Some Assembly Required*

Some Assembly Required*

August 2026

The Purpose of an Agent Is What It Does
We keep using AI to automate old processes.
 • Christopher Smith
Taylor Swift Taught Me How To Write Better System and Agent Prompts
The first system prompt I ever wrote for a client had four adjectives before the verb.
 • Christopher Smith
In Search of Maybe: On bookstores, algorithms and the pleasure of encountering something you weren’t looking for.
I bought a book last week. Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford’s inquiry into the value of work—hand to tool to material, the kind of competence…
 • Christopher Smith
In Defense of Option C: If you're choosing between A and B, you probably haven't thought about it long enough.
I have been using ChatChat to build a canonical record of how I work, and the relationship between the end product and the thinking that got me there.
 • Christopher Smith
Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens Was Right. I Just Wasn’t Old Enough to Hear It.
I first watched Justified the week it premiered.
 • Christopher Smith
Show me the verbs an organization uses with AI, and I can tell you what it thinks intelligence is for.
The noun gives AI the subject.
 • Christopher Smith
I am who I remember myself to be: What happens when the archive remembers something else?
I remember phone books.
 • Christopher Smith
Return on Inference (ROI): Capital allocation shaped modern corporations. Inference allocation may shape the AI-native ones.
The Second Meaning of ROI
 • Christopher Smith
Dream All the Time: How a cough-syrup-assisted mind wound its way from Bradbury to Proust, through AI, and back to the real world.
I have been sick over the past two weeks.
 • Christopher Smith
What the Hell Is an .md File, Anyway?
For most of my working life, the deliverable decided where the work began.
 • Christopher Smith
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