# rieseberg-how-to-be-more-ambitious-2026-10-13

## Veille

Blog post by **Felix Rieseberg** (listed role: EM at **Anthropic**, led engineering for Claude.ai, **Cowork**, and Claude Code Desktop; co-maintainer of **Electron**), published on **October 13, 2026**; ~2,000 words, 8 minutes. It responds to the rallying cry *"we're not ambitious enough"* with a tutorial: ambition with a model breaks down into **four types**, **Speed**, **Altitude**, **Depth**, and **Range**, with speed set aside as already achieved.

## Titre Article

How to be more ambitious: A tutorial for humans with models

## Date

2026-10-13

## URL

https://felixrieseberg.com/how-to-be-more-ambitious-a-tutorial-for-humans-with-models/

## Keywords

ambition, model usage, Speed, Altitude, Depth, Range, abstraction, goal beyond the goal, quarterly business review, QBR, expert depth, raw data, outside judge, verification, unreasonable goals, cross-disciplinary approach, nouns into verbs, role play, self-efficacy, Claude

## Authors

Felix Rieseberg — EM chez Anthropic (fonction affichée), co-mainteneur d'Electron ; blog personnel felixrieseberg.com.

## Ton

Profile: a tutorial by a practitioner who works on the product he's discussing, addressed to model users, non-specialists included. The register is casual and playful (*"I primarily use Claude (duh)"*, aliens threatening Earth to justify the ideal team), but the structure is methodical: a four-type taxonomy, then for each one numbered techniques and reproducible prompts, running through a single example (the Acme Inc QBR). The author bounds his advice: altitude doesn't suit creative projects well, "Claude, go make money" doesn't work in 2026, self-evaluation by the model is still to be avoided as of October 2026. The last section shifts register, moves into historical and sporting anecdote, and ends with a call for readers to share their own techniques.

## Pense-betes

- **Four types of ambition**: Speed (same work, less time, set aside), Altitude (outcome rather than task), Depth (expert method), Range (multiple disciplines).
- **Altitude**: moving from "fix this crash" to "keep the app crash-free"; sign that it's relevant: the subject would warrant meetings. Prerequisite: equipping the model (crash reports, version ↔ commit mapping, machines for the three OSes).
- **QBR in three stages**: explain what changed and why → three urgent decisions with arguments for/against → design something better than the quarterly deck, prove it against the historical record, run it in parallel for a quarter.
- **Depth, five techniques**: instruments of the best (not just their vocabulary); unreasonable goal (200 ms instead of 5 s); test beliefs against raw data; produce new knowledge (customer simulation, churn signal validated out-of-sample); outside judge, ideally an executable tool.
- **Depth prompt**: what a pro would do → the rawest material → methods and tools → what would prove the result beyond you and me → rewrite the prompt.
- **Range**: nouns → verbs (the QBR = "convincing busy people of a cause-and-effect story and deciding under uncertainty, in 30 minutes"); team: analyst, journalist, editor, motion/audio designer, red team (short seller, forensic accountant). Look for methods, not voices.
- **Common condition**: a computer where the model can install software + access to data (MCP or otherwise).
- **Self-efficacy**: believing it's possible (Dantzig), seeing someone else do it (Bannister, Sawe), allowing yourself to fail (*Inner Game of Tennis*, the Linux announcement).

## RésuméDe400mots

Felix Rieseberg, who works on Claude at Anthropic, observes that model capabilities are advancing unevenly, "stunning in some directions, lacking in others" according to Terence Tao. Some users get remarkable results from them; many limit themselves to simple questions. Against the slogan "we're not ambitious enough," he offers a tutorial.

He distinguishes four types of ambition. Speed, doing the same work faster, is already achieved and requires no creativity; he sets it aside. What remains are altitude, depth, and range.

Altitude consists of moving up in abstraction: asking what the goal behind the goal is. The author moved from requests to fix crashes to the instruction to keep his applications crash-free, which forced him to give the model crash reports, the correspondence between versions and commits, and Windows, macOS, and Linux machines to reproduce and verify. Using the example of a quarterly business review at Acme Inc, he grades the approach: explain what changed and why, identify the three most urgent decisions with their arguments, then design a mechanism more effective than the quarterly deck, validate it against the historical record, and run it in parallel. The approach works for targeted outcomes, less so for creative work.

Depth consists of executing the task the way the best expert in the field would. Models readily change vocabulary without changing method: one must demand the instruments of the best, set unreasonable goals while presenting them as reasonable, have hypotheses checked against raw data, ask for new knowledge validated on unseen data, and above all rely on an outside judge, not the model itself. A typical prompt asks the model what a professional would do, what raw material they would start from, with what methods, and what would prove the result, before rewriting the request.

Range consists of calling on other disciplines, which multi-agent systems make economical. Two techniques: replacing nouns with verbs to see which professions are involved, and assembling the ideal team, red team included, by asking the model to do what each profession does rather than imitate its style. All these approaches assume a computer and access to data.

Rieseberg finally ties the problem to self-efficacy: people accomplish more when they believe something is possible, when they have seen someone else succeed at it, or when they allow themselves to fail. In a world where capabilities advance in leaps, he calls for sharing other techniques.

## GrapheDeConnaissance

- Felix Rieseberg —travaille_chez→ Anthropic (ORGANISATION, 0.95)
- Felix Rieseberg —a_créé→ Quatre types d'ambition (CONCEPT, 0.9)
- Altitude —fait_partie_de→ Quatre types d'ambition (CONCEPT, 0.97)
- Depth —fait_partie_de→ Quatre types d'ambition (CONCEPT, 0.97)
- Range —fait_partie_de→ Quatre types d'ambition (CONCEPT, 0.97)
- Speed —fait_partie_de→ Quatre types d'ambition (CONCEPT, 0.95)
- Felix Rieseberg —affirme_que→ les modèles opèrent à des niveaux d'abstraction plus élevés à mesure qu'ils gagnent en capacité (AFFIRMATION, 0.88)
- Felix Rieseberg —affirme_que→ les modèles invités à agir en professionnels changent de vocabulaire sans changer de méthode (AFFIRMATION, 0.9)
- Felix Rieseberg —recommande→ un juge extérieur au modèle, idéalement un outil exécutable (AFFIRMATION, 0.93)
- Felix Rieseberg —recommande→ des objectifs déraisonnables présentés au modèle comme raisonnables (AFFIRMATION, 0.88)
- Felix Rieseberg —recommande→ de demander au modèle ce que fait un métier plutôt que d'en imiter le style (AFFIRMATION, 0.9)
- Depth —utilise→ juge extérieur (CONCEPT, 0.85)
- Range —s_inspire_de→ The Art of Innovation (DOCUMENT, 0.85)
- Range —utilise→ systèmes multi-agents (TECHNOLOGIE, 0.8)
- Felix Rieseberg —référence→ Terence Tao (PERSONNE, 0.85)
- Quatre types d'ambition —est_basé_sur→ Auto-efficacité (CONCEPT, 0.78)
- Locke et Latham —affirme_que→ des objectifs précis et difficiles donnent de meilleures performances que « faire de son mieux » (AFFIRMATION, 0.88)
- Felix Rieseberg —utilise→ Claude (TECHNOLOGIE, 0.95)

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Canonical: https://www.thekb.eu/en/fiches/rieseberg-how-to-be-more-ambitious-2026-10-13/