‘Chad: The Brainrot IDE’ is a new Y Combinator-backed product so wild, people thought it was fake

Then former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt, an audience member asked him if HBO’s satire ‘Silicon Valley’ would be revived. Costolo, who was a writer for the show, essentially answered no (at timestamp 38:17).

While the writers talk about this regularly, he says, they don’t elaborate because today’s Silicon Valley is so bizarre that it can’t be parodied.

The last example of this is a new company called Lined laboratories which was launched from Y Combinator this week. Clad’s product is so off the beaten path that people thought it was an April Fool’s joke in November.

But it is a real product, founder Richard Wang told TechCrunch. The product is called “Chad: The Brainrot IDE.” It’s yet another integrated development environment for coding atmosphere – an IDE is what software developers use to code – but with a twist. While waiting for the AI ​​coding tool to complete its task, the developer can mess around with his favorite brain-teasing activities within a window of the IDE.

Or, as the company’s website advertises: “Gamble while you code. Watch TikToks. Swipe on Tinder. Play mini-games. This isn’t a joke — it’s Chad IDE, and it solves the biggest productivity problem in AI-powered development that no one is talking about.”

The founders say their IDE increases productivity by aiding in “context switching.” Their argument is that by performing your brain rot activities within the IDE itself, once the AI ​​is done with the task, you get right back to work instead of having to concentrate on your phone or browser.

Response on X was mixed. While some people thought it was fake satire, others thought it was a good – or a terrible – idea.

Like it or hate it, everyone had an opinion, even Jordi Hays, co-host of the enthusiastically pro-tech podcast TBPN. Hay wrote a post about the product called: “Rage Baiting is for Losers.” In it he said about Chad IDE: “On the one hand it’s funny. On the other hand: what are we doing here and why does this belong on the official YC account?”

He argued that products like Chad IDE and Cluely have moved rage bait from a marketing gimmick to a “product strategy,” and “it really shouldn’t be that way.” He urged YC to teach its founders that “tantrums are for losers.”

This is particularly interesting advice from someone who, as a founder, mastered viral marketing without anger. Hays and his wife Sarah founded Party Round, a financing startup that went viral for their friendly marketing gimmicks like launching NFT versions of the top “useful” VCs. (Party round renamed Capital and sold to Rho in 2024.)

Wang tells TechCrunch what the haters don’t get about his brain-rotting IDE is that it wasn’t intended as anger bait. The founders hope it will become a truly beloved AI vibe coder for consumer app developers. They want to give these people a consumer app-like experience in an IDE.

Although the product is real, it is not yet available to the public.

“We are currently in closed beta,” Wang said. Right now, Chad is trying to build a “community” of users who like the idea. Clad Labs hopes to open the product to the public soon, but for now users must get an invite from someone already in beta.

There’s undoubtedly a certain type of developer who would love Chad. But whatever the future holds for this product, one thing is true: it’s almost impossible to parody Silicon Valley these days.