Signal Over Noise Vol 2, Issue 28 | Jul 17 2026
Don’t have time to read this week’s issue? Why not copy/paste it into your AI agent and ask it for insights?
When I think about AI and automation, I see an opportunity opening up that goes well beyond the chatbots everyone’s being handed — well beyond prompting, too. One of the most important things I ask my AI setup on every project is this: “That’s good, how can we make it better?”
Case in point — my friend Marcus is a working actor, and he doesn’t keep his own website up to date. Normally that sort of remit is in the hands of the agencies he works with for film and voice work. But it also depends on them getting the correct information, on time, and in place.
When building his site, and work timeline, I kept thinking “how could we make this better?” How can we build intelligence into the mechanics of the site so that it auto-updates? Is such a thing possible?
And now there’s a weekly automation that watches his acting credits on TMDb, as well as his agent’s official listing for new roles, and when a new credit appears, we get a ping to let us know that the site needs updating, which we then hand over to the AI agent in charge of the site.
The human in the loop part here isn’t about monitoring his new roles, or even updating the code on the website every time there’s something new. The human in the loop here is in verifying that the new information about to go live is in fact, legitimate (that’s the step that earns its keep - the check once turned up a 1975 documentary about Marcus Garvey, the civil rights leader).
Everything runs on open-source, and nothing’s vendor locked.
He isn’t the only one working this way. The same idea keeps turning up: the intelligence built into the mechanics, quietly, so the person at the centre can run the thing on their own.
Joanne spent a career inside UK energy and utilities, and this year she launched Talking Utilities, a serious news publication for the energy transition — without writing a line of code. An AI layer watches the sector’s sources, ranks what matters, and hands her a shortlist before she sits down. She works through it, keep, sharpen or spike, and approved pieces go straight to a site she owns. It’s the sort of sector-monitoring big firms rent from Meltwater or AlphaSense for five figures a year, except Joanne’s is built into her own newsroom. We even built her a custom MCP server, so her own AI agents can query her own sources.
Learn more about Joanne’s setup
A lot of “your website should work while you sleep” chatter is around slapping an AI chatbot on the front of it to handle frequently asked questions and enquiries. But that’s already outdated thinking compared to what’s achievable. That’s integration over capability: the intelligence lives inside each system rather than in a separate app you have to go and open. It’s what lets one expert run a whole newsroom, or one actor keep his own credits straight, with no team behind them.
Claude Plugin Marketplace Announcement
For the last few months, most of the tools I build to run my own business have lived solely on my own machine, or occasionally shared on GitHub. As of this week, they live somewhere you can reach too. We’ve put them in a marketplace, and you add the whole thing to your Claude Code or Desktop setup with just one line.
What’s inside
Seven plugins at launch, each pulled from real work:
- voice-superpowers — build a profile of how you actually write, edit any draft to match it, and catch AI tells before you publish.
- decision-superpowers — Stoic, strategic, and cognitive-science frameworks to pressure-test a big call before you commit to it.
- spain-ai-kit — Spain’s open government data (law, statistics, land registry, weather) straight from your assistant. Handy if you live here, like we do.
- vet-superpowers — run an OSINT check on a cold client, pitch, or bot before you reply, hire, or sign.
- web-superpowers — make your site accessible, findable, and fast: WCAG, SEO, and Core Web Vitals.
- validate-superpowers — an eleven-gate gauntlet that tells you whether a thing is worth building before you build it.
- framework-superpowers — three methodologies (PAST, SHAPE, and the Metric Mandate) for running an AI project that actually ships.
None of these are demos. They’re the tools we lean on, cleaned up so they run on anyone’s machine, and they’re only one install away.
Upcoming Events - AI Masterclass
Join our masterclass on 18th August.
For freelancers or small business owner with real experience behind you. You know your craft, you’ve built something that works, and your clients trust you. You may not consider yourself a tech person, but what you can feel is the ground shifting: AI is everywhere, and you suspect you could be doing more with it, with far less of the busywork.
You’ve also got two entirely reasonable worries. You don’t want to bolt AI on in a way that breaks the trust you’ve earned with your customers. And you don’t want to look up a year from now and find you’ve fallen behind.
This workshop is built for exactly that tension: curious, capable, and careful. Years of judgement, new to AI — that’s the sweet spot we’re teaching to.
The details
Format Live online workshop (StreamYard)
When Tuesday 18 August 2026 · 18:00 Madrid (CEST) / 5:00pm London / 12:00 noon New York / 9:00am Los Angeles
Duration 90 minutes, including live Q&A
Led by Maya Middlemiss & Jim Christian
Price €39
Save your seat → — tickets are limited.
“That’s good, how can we make it better?” can be one of the most powerful questions to ask your AI when you’re working on projects. Try it out this week and see how you get on.
— Jim
A tool I actually use: this newsletter’s member hub and most of my task system run on Notion. If you’re a startup or a solo founder, you can get 3 months of Notion Business free, with unlimited AI and no credit card, through my link. Try Notion free for 3 months →
Notion affiliate link — I get a small credit if you start a trial.
Paid membership is €7 a month or €69 a year, and you get:
- No ads
- The Paid Members Notion Hub — every build, script, prompt and guide behind the newsletter, yours to copy
Signal Over Noise helps you sort the AI worth your time from the hype. If it was useful, pass it to someone who’d want it too.