Field Notes
Notes from the
rabbit hole.
Articles, notes, and the occasional strong opinion on AI, automation, and building software with restraint.
How to spot a repetitive task worth killing
A repetitive task is any step your team does the same way most weeks, with the same inputs, and a result you could write down before they start. Most of them are not worth a project. A few of them are eating the week.
How to automate the process
To automate the process is to make a whole chain of work run without someone chasing each step. Write it on one page, handle the ordinary cases, and leave a named person on the rest.
How to choose AI consulting in South Africa that actually delivers
People looking for ai consulting south africa usually need one painful week of work fixed, not a demo. Choose a partner who finds the friction, ships the smallest fix, and leaves a person on the part that should stay human.
What an AI agency actually is
An AI agency is a company you hire to set up AI and automation in your business. People search for one when a demo looked useful and they want someone else to make it work.
How to automate a repetitive task
To automate a repetitive task you write the steps as they actually happen, connect the tools that already hold the data, and leave a person on the cases the rule cannot see. The model, if you need one, comes last.
Should you be trying the new Chinese models?
The open-weight models are genuinely cheap per token. That saving reaches an API bill, not your monthly subscription. When a switch is worth making, and when it is just a distraction.
Buzz, agents AS team members
Block shipped an open source workspace where AI agents are members rather than bots. We have been running it. The idea underneath it is the most interesting thing we have seen this year, and we would still not move a client onto it yet.
Build, buy, or host it yourself
Most businesses reach for another subscription by reflex. Here is the test we run first, and why the honest answer is sometimes to own the thing instead of renting it.
What forward deployment engineering actually is
A plain read on the role suddenly named the hottest job in tech, why the term appeared now, and what it says about where AI value has moved.
The AI is the easy part.
A field guide to why AI projects fail, and the discovery step that decides whether a build is worth starting.
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