Stories from the field.
Reflections on leadership, technology, creativity, and the occasional hard-won lesson learned the messy way.
-
Workflow Over Models: Why Defensible Value Lives in the Substrate
Most AI video tools wrap a workflow around a model.
-
Treat Agent Configuration as a Measured System, Not Vibes
If you don’t have a query-able history of your conversations with agents, then you lack a critical tool in improving their effectiveness.
-
The Vendor Question Studios Aren’t Asking: Who’s Responsible When Something Goes Wrong?
I’ve noticed a recurring theme in my conversations with studio heads recently: their teams are evaluating AI production platforms and nobody is asking about the security architecture.
-
A Marketplace Skill Gets You 60%; The Other 40% Is Yours to Encode
If you are downloading AI skills and plugins without fine-tuning them to your environment, you are leaving the most valuable findings on the table.
-
If You Can’t Trace Every Asset to Its Origin, You Have a Liability, Not a Pipeline
We learned something making The Seeker that I think every studio running AI in production needs to hear: if you can’t trace every asset back to its origin; its model, its inputs, its creative decisions; you have a liability, not a production pipeline.
-
Getting to Why: The Operational Discipline That Made Me a Better Product Leader
I’ve never stopped preaching operational excellence, and this article by Kelsey Brandt at The National CIO Review captures the “why” perfectly.
-
When You Got Teams of Agents, You Got Promoted to Leader-of-Leaders
Anthropic just dropped Opus 4.6 and introduced Teams of Agents in beta.
-
Bringing the Operational Rigor of Enterprise IT to Creative Workflows
I was forwarded an excellent demo of “controlling AI image generation” by Bay Raitt which walked through the molding of a can of tomatoes with Google Gemini.
-
Seven Lessons from Building a Product with Coding Assistants
About three months ago, I started an experiment: build a new product while asking the team to lean hard into coding assistants; we picked Claude Code, but these lessons are generally applicable to Codex, Cursor, etc.
-
The Maker-Checker Rule, or: Keep the Drinking Bird Away from the Keyboard
Does anyone else feel like using AI coding assistants is often frighteningly similar to Homer’s work-from-home computer terminal from The Simpsons Season 7 Episode 7: King Sized Homer?
-
Vibe Coding Takes Effort to Produce Production Code
Vibe coding takes effort to produce production code, despite opinions to the contrary.
-
Saving My Plants from Untimely Demise
I kill plants I drown them. I bake them. I overfeed them. I starve them. Of sunlight. Of water. Of nutrients. They stay strong for so long, but ultimately they shrivel up and die. Or their stems rot. Or they are eaten by bugs. I never meant to kill them. I’ve always intended that they…
-
5 things I learned from my biggest “new manager” mistake
I had no idea how badly blind execution of orders could hurt me, my team, and my company until this happened.
-
Writing as Catharsis: Rediscovering Creativity and Connection
A personal experience at a Hawaiian luau led to a reflection on my struggles with social anxiety and personal growth. This post is a reflection on the cathartic, confidence-building power of writing.
Want to know more?
Explore the work behind the writing, or get in touch directly.
See my work → Get in touch