Linden Tibbets

Things that ran for me yesterday without me noticing: A 6am forecast on my calendar My phone set to vibrate at 9pm Every IFTTT mention on X logged to a Google sheet for Claude to read AI decides what matters. Applets make sure it sees what happened.

For the first time on @IFTTT, AI can be the trigger. Point the new AI Agent at a page. A job board, a waitlist, a competitor's price. When a new item shows up or a number crosses a line, your Applet runs. Just a page and a sentence. ifttt.com/explore/ai-agent-a…

Reflection Canyon from above

61% of Americans want more control over how AI is used in their lives (Pew, 2025). The answer isn't less AI. It's instructions you can read. An Applet is a standing instruction. One line. You set it, you can see what it did, you can turn it off. AI works inside it.

In 2010, people understood "if this, then that" right away. Setting it up was the hard part. Now nearly half the Applets built in IFTTT's chat come from a single typed message. A typical one goes live in about 3 minutes. Say the sentence. It becomes the Applet.

Today IFTTT becomes IFTTT.ai. Our first tagline in 2010 was "put the internet to work for you." Now we're putting AI to work for you, and taking down our paywalls on every plan, including Free. I wrote about what changed and why. ifttt.com/explore/put-ai-to-…

I have watched IFTTT evolve through a few major technology waves up close. The web, the app store, smart homes, voice assistants. Now AI. Each wave changed how people talk to software. None changed what they want from it. If this, then that. Still a powerful sentence and idea.

Not every automation step needs a model. An email from a client's address is an exact event. A trigger catches it every time, at no cost. Save AI for what needs judgment, like how to word the reply. Intelligence is the costly part. Spend it where it counts.

What would you automate, in one sentence? If this, then that. Think big this time. What feels impossible or futuristic today but may be possible soon?

Maybe the only Land Rover i would drive :)

An AI agent can message your partner when you leave work. But only if you tell it you left. Automation is most useful when you never have to remember to ask. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is starting to get events. I'm glad, because the "if this" is the hard part.

Ten years ago this month I wrote that AI needs access, not a better interface. Data to learn from. Abilities to act. I got the access part right. I underrated the interface. Chat is what made AI usable for everyone. Turns out you need both. medium.com/read-think/ai-is-…

Give it enough time and the garden always wins.

The first IFTTT blog post went up on December 14, 2010. It explained that ifttt is short for "if this then that." One sentence anyone could use to make their tools work together. Sixteen years later, it is still the simplest way I know to describe automation.

Small @IFTTT thing I like: iOS Shortcuts can now send actual text into your Applet, not just a trigger. Dictate a video idea. Send a caption to your drafts. Log a client note on the go. ifttt.com/ios_shortcuts/trig…

Nobody trusts AI because it is smart. They trust it because it did a small job right ten times in a row. Then they hand it a bigger one. What was the first thing you let AI do without checking?

Working remotely in my garage sometimes feels like this. lindentibbetswashere.com/pos…

Still love this David Hockney print. lindentibbetswashere.com/pos…

We've been shipping fast — Ghost, Gamma, HeyGen, Linear, HubSpot, and dozens more are now on IFTTT. None of it is about any single app. It's about the ones you already use finally working together, automatically, in the background. ifttt.com/explore