Field notes
Practitioner essays on building production software with AI agents.
Operator-grade reports on the systems, decisions, and economics of shipping software with AI — what worked, what failed, and what changed.
Articles
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Your CRM Can Cost $3.5 Million a Month. Finance Panics Over a $100,000 AI Bill. Introducing the Inference Investment Theory (IIT).
AI value is not an inference metric. Start with product outcome, cycle time, total cost, and cost of delay, then overlay inference investment.
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Stop Budgeting Tokens by Engineer. Budget the Work.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Per-engineer token caps optimize the most visible cost while hiding labor, delay, and business value. Budget AI production by accepted outcome, not individual contributor.
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Would You Spend 150% of the Labor Cost to Ship Today?
Price the outcome before its tokens. A rational token budget is a function of total delivery economics, and even 150% of labor cost can make sense when it buys enough time.
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Your AI Coding Platform Is Becoming PLM. Stop Running the Decision Like Homecoming Court.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Download EPUB ↓AI coding platforms are becoming the system of record for software production. Govern them as lifecycle infrastructure, not developer preference.
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If you cannot afford the tokens, can you afford to build it?
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Download EPUB ↓Your CFO should not be asking what you spent tokens on as if the model invoice is a minibar tab. Your CFO should be asking why the highest-ROI production input in the software portfolio is underfunded.
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Put Tokens in the P&L, Not in a Developer Expense Report
Exec summary ↗Token costs are production costs, not developer allowances. Put them in the portfolio P&L, measure human plus AI labor against accepted outcomes, and stop mistaking visible inference bills for economic governance.
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Dear Developer: Why AI Adoption Is Slow
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Download EPUB ↓A letter from the executive seat to developers, managers, and directors on why AI adoption slows down when speed outruns trust, authority, and production reality.
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Your AI Token Burn Is Not the Problem. The Work Is.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Download EPUB ↓Your token burn is not the problem. It is the first invoice honest enough to show that your engineering work has no value discipline.
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Before You Build a Token Economics Dashboard, Build a Value Dashboard
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Download EPUB ↓Before you optimize token spend, measure the completed work, human attention, cycle time, and risk reduction those tokens bought.
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Your heroes are outdated. Your influencers are underqualified. The people you need are busy.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Download EPUB ↓The old software heroes explain the last era. The loudest influencers explain the demo. The builders answering customers in public are the ones closest to the truth.
Corporate fiction
Three books. One operating problem. No clean hero.
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