Reference: https://cluely.com/manifesto.
We want to cheat
on everything.Yep, you heard that right.
Sales call. Meetings. Negotiations.
If there’s a faster way to win — we’ll take it.We built Cluely so you never have to think alone again.
It sees your screen. Hears your audio.
Feeds you answers in real time.
While others guess — you’re already right.And yes, the world will call it cheating.
But so was the calculator.
So was spellcheck.
So was Google.Every time technology makes us smarter, the world panics.
Then it adapts. Then it forgets.
And suddenly, it’s normal.But this is different.
AI isn’t just another tool —
It will redefine how our world works.Why memorize facts, write code, research anything —
when a model can do it in seconds?The best communicator, the best analyst, the best problem-solver —
is now the one who knows how to ask the right question.The future won’t reward effort. It’ll reward leverage.
So, start cheating.
Because when everyone does, no one is.
The manifesto breakdown
We want to cheat
on everything.Yep, you heard that right.
Sales call. Meetings. Negotiations.
If there’s a faster way to win — we’ll take it.
I think most technical people hate having too many meetings, let alone going through many other administrative processes. The faster way to win here, at least in the short term, may be through cheating in some sense. However, the system would fail in the long term because it pushes forward the wrong incentives (cheating) instead of getting rid of unnecessary meetings, calls, and other administrative processes. You may argue whether cheating is a wrong thing to do in such cases, and the answer could be “no, it’s not”. Although it may not be the “wrong” thing to do, depending on the situation, it is not a good thing to be pushed forward as an incentive. There is a difference: cheating as an act and cheating as an incentive. People may be forced to cheat, and the guilt of cheating would be on the system, reinforcing it, not on the people doing it (at least not majorly). When looked at from this perspective, there is some amount of guilt on the system because of how the Cluely manifesto expresses the willingness to cheat on everything. However, the manifesto does not use “cheating” to merely fire back at the system; it also incentivizes it, effectively playing along with the system. This is where everything starts to become perplexing.
We built Cluely so you never have to think alone again.
It sees your screen. Hears your audio.
Feeds you answers in real time.
While others guess — you’re already right.
The question here is to what extent people would be willing to give away their privacy to be able to be “already right” while others are guessing. Another thing is, would you want to sound right undeservingly? Would you like to be a joke stealer? Seriously, though, is being right even when you don’t even know what right or wrong even means that important? This could make a good Black Mirror episode, if there is not one already; giving up your privacy to get hired by a company, only to then realize how you have become a puppet of the company, and now you are in serious trouble, facing the consequences if you do not do as they order.
And yes, the world will call it cheating.
But so was the calculator.
So was spellcheck.
So was Google.Every time technology makes us smarter, the world panics.
Then it adapts. Then it forgets.
And suddenly, it’s normal.
The calculator analogy may have already become the public defender of cheating cases by using AI, but it is understood and used in the wrong way almost all the time. There are still cases where using calculators is considered cheating, such as K4 students passing their basic arithmetic exam. There are still cases where using spellcheckers is considered cheating, such as English writing classes. There are still cases where using Google search is considered cheating, such as closed-book university exams. I do not see how a kid is supposed to be good at solving integrals without first understanding the first principles of basic arithmetic. Are we literally turning into the translator in the Chinese Room experiment? Using calculators is NOT considered cheating for university students, for example, because they already get it, and now it is a matter of efficiency. Using Google is NOT considered cheating in cases where the point of using it is not to copy and paste the thing you are interested in understanding, but something fact memorization-related. Using a tool should be considered constructive only when its use plays an intermediary role in bringing more wisdom/understanding to the tool user, not when it doesn’t help the person to gain more understanding of the thing of interest. This is the distinction between constructive and destructive ways of using tools. The rule of thumb is to use a tool’s output in the form of if tool-output is true, then the-thing-of-my-interest is true/false, followed by the question, why is tool-output true?, instead of tool-output is true. If you cannot trace back the question of “why the tool output is true (or false)?” to the things you already know or can test on your own, then using the tool’s output is destructive. It is only constructive when it guides you through the realm of possibilities efficiently, helping you to understand the thing of your interest to the extent of making the tool itself obsolete to solve the problem, if efficiency weren’t concerned.
But this is different.
AI isn’t just another tool —
It will redefine how our world works.
Indeed, this is a different case because AI stands for something that is intelligent in an unspecified way, meaning it can adapt and get better at doing any given task hypothetically. AI in its current form is not yet there to completely redefine how our world works, but it might be one day. So, I also believe it is more than just a calculator, or Google, or probably any other tool that has ever been invented in human history.
Why memorize facts, write code, research anything —
when a model can do it in seconds?The best communicator, the best analyst, the best problem-solver —
is now the one who knows how to ask the right question.
Why memorize facts? Almost no reason other than maybe you don’t want to get dementia or something when you get older. Why write code? Why research anything? Okay, let’s assume no good reason exists for a minute. The best communicator, the best analyst, the best problem-solver is now the one who knows how to ask the right question. Uhm, who is that person going to be? The one with the dementia who couldn’t write code and didn’t know how to conduct research properly? This sounds quite illogical. You are telling me I don’t need to use the rigorous language of mathematics to be a better communicator? You’re telling me that I don’t need to know coding and be capable of algorithmic thinking to be a better problem-solver? This sounds even harder than learning how to write code…
The future won’t reward effort. It’ll reward leverage.
This is already the case where putting too much effort into something does not mean you’ll get rewarded proportionally. There are multiple aspects of this issue, however. One of the issues is that you should pick the right tool to hammer down a nail; otherwise, you’ll spend enormously more time and effort than the guy doing it with a hammer. This is one kind of leverage. The other kind of leverage would be using your time to kill the other guy so that you would get the job by the rule of elimination (pun intended), even if you couldn’t hammer down your nail properly. So, when it is framed simply as “only leverage is rewarded”, it can mean anything, even if it is doing harm to society to get a job whose goal is to serve society. Not only that, but I also think that the guy spending too much time “unnecessarily” because of poor tool selection does not end up getting nothing beneficial out of his experience; he may realize where the difficulty of using the fist comes from and come up with a better tool to do the job the next time. It may be the case that this person will outsmart the other person, who just picked the hammer without giving it a second thought, in the long run, because this person is purely focused on observing the process and getting better at it, while the other person is just all about blindly using what is available until what is available breaks, disappears, or needs an improvement. The first person is a producer, the second one is a blind consumer.
So, start cheating.
Because when everyone does, no one is.
Maybe, just stop cheating. Because when everyone cheats, cowards start to become the heroes of society, and the heroes become the cowards. Because when everyone cheats, the world becomes even more unjust than it already is, and dignity becomes a burden instead of something to look up to. Because when everyone cheats, trust fades away, and honesty means nothing while the jokers run around trolling everything.
I don’t think the existence of the Cluely manifesto is “just bad”. Something has to break the reputation of the system (e.g., corporations) in order to make it better and be prepared for the future. There is no good without the bad and no bad without the good, where the good and the bad are both good and bad.