Productivity
Showing 1–20 of 34 posts
- Working with AI
Loyal to your work, not your model
Google is turning Gems into skills. The AI tools you rely on will keep changing, so keep your prompts, skills, logs and chat summaries outside the chat, where you own them.
- Agents & Tooling
School family knowledge base, part 2
Part 2 of a build log about a school family knowledge base: what information each of the eight sources holds, and the format it arrives in.
- Agents & Tooling
School family knowledge base, part 1
Schools send us information in eight places. That's a lot of channels for parents to coordinate and understand. Part 1 of a build log: the main issue, and how the tasks have to be broken down.
- Agents & Tooling
Space to be human
A week of new school routines and a storm and flood, and what I needed was space to be human.
- Agents & Tooling
How developers organise and maintain agent skills
An Ask HN discussion describes skills as repeatable workflows, with shared repositories, human review, behavioural tests and updates across coding tools.
- Agents & Tooling
Handing off the 60%
Planning is 40% of a task; execution is the 60% that eats your week. Plus vibe sourcing — finding the open-source tool instead of generating one.
- Agents & Tooling
SoN 2.31: Don't be a meat proxy
A meat proxy forwards an AI's answer without reading it. That hands the next person more work than the question did.
- Working with AI
SoN 2.30: Which of your AI's rules are still doing a job?
Last week's advice and Anthropic's both hold. The test is one question you can ask about any rule you've written.
- Agents & Tooling
Stop Guessing Whether AI Is Coming for Your Job. Ask the Data.
Anthropic made its Economic Index queryable in plain language inside Claude. The anxious question about your own field is now a research task.
- Working with AI
Paperwork Shot List
A shot list for the paperwork This week I’ve spent five hours or more in the car, driving between schools to move our kid from one to another for the new school year. It’s a mixed…
- Agents & Tooling
SoN 2.25: Stop guessing and use AI to pull the data
Stop guessing and pull the actual data =================================================== I help out a small, volunteer-run cat rescue. They do good work, and they post on…
- Working with AI
SoN 2.24: AI hasn't made me faster
AI hasn’t made me faster — it’s made me able to start Last Tuesday I came out of a meeting with a narrow window before the school run, and inside of it I did the following: sent a…
- Working with AI
Measure twice, cut once — with two AIs
3 June 2026 When you work on your own, the thing you miss most is a second pair of eyes. Trades have known this forever. Carpenters say measure twice, cut once — because once…
- Working with AI
SoN 2.21: AI doesn't know when to stop. You have to.
Stay In Your Lane (Then Go Deeper) Honestly, I’ve been so busy I forgot what day it was and started the newsletter too late this week. But as I think I’ve mentioned before, with…
- Working with AI
SoN 2.18: Where can I skill up on AI? (Free Edition)
Multi-Tool Fluency Is a Non Starter (Free Edition) Dear Reader, Which tool should I use? The job market case for getting decent at AI got clearer in the last year. PwC analysed…
- Agents & Tooling
You Feel Faster. Are You?
A randomized controlled study found AI tools made experienced developers 19% slower. They thought they'd been sped up by 20%.
- Working with AI
SoN Vol 2, Issue 9: The Mirror and the Telescope (Free)
The Mirror and The Telescope Dear Reader, “Know thyself” has been advice for about 2,500 years. The inscription at Delphi, Socrates building a whole philosophy around it, every…
- Working with AI
Stop Wrapping Failed Systems in AI
Every few months, someone posts a version of the same question: 'Has anyone built an AI system that actually handles ADHD life management?'
- Working with AI
SoN Vol 2, Issue 1: Stop Prompting Better. Start Programming Your Gaps.
Something shifted over the holidays. Since Claude Code Opus 4.5 launched in November, a pattern has emerged among knowledge workers using Claude Code with their Obsidian vaults…
