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 Sales CRM Is Now a Tax, Not a Moat
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your revenue team already exports pipeline data out of the CRM to do the real work somewhere else. You are not buying a strategic platform. You are paying $2.2 million a year for a database you already own, and four engineers could replace it in twelve weeks.
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Hello New CTO : Your Loan Engine Cost More than Giving Billionaires Free Cars
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗New CTO reality check: Your legacy systems cost more than you think. A frank analysis of technical debt and the business case for AI modernization.
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What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to Engineering Directors
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Engineering directors have 18 months to prove they can transform teams for AI. The market in 2028 will have directors with proven transformation track records. Will you be one of them?
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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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Your Questions About AI in the SDLC Reveal Exactly Where You Are in the Adoption Curve—And How to Bridge the Gap Before You Waste a Year
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your questions about AI in the SDLC reveal your adoption maturity level. Diagnose where you are and learn how to accelerate your journey.
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Your AI Agent is the World’s Most Educated Five-Year-Old
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your AI agent has the world’s knowledge but the judgment of a five-year-old. Learn to work with it like the brilliant but inexperienced junior it is.
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He Cannot Hire the Engineer He Needs. Here’s What He’s Doing About It.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗When you can’t hire the engineer you need, build one. How one leader is using AI to upskill existing team members and close capability gaps.
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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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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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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.
Essential or Ornamental
Three companies. Three choices. One satisfactory ending.
One does nothing. One maps the waste. One bets everything on twelve people in a warehouse.
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