CONCEPT
Vanity Metrics
Measurements that make the team feel good without informing any decision — the category Ries identified in the pre-AI regime, now expanded by a new generation of metrics that look actionable but measure the tool's capability rather than the team's learning.
Ries's distinction between actionable metrics (those that can inform decisions) and vanity metrics (those that make the team feel good without informing decisions) was clear in the pre-AI regime. Total users, total downloads, total page views — the classics. The AI revolution has created new categories of vanity metrics that are harder to recognize because they look like actionable metrics. Build velocity, deployment frequency, time-to-prototype, architectural sophistication — all appear to measure team performance but in fact measure the capability of the underlying tooling. A team using a more capable AI will score higher regardless of process quality. These new vanity metrics are more dangerous than the old ones precisely because they carry the surface form of engineering discipline while measuring something the team does not control.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Build velocity was weakly actionable in the pre-AI regime because it was constrained by team capacity. An increase indicated process