Pilot: Tom and Jonny find their feet (and microphones)

Near Future Podcast – Pilot EpisodeWelcome to the Near Future Podcast, where Tom and Jonny explore what they're building, learning, and experimenting with as AI reshapes how we work.In this episode:Agentic Murder MysteryJonny walks through his experiment building a six-agent murder mystery game using NanoClaw. He created a cast of AI suspects — each with their own secrets, personalities, and email inboxes — and ran a live session with a group of exited startup founders. The conversation covers what makes agents distinct from standard LLMs (triggers, tools, memory, collaboration), and the surprisingly playful emergent behaviour that unfolded when participants tried to interrogate and social-engineer the AI suspects.The Near Future Logo InstrumentTom shares his experiment turning the Near Future logo into an interactive, playable design tool — built in Claude Code — that generates ambient generative music as the logo animates. The conversation explores what it means to treat a brand asset as a toy, and how ephemeral software experiments fuel deeper craft practice.Craft, Design, and What LastsJonny reflects on receiving his long-awaited Poem Clock — a piece of hardware by Matt Webb that displays AI-generated rhyming couplets telling the time — as a lens for thinking about what makes design feel timeless. The duo discuss Dieter Rams' principles, the difference between craft as polish vs. craft as practice, and what that means for designers navigating the AI era.Hiring Designers in the Age of AITom shares observations from a recent head of design hiring process — how AI is adding noise on both sides, what strong portfolios look like right now, and the balance between deep foundations and pushing the frontier.Design Engineering & the Future of the Design TeamA candid discussion on whether every designer needs to become a design engineer, the role of different archetypes within a team, and how to close the gap between Figma and code without putting everyone in an IDE.Tools We're Excited AboutTom: Flora AI (visual asset generation with reference images), Notion's new agent capabilitiesJonny: UK-built sovereign design tools — Dawn Labs, Superhands, and Dessn(00:00) - Pilot episode (00:04) - Introduction (01:07) - Agentic Murder Mystery (15:17) - The Near Future Logo Instrument (22:27) - Craft, Design & What Lasts (29:03) - Hiring Designers in the Age of AI (33:30) - Design Engineering & the Future of Design Teams (45:56) - Tools We're Excited About Find us at nearfuture.works