Insights
Notes from the practice.
Thinking on AI-native development, technology leadership, and the engineering discipline that turns AI into real leverage.
- Agentic SDLC
Building Kalendar, Part 3: An Org Chart of Agents
I did not prompt an assistant. I staffed a team. The six role-based agents that build Kalendar, why each has one job and a lane it does not cross, and the rule that keeps them honest: no agent approves its own work.
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Building Kalendar, Part 2: The Docs Are the Contract, the Code Is the Fulfillment
In most codebases the code is the source of truth and the docs rot. Kalendar inverts it: the spec is the only normative artifact, and the code is annotated as fulfilling it. How a behavioral contract traces to the exact code and tests that satisfy it, and the time that traceability caught what I would have missed.
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Building Kalendar, Part 1: The Discipline Is the Story
I am building a real product mostly with an AI coding agent, and putting an unusual amount of process in front of it. What the spec-driven, agentic SDLC actually is, what it costs (226,000 words of docs and counting), and where it broke down.
Read article - AI in practice
Four Kids, Four Supply Lists, One Spreadsheet
Four school supply lists, four authors, four conventions. Consolidating them is a normalization problem, not a copy-paste problem. What made an AI handle it well: ask the clarifying question first, surface the ambiguity, and write down the assumptions.
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Running a Cub Scout Day Camp with an AI Assistant — Part 4: The Retrospective and a Repeatable Process
The biggest payoff from running our camp with an AI assistant was not any single document — it was that the work compounds. Turning one exhausting week into a repeatable process that hands the next organizer a running start instead of a blank page.
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Running a Cub Scout Day Camp with an AI Assistant — Part 3: Organization
The unglamorous backbone — certifications, rosters, sign-in sheets — is where volunteer burnout hides. How an AI assistant handled the assembly and cross-checking while the verification of who is cleared to work with kids stayed firmly human.
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Running a Cub Scout Day Camp with an AI Assistant — Part 2: Communication
Underneath everything, a day camp is a communication engine. How an AI assistant turned every parent reminder, volunteer update, and dreaded cold outreach into a fast first draft — while the relationships and judgment stayed mine.
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Running a Cub Scout Day Camp with an AI Assistant — Part 1: Planning
How an AI assistant cleared the busywork of planning a 60-camper Cub Scout day camp — job descriptions, orientation, and coverage — while every real decision stayed human.
Read article - Perspectives
What Parenting Taught Me About Prompting AI Agents
A confident "yes" and a bone-dry toothbrush taught me more about working with AI than any tutorial. On hallucination, verification, and why setting context is a deeply human skill.
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The Puppy Project
What choosing a family dog taught me about structured decisions, AI as a thinking partner, and the moment analysis hands off to judgment.
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