A job posting that bans AI tools is, in 2026, a novelty worth noticing. Text Blaze - the Y Combinator-backed tool that lets users create keyboard shortcuts that expand into full text snippets - is advertising a summer internship with a clear rule: no AI assistance on the job.
The company calls it the "Blaze No-AI Summer Internship." Text Blaze's product automates repetitive typing - type a short code and get a full email response - which gives the no-AI policy a certain coherence. Understanding where human workflows break down, and which parts are actually worth automating, requires experiencing those workflows without shortcuts first.
There's also a skills-verification angle that hiring managers across tech are quietly grappling with. Portfolio projects and take-home exercises are harder to evaluate when every candidate has had access to Claude Code and GitHub Copilot for the past two years. Requiring an intern to work without AI removes that variable.
Text Blaze has around 100,000 users and a small team - this is a niche role, not a statement from a company with a hundred-person recruiting class. But posting the no-AI constraint as the headline of the listing suggests they know it's unusual enough to attract a specific kind of applicant: someone confident enough in their own skills to not need the shortcut.