Articles

Practitioner deep-dives on AI operations.

15 October 20266 min readOperations
Running my business from a phone, a month on
In October my Mac was away for a week, so everything went through my phone. What broke then changed how I work now: a board, one approval tap, and one rule about what anyone is allowed to ask me to do.
14 October 20269 min readOperations
The dev site is the thing I test
On 30 September a redesign went live before I'd properly seen it, and I had to roll the site back. Here's the workflow that replaced it: a private copy of the real site, rebuilt on every change, and nothing live until I say ship it.
13 October 202610 min readIndustry
Getting off one AI subscription
Six weeks of quota limits, credit running dry and one bad switch taught me that the goal isn't leaving a provider. It's never depending on any single one.
12 October 20269 min readOperations
The reviewsheet: one word, one page
I type one word and get one page on my phone: what was built, what needs my decision with a recommended answer, and every piece of work in priority order. How it came about, and the four formats it went through in one night.
11 October 20268 min readCase Studies
Building the box: an always-on server for £7.55 a month
Why I rented a small server so my AI keeps working with the laptop shut, what it cost, and the three weeks of things that broke while I set it up from a phone in Spain.
10 October 20264 min readCase Studies
Building from a van while the factory ships
What AI operations looks like when it is how the work actually gets done, including the day it stopped nine times.
10 October 20267 min readOperations
Using Orca: one agent per ticket, steered from my phone
How a desktop app with a phone companion became the workbench for my agent factory, what it is not, and the night I used it to fix my own server.
9 October 20269 min readHow AI Works
Jev: how my factory decides what to build next
My agent factory kept spending its time fixing itself instead of doing paid work. How I now rank every ticket by revenue and deadline, and use a model that can only make decisions to check the work between steps.
6 October 20269 min readCase Studies
Running a business from a van
The practical side of working from a 4.86 metre van on parental leave: a closed laptop that silenced 112 messages, a ferry that looked full, a hotspot that kept dropping, and the rule that the Mac stays off.
2 October 20268 min readOperations
Disk full: the storage lessons nobody mentions
An AI system that remembers everything has to keep it somewhere. Four times this year my disk filled up, and once an agent deleted 8.3GB from under a job that was still running.
28 September 20269 min readHow AI Works
Why my second brain took three goes
A folder of notes that outgrew the AI, a faithful copy of someone else's architecture that only looked finished, and a third go where I checked everything. What each one taught me, and how I'd start today.
17 September 20269 min readCase Studies
Building the metafactory
Seven weeks building a factory of AI agents that picks up tickets, builds, checks its own work and lands it. The false starts, the nine hours it sat dead, and the night it landed four tickets with nobody watching.
31 July 20269 min readCase Studies
I audited my own AI system and deleted most of it
Over 100,000 lines of custom code, measured against what it actually delivered in 30 days. What I kept, what I deleted, and why the deletions made it better.
8 July 20267 min readCase Studies
One repo, not three: folding Meta and Bobble into MetaNova
For seven months I ran my AI work across three projects, with one of them meant to coordinate the other two. On 2 July I decided to fold them into one. Here's why the coordinator stopped earning its keep.
12 June 20268 min readHow AI Works
My AI said it was done. It wasn't.
A reply 'in my drafts' that didn't exist, a commit that resolved nowhere, and an overnight read of 45 build sessions that found 61 overclaims. How I now check what my AI tells me.
2 June 20268 min readOperations
WhatsApp is how I talk to my AI
Since March most of my conversations with my AI happen in WhatsApp groups. How it's set up, the morning a reply went to the wrong group, and the 38 hours it went quiet without telling anyone.
1 April 20262 min readHow AI Works
What is an AI operating system?
Not a chatbot or a dashboard: a way to connect business context with recurring work and human decisions.
24 March 20268 min readHow AI Works
MetaNova V3: how my second brain is actually built
Three weeks after the rebuild, with real data loaded. The seven rules it runs on, how the instructions are layered, and what I moved into it on 17 to 20 March.
9 March 20268 min readCase Studies
Deleting my second brain twice in one morning
On 3 March I wiped 242 files at 10:08, rebuilt in five minutes, and wiped that too at 11:23. What went wrong both times, and the rule I took from it.
20 February 20268 min readCase Studies
Bobble: my first go at a second brain
Five months, 248 commits and a set of notes that grew until the AI spent 46% of its memory reading them. What I built first, and why it's hitting a wall.

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Articles

Running my business from a phone, a month on

The dev site is the thing I test

Getting off one AI subscription

The reviewsheet: one word, one page

Building the box: an always-on server for £7.55 a month

Building from a van while the factory ships

Using Orca: one agent per ticket, steered from my phone

Jev: how my factory decides what to build next

Running a business from a van

Disk full: the storage lessons nobody mentions

Why my second brain took three goes

Building the metafactory

I audited my own AI system and deleted most of it

One repo, not three: folding Meta and Bobble into MetaNova

My AI said it was done. It wasn't.

WhatsApp is how I talk to my AI

What is an AI operating system?

MetaNova V3: how my second brain is actually built

Deleting my second brain twice in one morning

Bobble: my first go at a second brain

Get articles like these in your inbox