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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Every Consultant Says They Can Fix Your Legacy App with AI, Here Is the Test
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗This is the third time your company has tried to fix the monolith. The first two attempts cost millions and changed nothing. AI agents make the third attempt possible, but only if the person leading it has actually done this before. Here is how to tell in ninety seconds.
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You Added AI. Congratulations, You Now Run a Slop Factory.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗You gave your engineers AI tools and skipped the governance conversation. Now your PRs are tripling, your review queue is drowning, and nobody can tell the good code from the generated garbage. You did not adopt AI. You built a slop factory.
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Your Best Salesperson Didn’t Pick Salesforce. Your Best Engineer Shouldn’t Pick Their AI.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your best engineer shouldn’t pick their AI tools any more than your best salesperson picked Salesforce. Make AI infrastructure, not individual choice.
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As CxO, the 2 Things Your HR Needs to Do Different
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your HR is declining AI-native candidates who ship in weeks what your teams ship in quarters. Two critical changes your HR needs to make before you lose the talent war.
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I Drove a Cactus Into a House in Marseille, France
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗You keep buying the fastest tool on the market and wondering why nothing changed. The problem is not the vehicle. The problem is your streets were designed a thousand years ago for donkeys. Here is what to do about it.
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Your Transformation Org Just Got a Fifteen-Year Service Award. Now You Want to Repeat That Pattern with AI?
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Your Agile Transformation VP just got a 15-year service award. The org still cannot release without a CAB meeting. Now you are building an AI team with the same playbook. You know how this ends.
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The Executive Operating Model We Run In Private: Four Sessions That Turn AI Anxiety Into Board-Grade Decisions
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗A detailed, private four-session executive operating model with agendas, timelines, decisions, and risk controls to move from AI confusion to measurable execution.
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You Have a Sub-Five Miler. Your Relay Team Still Loses.
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗You have ten engineers who could ship the next quarter alone. You have forty more who, through no fault of their own, cannot. Where do you put the AI investment, across the floor or into the ceiling? On the math, the answer most CTOs give is wrong, and the org chart you currently run is the residue of avoiding it for a decade.
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What Got You Here Won’t Keep You Here: A Letter to Mid and Late-Career Developers
Executive Deck ↗Exec summary ↗Listen ↗Mid and late-career developers: AI isn’t here to replace you. But developers who use AI will replace those who don’t. Here’s how to adapt.
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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?
Corporate fiction
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