All posts
Everything written so far, newest first. 25 posts.
Why connecting GitHub comes with free credits
Claude offers prepaid cloud credits for connecting a GitHub account. Rather than take that at face value, I followed GitHub's own documentation on what the connect button actually grants, and what the credits are buying.
Which stage of AI fluency am I at? A 12-question check
Saying you use AI means different things to different people. Twelve yes-or-no questions place you on the five stages, with exactly one thing to do next at each stage. My own score is in here too.
How a non-developer owner reads code
Opening code the AI wrote for me showed nothing but characters. Reading it one file at a time by asking made two things visible, what to ask to be changed and what must never be inside the code.
What a Solo Business Should Automate First
A month of actually removing work, in the order it happened. There is a way to decide what to touch first, and starting wrong wastes the momentum.
Giving a child an AI that asks instead of answers
If a child brings back answers from an AI, the homework is done and nothing is learned. One paragraph of setup that makes the AI ask instead of answer, plus a sample dialogue run with that setup.
Talking to a book instead of reading it
Instead of reading thick things from the first page, I ask first and open only the chapters that touch my question. Terms of service, statutes, licence documents, and books. I read less and keep more.
When Your Link Preview Shows Nothing
Getting a bare URL instead of a card means the page never declared og tags. Here is how I generate a preview image for every post automatically.
When the AI is wrong, catch it by asking
AI is confidently wrong. Four questions that expose a wrong answer inside the conversation, without any tools, plus three real cases my company caught while putting AI to work.
Drawing a map of what I do not know, with AI
The scariest part of new work is not knowing what you do not know. Five questions that find that dead end, the aporia Socrates led people to, within an hour, plus one of my own maps.
When Your Blog Does Not Show Up on Google
Not showing up means two different things, and telling them apart first stops you from spending days fixing something that was never the problem.
Why Linux is the final OS choice in the AI era
People say they use a Mac because the terminal is comfortable there. If that is the reason, the answer is Linux, and more so. Written on a machine from 2011.
The Feynman technique, explained to an AI
The Feynman technique says explain what you learned to someone else. It always needed a listener. Now an AI listens and points at the gaps. Here is what happened when I explained DNS.
A question is not a search term
Type a search term into an AI and you get a dictionary back. Three pairs of things I actually typed show how the shape of the question changes the answer.
What Is the Socratic Method? Definition and an Example
The Socratic method defined in plain words: the two ideas of midwifery and aporia, one short dialogue, and why a 2,400-year-old technique became useful again.
Seven Socratic prompts I actually use with AI
One question and a closed tab is just search. Here are the seven follow-up questions I ask after the first answer, taken from real conversations while running a small company.
The Five Stages of Working With AI
From asking a chatbot the odd question to running six agent sessions at once. The four stages I went through, and the fifth one I am entering.
Website Quotes in the AI Era, From Both Sides
Building got cheaper. Deciding did not. Here is why I now bundle training into every quote, so the owner can maintain the site without me.
A Dead Airline's Emails Just Sold for $10 Million
Google paid $10 million for a bankrupt airline's internal email. A few years ago that data would have been deleted. What survives automation is the record.
I Told It to Run Every 10 Minutes. It Ran 17 Times.
A free scheduled job kept missing its time. Counting the runs showed 17 where 128 should have been. How I fixed it without buying a server.
The Socratic Method, 2400 Years Later
The most effective way to learn anything was invented in Athens. The catch was that there was only one Socrates. That constraint is gone now.
The First Thing My AI Transformation Changed Was Me
The scene in The Matrix where flying a helicopter downloads into Neo's head. That is happening to me. AI moved my ceiling first, and automation followed.
Google Apps Script Already Worked. Here's Why I Added n8n
My quote automation already worked in Google Apps Script. I brought in n8n anyway. Why I added a second tool, and which jobs Google Apps Script still owns.
Google Sheets Quote Automation With Apps Script: 5 Minutes, Not a Day
Automating quotes with Google Sheets and Apps Script: USD list prices, per-product discounts and volume tiers, cut from a day of hand work to five minutes with Claude.
Wix vs Cloudflare: Moving Off Wix Cut $408 a Year to Zero
Wix vs Cloudflare from someone who switched: two sites moved off Wix to Cloudflare Pages in two days with Claude and Cursor, including one whose source code was gone.
Why I Started My AI Transformation
The first post on this blog. Why I decided to move my work onto AI, and why I chose to keep the whole record out in the open rather than privately.