ai-tools
18 essays on this topic.
- The Anti-Slop Pattern
Most AI skill prompts say 'make it good.' The ones that actually work say 'here are the 22 things you'll reach for first — reject all of them.'
- The Name Collision That Found Two Tools
When a dispatcher and an executor share a name, you don't have a naming problem. You have an architecture problem.
- When the Name Doesn't Fit
Naming as a design constraint: if a tool resists a name, the tool needs redesigning, not the name.
- Workflows, Not Containers
AI coding tools give you boxes to put things in. Biology suggests you should be thinking about how things flow instead.
- Inline Beats Reference for LLM Attention
When building AI scaffolding, put the knowledge where the decision happens — not in a reference the model is supposed to consult.
- The Silence of Missing Skills
The most dangerous failures in AI scaffolding are the ones that look like nothing happened.
- The Immune System Pattern
What biology already knows about self-healing systems, and why your automation probably isn't one
- The Lamp That Knows You
Disaster recovery for an AI-native workflow isn't about servers — it's about restoring a relationship.
- When Your Life OS Becomes the Life
The real risk of building a personal AI operating system isn't that a better tool appears — it's that your system's complexity becomes the thing you maintain instead of the thing that maintains you.
- I Made AI Remember to Remember
Most AI memory is either always-on or ephemeral. The missing category is prospective: remember until a context arises, then forget.
- Default to the Whole Conversation
When AI tools search conversation history, they should index both sides by default — not just the human's half.
- Save Conclusions, Not Just Rules
When an answer requires multi-step reasoning to reach, save the conclusion — a fresh start won't reliably reproduce the chain.
- Hooks Are Life Infrastructure
Event-driven hooks in AI coding tools aren't just for linting — they're programmable triggers for life routines, habits, and systems.
- Your AI Tools Should Watch You Fumble
The best time to improve a CLI isn't when it breaks — it's when you review the breakage log at the end of a work session.
- Building a Bus Alert System in One Session
How a real need on a Hong Kong bus turned into a GPS-powered alert system in under two hours
- The Wrong Metric: Why I Stopped Switching AI Models Mid-Session
Per-task model routing optimises cost per token. But at personal assistant scale, friction is the real cost.
- The Queue Should Live Where Your Thoughts Live
AI agent results should be push, not pull. The feedback loop should close on mobile. Most tools miss all three — not from ignorance, but because dashboards photograph better.
- The Queue That Texts You Back
Personal AI infrastructure should report results to you, not wait for you to go looking. A small architecture shift changes the whole dynamic.