Writing & Thinking
Prompting, writing, memory, and whether the model is telling you the truth.
90 posts
- Space to be human
A week of new school routines and a storm and flood, and what I needed was space to be human.
- 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.
- 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.
- SoN 2.31: Don't be a meat proxy
Forwarding what the chatbot said hands the next person more work than the question did.
- Five words for the same thing
The jargon is doing less work than it looks.
- 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.
- From Custom Code to Conversational Prompts
Who's allowed to build software has changed hands three or four times in a decade. Grok Build is the latest handoff — and the security data on what it produces is not subtle.
- The Donkey Work Doesn't Need a Genius
A $500 fine-tune of a 9B open model beat every frontier model on a catalogue-review task. I haven't trained anything — but the underlying bet is the one I've been running on a MacBook Air for months.
- Rehearse the Deck You Didn't Write
The illusion of explanatory depth is what happens when the first test of your understanding is live, in front of people. Better to fail that test at your own desk.
- Kimi K3 Is Open. I Still Can't Run It.
2.8 trillion parameters, 1.4 terabytes of memory to run it. Open weights existing and open weights being usable by an ordinary person have stopped being the same claim.
- "AI Found a Security Bug" Is the Wrong Headline
Claude found a real improved attack on HAWK and a new technique against reduced-round AES-128. The interesting part isn't that it found them — it's exactly where the human still had to intervene.
- Hubble, and the Assumption Baked Into a Notes App Now
"The best notepad for you and your agents." Hubble designs the note format around a second reader from the start — and the cost of that choice sits on the portability side.
- 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 you can actually run — with the honesty to read its limits.
- Tell AI What You Want and Who You Are
Two takes on the same idea — the ASD-STE100 controlled-English standard and the i-have-adhd Claude Code skill — on giving your AI a writing system and telling it what you want.
- SoN 2.28: "That's good, how can we make it better?"
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…
- 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…
- SoN 2.27: I Just Talked With Someone Else's Vault
More than twenty years ago, I sat with a class of eleven- and twelve-year-olds and tried to show them what “connected to the internet” actually…
- The model of the week changes by Thursday
Two headlines are eating the feeds this morning, and both have the shelf life of milk. Anthropic extended Claude Fable 5 to every paid plan through…
- Where You Keep the Final Say
I keep a tool wired into my AI setup that can read the actual text of Spanish law — the BOE, the official state gazette. In layperson terms it’s a…
- 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…
- 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…
- What I Automate with AI
What I Automate with AI I went looking today for a list of everything I’ve got automated since I started this AI journey back in 2024. Every tool…
- SoN 2.22: How do you choose "the best" AI tool?
How do you choose "the best" AI tool? A friend asked me this week to explain how to use “all the different AI tools” — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, the…
- 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…
- 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…
- SoN 2.19: It's 10pm. Do you know what your agents are doing? (Free)
The Context Gap (Free) Dear Reader, Who’s watching your AI agents? This past week alone: Codex shipped its Chrome extension, giving OpenAI’s agent…
- 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…
- SoN 2.16: Ask your AI what it can already do (Free Edition)
You don't need more AI tools (Free Edition) Ask your AI what it can already do Last Friday, Maya and I spent an hour delivering a post-lunch…
- SoN 2.15: Ask your AI to Ask You Questions (Free Edition)
Ask Your AI To Ask You Questions (Free) Ask your AI to ask you questions Last Saturday morning I sat down to write the weekly digest for my…
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 14: What about everything we learned? (Free Edition)
What about everything we learned? (Free Edition) Hey there, What about everything we learned? Last week we sent the shutdown email for MyCityZen.…
- Context Is the New Bottleneck. So Is Judgment.
Tiago Forte says AI shifts the bottleneck from capability to context. He's right — but that only works if you still have opinions worth providing.
- 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%.
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 13: Are your tools deciding how you think? (Free Edition)
Are your tools deciding how you think? (Free Edition) Hey there, Are your tools deciding how you think? Your CRM shows you a flat list. Your…
- The Promises Failed, Not the Technology
AI fatigue is real, but the backlash is aimed at the wrong target.
- Microsoft's Copilot Now Uses Two Models to Fact-Check One
Microsoft's Wave 3 Copilot routes answers through a second AI model to verify accuracy. That's useful — and a quiet admission about single-model trust.
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 12: The Yes Machine (Free Edition)
The Yes Machine (Free Edition) Hey there, The Yes Machine Your AI agrees with everything you say. That’s not a compliment. I wrote about AI…
- Mozilla Built Stack Overflow for Agents. I Built It by Hand.
Mozilla's cq gives AI coding agents dynamic, evolving context — formalizing what power users already figured out through trial and error.
- 4.4 Million People Just Watched the Sycophancy Problem in Action
Senator Bernie Sanders interviewed Claude on camera about AI privacy. Claude agreed with everything he said. That's not a revelation — it's the problem.
- Perplexity Is Learning What I Learned Six Months Ago
The Perplexity CTO says MCP eats 40-50% of your context window. Practitioners already knew this.
- When Knuth Writes a Paper About You
Donald Knuth published a paper named after Claude after it solved an open graph theory problem. That's a different kind of validation than a benchmark score.
- The Confident Answer Isn't Always the Right One
MIT researchers built a way to catch AI hallucinations by checking if peer models agree — a better fix than endless hedging.
- WordPress Just Opened the Floodgates
AI agents can now write and publish directly to WordPress. Quality control just became the only thing that matters.
- MIT Found a Math Fix for AI Overconfidence. I Found a Behavioral One.
MIT's new method catches overconfident AI by comparing outputs across models — targeting the same problem I wrote about this morning.
- Perplexity Wants Your Blood Pressure Data
Perplexity Health can now access your Apple Health records. The utility is real — so is the trust question.
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 10: Same Prompt, Different Model, Worse Results (Free)
Same. Prompt,Different Model, Worse Results Dear Reader, New LLM models drop every few weeks. Features change between updates. The prompting advice…
- 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…
- 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?' The answers are always the same.
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 6: The Talking Wrench
Three conversations you should be having with your AI tools Dear Reader, I had coffee with a friend this week — who’s trying to solve a practical…
- Everyone's Sharing 'Something Big Is Happening.' Here's What They Leave Out.
Matt Shumer's viral AI post follows a familiar template. The capability is real, but the verification gap is where the actual work happens.
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 5: My AI Declined to Join Moltbook. Here's Why.
A guest post from Cerebro on agent social networks, security theater, and what "emergence" actually looks like Dear Reader, You may have seen…
- 150,000 API Keys Leaked. Anyone Surprised?
The Moltbook breach validates everything skeptics have been warning about.
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 2: The Art of Breaking Things Down
Dear Reader, Last week I introduced the idea of "programming your gaps" — the mental shift from asking "how do I prompt better?" to "what friction in…
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 1: Stop Prompting Better. Start Programming Your Gaps.
Dear Reader, Something shifted over the holidays. Since Claude Code Opus 4.5 launched in November, a pattern has emerged among knowledge workers…
- SoN 34: What Will You Vibe Code Next Year?
December 23rd, 2025 Dear Reader, What Will You Vibe Code Next Year? Back in July, I wrote about vibe coding and the beginner’s mind — that Zen…
- SoN 33: The Questions I'm Asking My AI Before the New Year
December 17th, 2025 Dear Reader, Last week I asked Claude a simple question: “What patterns do you see in how I’ve been working this month?” Some…
- SoN 31: The AI Productivity Treadmill
December 4th, 2025 Dear Reader, Claude Opus 4.5 dropped last week, and I haven’t stopped building since. I’ve connected half a dozen MCP servers to…
- SoN 30: Four Questions That Fix Your Prompts
November 26th, 2025 Dear Reader, Most prompts fail before you hit enter. Not because of the AI model nor because of token limits or temperature…
- SoN 29: The Godfather of AI’s Warning Isn't What You Think It Is
November 14th, 2025 Dear Reader, A slight departure this week towards something more topical. Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for…
- SoN 26: The System of Building Your AI Style Guide
October 29th, 2025 Dear Reader, Last week, I wrote about why your personal voice matters, and how AI can act as an accessibility layer to help your…
- SoN 25: Writing With AI Isn't Cheating — It's an Accessibility Tool
October 22nd, 2025 Dear Reader, Part 1 Using AI isn’t cheating. It’s an accessibility tool. Some people have brilliant ideas but struggle with formal…
- SoN 23: One Year of Writing About AI
October 8th, 2025 Dear Reader, One Year of Writing About AI, Five Months of Actually Filtering It A year ago, I started writing “The Download”—a…
- SoN 22: How to Write AI Instructions That Actually Work
October 1st, 2025 Dear Reader, (Psst, this is a long one - so if you can't get through the whole read at once, that's cool - but make sure you scroll…
- How AI Changed My Build vs. Buy Process
AI has fundamentally changed what's possible for small businesses and individual operators.
- Why I Moved My Newsletter to Wednesdays (And You Should Optimize Your Timing Too)
Data-driven timing optimization beats guesswork every time.
- GPT-5 Reality Check: Why Your Framework Matters More Than the Latest Model
August 15th, 2025 Dear Reader, Well it’s been a week since release and everyone’s still talking about ChatGPT-5. Most can’t access it, and those…
- Your AI Assistant Is a Yes-Man (And Why That's Dangerous)
August 1st, 2025 Dear Reader, I came across this meme on social media this week: “The dumbest person you know is being told ‘You’re absolutely…
- How to Spot AI Generated Text
AI should make you more efficient at being yourself, not more efficient at being generic.
- Why Your AI Prompts Aren’t Working (And How to Fix Them)
Prompts are not magical incantations, they're conversations.
- “Zero Effort” AI is a Myth, and It’s Holding Us Back
Every "zero effort AI" promise is a lie, and believing it is making us worse at our jobs.
- Stop Writing Prompts, Start Building AI Assistants
How to Build AI Assistants That Actually Work for You With the SHAPE Framework
- How to Talk to AI (and Actually Get What You Want)
Stop getting weird AI responses. Learn the PAST framework for writing prompts that actually work. Get clear, useful results every time.
- Real Stories: AI Success in Content Management
How AI automation cut content audit costs by 94% - from 6 months manual review to 2 weeks orchestrated analysis. Real case study with results.
- Digital Resilience: From Concept to Award-Winner in 48 Hours
May 23rd, 2025 Dear Reader, This week I’ve been immersed in the exhilarating chaos of Hack the Future – a 48-hour climate resilience hackathon in…
- One Shortcut Is Worth More Than Ten Assistants
The AI Download #022 May 2nd, 2025 Dear Reader, I used to think building a great AI assistant meant covering everything: Project planning. Writing…
- Could a 4-Day Work Week Be Your Future?
The AI Download #021 April 25th, 2025 Dear Reader, Efficiency isn’t just a buzzword–it’s the key to unlocking both better work-life balance and…
- The Landscape of Available AI Tools
The AI Download #020 April 18th, 2025 Dear Reader, Let's be honest: the AI tool landscape in 2025 is a mess. Every week, a new "game-changing" tool…
- Boost Your Creative Writing with Local AI Models
The AI Download #019 April 11th, 2025 Dear Reader, Creative writing is experiencing a significant transformation thanks to advancements in Artificial…
- Transformative Imagery at Your Fingertips
The AI Download #018 April 7th, 2025 (this is an image-heavy edition - make sure that you permit your email client to display them) Dear Reader, If…
- From the Turing Test to Humanity's Last Exam: How We Measure AI
The AI Download #017 March 21st, 2025 Dear Reader, Have you ever wondered how we (as a species) determine if a machine is truly "intelligent"? Long…
- How to Get the Best Out of ChatGPT: The Art of Effective Prompting
The AI Download #015 March 7th, 2025 Dear Reader, Ever felt like you're getting stuck in circles with ChatGPT (or other chatbots, for that matter)?…
- AI Voice Cloning and Video Generation Are Revolutionizing Content Creation
The Download #014 February 28th, 2025 Dear Reader, I spent the majority of time this and last week keeping my poorly kids entertained at home while…
- 💾 The Download #012: AI web search, OpenAI's Whisper, Qwen AI and more.
💾 The Download #012: AI web search, OpenAI's Whisper, Qwen AI and more.
- 💾 The Download #011: Notes on DeepSeek, revisiting Make.com automations and more.
The Download #011 February 7th, 2025 Dear Reader, This week: Notes on DeepSeek, revisiting Make.com automations and more. In the last few weeks,…
- 💾 The Download #010: Photorealistic images in MidJourney, creative AI predictions for the next 5 years, AI tool of the week and more.
The Download #010 January 24th, 2025 Dear Reader, I don't know about you, but I'm feeling globally fatigued since the start of this week. Despite all…
- 💾 The Download #009: A Jim-GPT to make your prompt creation easier, testing OpenAI's text-to-video model and more.
In this issue of The Download: A Jim-GPT to make your prompt creation easier, testing OpenAI's text-to-video model and more.
- 💾 The Download #005: Perplexity tips, BYO Buffer and more.
The Download #005: A top tip for Perplexity.ai, building my own social media scheduling manager, a power user's guide to Gmail and more
- 💾 The Download #004: First AI services available, Notion Marketplace and more.
#004 Hey Reader 👋🏻, While I normally kick off these newsletters with a note about the weather, it should already be known that Valencia is going…
- 💾 The Download #003: Updates on Perplexity, Claude’s Anthropic, reflections on creating my “digital twin” and more.
#003 Dear Reader, Greetings again from an incredibly muggy Valencia. Yesterday and today I'm attending the VDS 2024 Tech Conference at the City of…
- 💾 The Download #002: Automating content creation and sharing, rethinking search and more.
#002 Dear Reader, Greetings from a wet Valencia, where yesterday a few hours of downpour brought about mild flooding, a double rainbow and some…
- 💾 The Download #001: New product launch, retooling the tech stack and more.
#001 Dear Reader, I’m writing this on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in the garden, having been forced out of my home office due to an internet outage.…