Posts
Thoughts on technology, design, and building products.
2026
May
How I Evaluate an AI Tool Before I Trust It in Production
Most AI tool evaluations stop at "does it work in the demo." Here's the framework I actually use before trusting something in a production system.
The Southeast Doesn't Need Permission to Build
The assumption that serious tech work only happens in San Francisco, New York, or Seattle is wrong — and increasingly expensive to believe. A practitioner's case for building in the Southeast by choice.
April
Your AI Agent Didn't Go Rogue. You Gave It the Keys.
Why the Cursor/Railway incident wasn't a vendor failure - it was an architecture gap. How to prevent AI agents from accessing permissions they shouldn't have, and why ownership matters.
What I'd Tell a Team About to Ship Their First AI Feature
The gap between a working AI demo and a production AI feature is wider than most teams expect. Here's the honest version of what to know before you cross it.
The Seven-Layer AI Agent Stack
Every production agentic system has seven layers. Miss one and you'll find out in prod. Here's what each layer does, why it matters, and where teams consistently get it wrong.
Most Agents Are Just Prompt Chains With Better Branding
A practical, opinionated breakdown of agentic AI development for builders who are done with demos and want to know what actually works in production — covering orchestration, failure modes, guardrails, and the patterns worth betting on.
February
OpenClaw Sent 500 Messages to My Wife
A real-world OpenClaw safety failure: my home automation agent sent 500 messages, got stuck in a loop, and ended up in Bloomberg.
Agentic Workflows That Actually Work
How to build production agentic workflows with retry logic, audit trails, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints that survive real-world failure modes.
January
The Gap Between AI Demos and Production
The gap between AI demos and production: what happens when you deploy AI agents into incomplete data, hostile inputs, and users who don't read instructions.
Recurring Value: Beyond Clever Automation
Why the best AI automation compounds over time — building structured workflows with human checkpoints instead of one-off scripts that break.