Are they made from real Girl Scouts?

Hey Reader, Christina Ricci has nearly 100 credits to her name. Yet, one of her first roles crowns the “known for” section of her IMDB page. Ricci played Wednesday Addams (no relation) in the 1991 Addams Family movie. She was given the best line, delivered beautifully, when she clapped back at the sassy Girl Scout. While my daughter is not as brazen as either of these characters, she does don the sash and stand outside of stores with cookies. She doesn’t trade for lemonade or any other treat besides cold hard cash. Ok, it’s mostly Venmo. Don’t get me wrong, she loves lemonade. But she has bills to pay! For several months each year, we operate a cookie warehouse. Her bedroom floor is stacked several cases high with the Girl Scouts’ most famous products during cookie season. When a box is sold in person, she takes the $ from the customer ($6 in our area) and hands them the goods. That’s one less box in our house and $6 less that we’ll personally have to pay to the regional chapter. That’s right, individual scouts (or, let’s be real, their parents) are on the hook for everything in their own little warehouse! At the start of every cookie season, my daughter sets a goal for how many boxes to sell. Then the troop makes the order for her, right down to the number of Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties to get. The Girl Scouts regional chapter has a contract with one of two bakers, who then deliver the cookies. Thankfully, no money has changed hands yet at this point (have you ever asked 10-year-olds for thousands of dollars?). But the countdown starts, because twice per season, the regional chapter slurps half the cost of the entire cookie order from the troop’s account. It is a fundraiser for the troop, so the chapter only takes back $5 per box. That has to come from somewhere: either the troops sell their boxes, or parents foot the bill. The parents who shill their kid’s cookie sale? They’re trying not to get left with an edible debt. (Don’t worry, no ask from me—cookie season is over here). But here’s how my daughter’s bedroom floor looked not too long ago: At cookie mania time, accounting can be hard to grasp. Neighbors are Venmoing parents and relatives are writing checks. The kitchen drawer is chock full of fives and ones. During a February rainstorm in front of a supermarket, girls make change as the wind flaps their tent, and you sure hope their 5th-grade math is right. When everything settles, all the accounting makes sense. But in the moment, it feels like craziness. It can be difficult to make good decisions when you’re surrounded by uncertainty. I think that’s why the Girl Scouts tries to make it super simple for the kids: one box, six bucks. Lucky for us in the technology industry, the present and future are crystal clear, right? Hardly! Things have always moved fast, but the last few years especially so. AI is changing how everyone works, including how developers build software. There are so many new tools, it’s hard to know where to start. And if you’re a marketer for one of those tools, it’s tough to figure out how to be found. When it feels like things are swirling around you, it’s hard to see where things are headed. One thing that’s helped me is my recent research into how devs use LLMs in their workflow. After collecting data on 30+ categories of dev tools, I decided to release it for free as LLM Rank.fyi. You’ll find leaderboards that show how GPT-5 recommends each category. You can also see how each dev tool’s place has changed since GPT-4. The positions themselves aren’t nearly as interesting as the differences: between models or from one use case to another. Small changes in language can impact what tools get recommended. We use these with clients to help them get a sense of the current state and the trajectory. With a little grounding, you can then start to explore gaps more meaningfully, even as uncertainty swirls around you. It comes back to something I’ve been saying for a long time: the words developers use unlock a lot of potential. You’ll find one-box-six-bucks kind of clarity by following their language. And “language” is one of the Ls in LLM. Check out LLM Rank and let me know what you find. We have way more data than what’s there, including more categories and Models. I’m happy to share if you ask. Oh! I just remembered I have some Thin Mints in the freezer. I'll only eat one (sleeve). Adam