I built this website by pressing approve, over and over. AI is turning operators into governors who authorize work they don't fully understand.
The journal · Theme
Prompting & tools practice
Notes from the workbench: prompts, workflows and the tools themselves. 17 essays, newest first.
Taylor Swift Taught Me How To Write Better System and Agent Prompts
Taylor Swift says details shouldn't be strictly decorative. The same rule makes better system prompts: every sentence has to change what the agent does, so delete and test.
Write, summarize, generate: the verbs people use with AI decide what it gets used for. Diagnostic and adversarial verbs produce better questions.
What the Hell Is an .md File, Anyway?
Opening PowerPoint decides the shape of your thinking before you've done any. A plain-text source layer keeps the thinking intact, so it can be rendered for any audience.
The Token, the Stack, and the Body: What AI Actually Costs an Operator of One.
Running AI as a company of one has three costs. The tokens are the cheapest. The always-on tool stack and the physical toll of constant learning cost far more.
The Brief Used to Go to a Photographer. Now It Goes to a Pipeline.
Why mastering AI creative production now requires thinking like a systems architect
Why I’m Giving Away One of the Most Valuable Things I Use
To Question Is to Answer: The Missing Skill in the Age of AI
AI reflects the thinking you bring to it. The book started from that idea: the quality of your questions matters more than the craft of your prompts.
You Can’t Just Be An [insert job role here] Anymore.
AI has dissolved the walls between specialist roles. Frameworks are what let people cross from one discipline to the next without getting lost.
Ghosts in My Notebooks, 0 to 1 thinking, and how I have moved past these.
Most of my ideas used to die as fragments in notebooks. Now I use AI to push each one far enough to judge whether it deserves to live.
Breaking Down the Levi’s Spot: How I Used Flow/Veo 3 to Prototype an Idea.
A step-by-step look at prototyping an unofficial Levi's film with Gemini, JSON prompts, Veo 3 and CapCut. Generative video as a previz sketchbook.
The Quiet Genius of Gemini and NotebookLM
A week working only in Google's tools for a coaching client. Gemini and NotebookLM win by quietly respecting how people think over time.
Prototyping at the Speed of Thought: Why I’m Exploring VIBE Coding
Ahead of a hackathon: vibe coding lets strategists and creatives turn an idea into a working prototype through conversation. It raises the resolution of the early idea.
Are We Human, or Are We Prompting?
The Killers asked the question first. Formulaic prompting turns us into performers for the machine, and the machine starts training us back.
Why I’m Polite to Something That Doesn’t Care
I Say Thank You to AI. It’s Not Weird, It’s Strategic.
Read My Book. Or just buy it and put in on your shelf. Up to you.
To Question Is to Answer is out. Ten things it isn't, and the one thing it is: a field guide to asking AI better questions.
In my 1-1 sessions, I ask one question, and I am always surprised by the answer.
When did you last read your competitor's annual report? Almost nobody has, and generative AI now makes it easy to read a whole sector at once.