Building an AI operating system, in public.

I share what I build as I build it: what worked, what didn't, and how a non-technical operator makes real systems with AI. These are the pieces, one at a time.

My writing
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OCT 2026

Renaissance or industrial revolution?

People worry AI erodes critical thinking. Two days after I asked Claude one of my favorite questions, a colleague and I had a dashboard that answered every budget question we'd been stuck on.

Risograph illustration of a woman tapping on her phone while a dashed route carries a train ticket, a house and a map pin across Lisbon's trams and rooftops to a family waiting with suitcases at a station.
SEP 2026

Personal AI agents are arriving fast. I tested one on a family trip to Lisbon. Here is why I won't keep using it.

It saved us almost half the train fare and booked our Airbnb. Then it asked for my children's passports, and its privacy policy didn't back up what it told me.

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SEP 2026

I rebuilt my email in Claude

Four inboxes and a Teams channel on one screen twice a day, sorted and drafted. Including the first version I would have stopped using.

Risograph illustration of a stream of documents, newsletters and microphones flowing into a sound wave that reaches the headphones of a woman out running.
AUG 2026

I created a podcast (and it's just for me)

My weekly intelligence brief, rewritten for the ear and narrated, waiting in my podcast app every Monday. Built in two hours, about $0.96 an episode.

Risograph illustration of a woman working at a computer fed by roots of pages and folders, with a patterned bloom rising from the screen.
AUG 2026

In January I gave up on building my website with AI. In June I built one I love, with the same AI.

The first version was so generic I never launched it. What changed the second time: clarity, and an operating system that already knew my work.

Risograph illustration of two counting machines: one spilling a chaotic heap of slips, the other producing a neat stack with a woman's hand resting on it.
AUG 2026

Two people nearly gave up on AI. Both had handed it a job it's bad at.

A sticker game and a grant proposal, both confidently wrong. What went wrong, how we rebuilt them, and the exact prompt to give AI before any task.

Risograph illustration of a scanning bar grazing the surface of a single sheet of paper while a vast root system spreads out unmeasured below it.
JUL 2026

I use AI in my writing, and I'm not going to stop

Substack now scores posts for AI. It measures sentence structure, the one thing that doesn't matter, and the people already gaming it prove why.

Risograph illustration of a four-step loop: a woman seated at a desk mid-conversation, a transcript, a rising bar chart and a folded card, all circling a stacked block at the centre.
JUL 2026

I'm not very good at business development. So I built myself a coach.

I asked Claude to review the transcripts of my own sales calls. The coaching loop I built from what it found, and why the standard you set is what makes it useful.

Risograph illustration of a document loop: a machine produces pages, a magnifying glass grades each one and sends failures back around, and a single clean page exits to a tray.
JUL 2026

AI gave me a perfect action list. Six items were wrong.

AI's errors hide inside polished work. The grade-and-fix loop that catches them, and why the quality comes from the judgment you put in, not the tools.

Risograph illustration of AI agents passing an ad around a loop, one grading it, a human approving at a gate, and a compounding stack.
JUL 2026

Built to compound: the marketing engine we run at Tandem

How a small, part-time team runs whole marketing campaigns with a system of AI agents that grade each other's work, and where we keep human judgment in the loop.

Risograph illustration of a person interviewing a friendly geometric figure across a small table.
JUN 2026

Treat AI like a new colleague

Most people I speak with don't know where to start. Onboard AI like a new team member and let it interview you. Prompt included.

Risograph illustration of building a modular structure and filling its gaps.
JUN 2026

Build, find the gaps, fix them, repeat

I heard one prompt on a podcast and ran it against my AI operating system. Here's how I keep it improving as new features ship every day.

Risograph illustration of a pile of paper forms beside a health worker greeting a mother holding her baby.
JUN 2026

Better work, not better paperwork

Building Zanzibar's community health system taught me to redesign work around outcomes. Most teams are making the same mistake with AI today.

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MAY 2026

AI slop isn't the whole story

Everyone hates AI slop. I'm more interested in what it takes to get real value out of AI, and the patterns others can learn from.

Risograph illustration of a browser, database, and gear connected by cables with a document flowing through.
MAY 2026

A few times a week, I catch myself whispering "holy crap"

Watching Claude build a multi-platform procurement system through MCP connectors, end to end.

Risograph illustration of a drawer of plain files rising into a glowing constellation shaped like a mind.
MAY 2026

AI memory is just markdown files

The "memory" everyone asks about isn't magic. It's plain text files, read and updated every session. Context engineering, explained.

Risograph illustration of a person unplugging a coin-fed machine while a modest machine keeps printing.
MAY 2026

The $104 experiment I deleted

Not everything works. Here's one I built, measured, and shut down, and what it taught me.

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APR 2026

The Sunday intelligence brief

The AI business analyst I'd wanted for five years: every Sunday it reads 14 podcasts, 20 newsletters, and the research, and writes me a brief.

Risograph illustration of a mind opening into a web of connected nodes.
APR 2026

I was curious about AI second brains. Now I'm convinced.

How I built an LLM Wiki in Obsidian over a weekend, and why it became the backbone of how I work.

Risograph illustration of a woman at her desk as her schedule organizes around her.
APR 2026

I built an AI executive assistant over a weekend. It changed how I work.

The build that reached 90,000 people, with no code. What it does, and why so many people wanted one.

The newsletter

The full write-ups live in AI on Purpose

These notes are the short version. My newsletter is where I go deep: every prompt, every step, and what I'm learning from the people and organizations I work with.

Subscribe to AI on Purpose

Everything I write comes back to one idea: adopt AI deliberately, so it strengthens your thinking, in service of work that matters. That's what I mean by AI on purpose.