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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You Do Not Have Time for a Two-Hour Kickoff but You Have Time to Fail for a Year
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗A VP told me his org only had 30 minutes for AI training. I recommended the two-hour kickoff that has consistently produced results. He said they did not have time. That told me everything I needed to know.
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You Trust the Lowest Bidder. But Not the Best Frontier Model?
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗You trust the lowest bidder's pull request. Why not the best frontier model inside a system that actually checks the work?
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If Your Engineers Only Get Thirty Minutes to Learn, That Is Not Their Failure. It Is Yours.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗You called to talk about AI adoption. But you do not know your value streams, your engineers get thirty minutes a week to learn, and you are still defending manual QA that produces no ROI. That is not an adoption problem. That is a leadership problem you built and now own.
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If Mythos Is Real, Will the Board Wait 24 Months While You Figure It Out?
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Everyone is talking about Claude and Mythos. Nobody is talking about the fact that your org still cannot ship. The models are not your bottleneck. Your decade-old dysfunction is. And the board is about to notice.
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You Added AI Agents. Why Are You Still Running a Separate Quality Organization Like It Is 2009?
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗If you are adopting AI and still defending a separate quality organization in 2026, you are not making a technical argument. You are making an emotional one. CEOs and boards should treat that as a leadership warning.
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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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Before You Optimize Token Spend, Try This Formula Instead
Stop spending dollars to save pennies on tokens. Tie the token budget to estimated labor cost, pick a starting percentage, and adjust it using completed-project evidence.
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Your Leaders Stopped Building. Now Vendors Own Your AI Strategy.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your technology leaders stopped building years ago. When AI arrived, vendors filled the vacuum. The fix is not better tools. It is rebuilding the technical leadership capability you let atrophy.
Corporate fiction
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