I’m writing this from a family hotel resort in Fort Myers, Florida. I’ve been here the past few days with my wife, our three boys, my parents, and my sister. We’ve shared meals, watched the kids splash endlessly in the pool, gone on short excursions, and enjoyed each other’s company in between sunscreen reapplications and snack runs.
At one point while watching my kids play in the water, I had this thought:
The family vacation is a type of wrapper.
Over the past 18 months, there’s been growing conversation around AI apps, specifically those built on top of large language models like GPT or Claude. These apps don’t invent the model itself. They’re wrappers:
- Interfaces for specific use cases
- Constraints that reduce complexity
- Workflows that make the raw model more useful
- Guardrails, prompts, and UI that turn general intelligence into focused tools
They don’t generate power, but they channel it.
In 2024, I saw a number of posts online poking fun at AI apps as nothing more than “wrappers on top of GPT.” VCs would deride startups as “nothing more than an LLM wrapper” and pass.
But in just a year, there’s a new meme genre now: it’s wrappers all the way down.
- Venture capital is a wrapper for LP money
- OpenAI is a wrapper for Nvidia chips and Microsoft infrastructure
- Many SaaS tools are wrappers for AWS, open source libraries, and APIs
- Even entire industries are wrappers for upstream capabilities and capital
The meteoric success of “wrapper” AI apps and their ability to scale revenue to tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time has prompted a reframe:
A wrapper isn’t lesser, it’s what gives structure, shape, and usability to something powerful but raw.
When done well, wrappers create leverage. They make ideas accessible, workflows repeatable, and outcomes predictable.
So back to Fort Myers. I’m going to expand upon the wrapper metaphor.
This family vacation?
It’s a wrapper for a whole set of otherwise scattered, unmet needs:
- Focused time with my kids
- Shared meals with my parents and sister
- A break from home routines
- Core memory creation
- A dose of sunshine, rest, and togetherness
- An attempt to “slow down” time, even if just for a week
None of these require a resort in Florida. But left to their own devices, these things often remain unscheduled. They’re hard to prioritize amid work, school, and the daily grind.
A vacation wraps them up into a single interface: plane tickets, packed bags, a hotel reservation. It gives structure to presence (albeit with some friction like kids melting down en route).
We move through life surrounded by wrappers. Some are intentional, some inherited, and some improvised.
A few that come to mind:
- A dinner reservation is a wrapper for private time with the spouse
- A holiday is a wrapper for rituals, rest, or family obligation
- A job title is a wrapper for status, identity, and expectation
- A birthday party is a wrapper for making someone feel seen and celebrated
- A group chat is a wrapper for belonging, co-regulation, inside jokes, and asynchronous presence
- A business’s website is a wrapper for the promise and proof of a business, carefully packaged so a stranger can make a decision with confidence
Without these wrappers, we might forget to reach out, miss moments that matter, or let needs go unmet. With them, we have form, a thing to point to, schedule, and participate in.
They don’t eliminate the mess underneath, but they help us engage with it, together.
Even agency businesses are wrappers. We take talent, tools, and experience, and wrap them in process, messaging, and relationship. We give clients an interface to make progress without having to hire, manage, or solve on their own.
The key isn’t to avoid being a wrapper. The key is knowing what you’re wrapping and why it matters.
Pressing publish while the kids are still napping! That’s a wrap!