five versions of a landing page, scaffold three product flows, rewrite the copy, add the dashboard, extend the feature, and keep going.

That is useful.

It is also dangerous.

Because when everything can be made, everything starts to look slightly finished. The weak idea gets a clean interface. The unnecessary feature gets a working state. The product with no clear user gets a polished demo.

Taste is what separates 'this works' from 'this is worth owning.'

It is the editor choosing one headline out of twenty adequate ones. The builder cutting a feature the agent implemented correctly. The designer noticing that the layout is technically fine, but the product has no center.

These are not technical calls.

They are taste calls.

Taste is trained

There is a comfortable myth that taste is something you either have or do not.

It is not.

Taste is built through exposure, repetition, attention, and being wrong often enough to start recognizing the difference.

You develop it by looking closely at products that work. Not to copy them, but to understand the decisions inside them.

Why does this onboarding feel light? Why does this empty state make sense? Why does this product feel complete with fewer features? Why does this copy land when almost identical copy does not?

Taste sharpens when you stop looking at the surface and start looking at the choices.

What was included. What was removed. What was made obvious. What was left unsaid.

That is where the product lives.

Where taste shows up

Taste rarely announces itself.

It shows up in the parts people do not screenshot.

The error message that helps instead of blaming. The first screen that knows what you came to do. The checkout that does not make you think. The feature that is missing because the product is better without it.

None of these are difficult to generate.

All of them are difficult to care about consistently.

The products that feel worth using have a texture that comes from many small decisions made in the same direction. They feel resolved. Not because they are big, or complex, or technically impressive, but because someone had a standard and held it.

Taste is that standard in motion.

The last uneven field

When everyone can generate adequate work, adequate stops being interesting.

The market does not stop needing good products. It becomes less patient with mediocre ones, because mediocre ones are everywhere.

That is the edge.

Not being able to build. More people can build now. Not being able to produce. The tools can produce.

The edge is knowing what should exist, what should be cut, what should be finished, and what is good enough to be carried forward by someone else.

AI did not flatten taste.

It made taste easier to see.

Because once the making gets cheaper, the choosing is exposed.

And choosing was always the work.