Raycast CEO Thomas Paul Mann thinks we're settling for too little from AI. While everyone's building another way to chat with ChatGPT, his productivity app is turning large language models into actual computer operators that can rename your photos, manage files, and control any app on your Mac or PC.
The AI productivity revolution just got real. Raycast CEO Thomas Paul Mann dropped a vision bomb during The Vergecast that should make every tech worker pay attention. While the industry's busy building the 47th way to chat with ChatGPT, Mann's team is turning AI into your computer's new operating system.
"If all you want is a way to talk to ChatGPT, you're practically spoiled for choice," Mann told The Verge's David Pierce. "But that's not the whole story of how we'll interact with large language models. It better not be."
Raycast isn't just another launcher app anymore. It's become a Trojan horse for what Mann calls "agentic AI" - artificial intelligence that doesn't just answer questions but actually performs tasks on your behalf. The app already handles file searches, note-taking, and app launching, but its AI integration lets it rename photos, organize documents, and theoretically control any application installed on your machine.
The implications are staggering. Instead of typing commands into a search bar, you could tell Raycast's AI to "organize my desktop photos by date and subject" or "find all my Q3 budget files and create a summary." The AI doesn't just find information - it manipulates it, moves it, and acts on it.
Mann's betting that desktop integration beats browser-based AI assistants. While companies like Google and Microsoft are cramming AI into Chrome and Edge, Raycast thinks replacing your Mac's Spotlight and PC's Start menu creates deeper, more useful access to your digital life. "It can help you create, manage, and organize files, but it can also operate inside of any app you have installed," Mann explained during the interview.
But here's where things get scary. Mann isn't naive about the risks. "It's one thing for a chatbot to make mistakes in a text chat; it's another entirely to turn a hallucinating, imperfect tool loose on your computer," he acknowledged. When ChatGPT hallucinates about historical facts, you roll your eyes. When an AI agent hallucinates while managing your files, you could lose work, corrupt data, or worse.
