Essays
essay

Just say no to STE-100

Or: the right tool for aircraft maintenance is the wrong tool for your Tuesday.

Substack ↗
essay

Everyone wants to write with impact. Almost nobody knows the methods.

The techniques are a century old. Choosing between them is the part nobody does, so I built something that does. Testers wanted.

Substack ↗
essay

More on Mechanical Writing

Exploring Claude's Output Styles as communication mechanisms.

Substack ↗
essay

In Defense of Mechanical Writing

Writing has a job to do. Perhaps we should specify the job.

Substack ↗
essay

Introducing Work-Ledger

See what AI is doing, and how to make the work better

Substack ↗
essay

Don’t Tell Me You Used AI. Tell Me What Changed.

How to explain your AI work so hiring managers see judgment, operational thinking, and real business impact.

Substack ↗
essay

Evaluate What You’re Building, Not What You’re Paying

Work Ledger: Understanding what your AI investment is actually building.

Substack ↗
essay

Security Risks, Common Pitfalls, and Best Practices in the Claude Skills Ecosystem

How do we know what good looks like?

Substack ↗
essay

Tricorder: A System for Learning from Code Review

An LLM-based system for capturing, measuring, and operationalizing the knowledge created during code review.

Substack ↗
essay

Flow State or Documentation: This Skill Lets You Have Both

A Claude skill to keep your working notes

Substack ↗
essay

The most important part of your work evaporates

Working Knowledge — a three-part series on expertise, institutional memory, and the IP problem nobody's treating like one.

Substack ↗
essay

This Is What AI-Assisted Building Looks Like

The ideation, the stack, and what it actually takes.

Substack ↗
essay

This Is Shipping, Not Showing.

I built four automated podcast feeds without writing code. Why that matters more than the podcasts themselves.

Substack ↗
essay

Showing vs. Shipping

Demos are impressive. Equipping is impactful.

Substack ↗
essay

Consumer-grade tools. Industrial-grade reach. Civilian-grade judgment.

The three levers that changed what AI can do — you set the limits; you own the outcome.

Substack ↗
essay

From nouns to verbs. How to make AI do things, not just say things.

A short, practical setup for connecting Claude Desktop to Gmail via MCP.

Substack ↗
essay

Focus Time Is Now Portable

From Idea to Action — Without Breaking Focus

Substack ↗
essay

Don’t Let Your AI Session Eat Itself

A Practical Guide to Context Management in Analytics Development

Substack ↗
essay

It’s Not You, It’s Me

A field guide to building a durable, high-leverage relationship with AI

Substack ↗
essay

Why Your AI Sessions Degrade — And What’s Actually Happening

A deeper look at context decay, for readers of Don’t Let Your AI Session Eat Itself

Substack ↗
essay

AI Doesn’t Improve Thinking—Unless You Design for It

The missing ideation layer in AI workflows

Substack ↗
essay

AI as a Thinking Multiplier

How I turned a research paper into a system that forces better thinking

Substack ↗
essay

Non-Linear Learning With AI

How tools like NotebookLM turn dense documents into navigable ideas

Substack ↗
essay

Turning Reading Into Leverage With NotebookLM

How I use AI tools to turn a single article into shareable, domain-relevant insight

Substack ↗
essay

Writing Isn’t Hard. Thinking Is.

Using AI to separate ideation, structure, and communication

Substack ↗
essay

Napkin Analytics Meets New York Times Wordle (#2)

Why constraints shape judgment

Substack ↗
essay

Asking Smaller Questions

How GPS, handwriting recognition, and stroke care were retooled around human judgment

Substack ↗
essay

Building a Thoughtful Document Vault on Top of Evernote

A design-first, open-source experiment in long-term storage and retrieval

Substack ↗
essay

Napkin Analytics Meets New York Times Wordle (#1)

What a simple word puzzle reveals about reasoning inside constrained systems

Substack ↗
essay

The Hidden Structure of Policy Networks

How lobbying coalitions self-organize — and what graph theory reveals about their durability.

Commentary