Imagination Engineering — Eve Bouffard, Head of Design, Y Combinator
Jul 16, 2026 · 16:04
Eve Bouffard, Head of Design at Y Combinator, introduces 'Imagination Engineering' as the art of stretching the mind to invent what seems impossible, arguing that idea generation is the new bottleneck as AI models become incredibly capable. She shares her experiment in 'thinking in public' with a Slack channel called 'Eve Thoughts,' where she dumps her stream of consciousness, and then used Opus 4.8 to build a personalized website (EveBouffard.com) that aggregates and visualizes those thoughts. The site dynamically surfaces her projects, quotes, tools, and books, and even applies shaders and translations. She also built 'Shape of Minds'—a tool that analyzes commonalities across history's greatest minds, revealing patterns like taking naps and barely eating. Bouffard demonstrates how to spin up agents on demand for learning and productivity, emphasizing that anyone can now create software on the fly from their stream of consciousness.
