7 min read
A week of running my business from a phone
My Mac was away for about a week in October, so everything went through my phone. What worked, what didn't, and the rule I ended up with about what an AI is allowed to ask me to do.
Newsletter
Every new article goes out as an email, word for word. These are the past issues. Each one opens here, on its own page.
Past issues
9 min read
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.
10 min read
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.
9 min read
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.
8 min read
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.
4 min read
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.
7 min read
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 min read
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.
9 min read
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.
8 min read
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.
9 min read
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.
9 min read
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.
9 min read
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.
7 min read
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.
8 min read
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.
8 min read
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.
2 min read
What is an AI operating system?
Not a chatbot or a dashboard: a way to connect business context with recurring work and human decisions.
8 min read
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.
8 min read
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.
8 min read
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.