Things we figured out the hard way .

The machine was excellent. It was pointed at the wrong target.

From the build log. We checked our own AI setup expecting to find a missing tool. The tools were fine. The hold-up was that almost every decision had to pass through one person, and we only spotted it once we counted.

Jun 10, 2026READ →

An agent can do the work and still lose your trust.

From the build log. The agent was doing the work and getting the answer right. The person using it just couldn't see any of that happen, so they stopped believing it.

Jun 3, 2026READ →

TEARDOWN4 MIN

Six small bugs that made a new user's first session feel broken.

From the build log. None of these bugs showed up in a demo. We only found them by signing up as a total stranger and pretending we'd never seen the product before.

May 27, 2026READ →

METHOD7 MIN

The live gate you cannot skip for an agent that pushes code.

From the build log. Before we let a software robot make changes to our code on its own, we rehearsed it against a throwaway copy first. The rehearsal caught two problems that all our careful checks had missed.

May 20, 2026READ →

One command should set up an AI assistant for everyone, or you have not really built a tool.

From the build log. We wanted every person on a team to get their own AI assistant without us writing fresh code for each one. The day the setup tool first ran for a real person, it taught us almost everything worth knowing.

May 13, 2026READ →

The audit that overturned its own brief.

From the build log. We set out to rebuild something we were sure was half-finished. An hour spent actually looking proved us wrong. It saved about two weeks of work on a problem that did not exist.

May 6, 2026READ →

How to give a beginner a capable AI agent without it being reckless.

From the build log. Before handing capable AI agents to a group of complete beginners, we had to settle one question: how much power do you give someone who can't yet spot the danger? The honest answer was not "as little as possible".

Apr 29, 2026READ →

PROCESS4 MIN

Why we ship the agent before we send the invitation.

From the build log. Six welcome emails sat ready to send. We didn't send them: not because of a deadline, but because the thing each email promised wasn't ready yet for the person it was going to. Knowing not to press send was the actual work.

Apr 22, 2026READ →

A fast validator and a slow gate, in that order.

From the build log. We built a content pipeline that writes its own social posts. The interesting part is not the writing. It is the two checks we put between the machine and a human, and why one had to be cheap and one had to be slow.

Apr 15, 2026READ →

TEARDOWN6 MIN

The intermittent error that was a ghost, not a bug.

From the build log. A booking system for a medical-conference client was failing about four in every ten requests from the public internet, while the same request from a laptop worked every time. We spent half a day fixing the wrong thing.

Apr 8, 2026READ →

The production row our code was never written for.

From the build log. We built a feature that gives every trainee their own AI assistant to chat with. It worked perfectly against our test data, then failed against the one real account that mattered most.

Apr 1, 2026READ →

TEARDOWN5 MIN

Restarting one container took down four sites that had nothing to do with it.

From the build log. We restarted one small piece of plumbing to make a routine change. The change itself was harmless. But four unrelated public sites went dark, because of a shared layer almost nobody thinks to check.

Mar 25, 2026READ →

METHOD5 MIN

One team builds client work and trains new people. Keep the two apart.

From the build log. The same small team does private client work and teaches newcomers on the very same platform. Those two worlds must never see each other. The thing that keeps them apart is duller, and far more important, than any password.

Mar 18, 2026READ →

TECHNICAL6 MIN

Stamp identity on the message, not on the context.

When several assistants share one inbox, the question "who sent this?" has to be answered by the message itself. Let the surroundings fill in the blank and you have built something that acts on the wrong person's authority.

Mar 11, 2026READ →

TEARDOWN5 MIN

A merged pull request is not a live deploy.

From the build log. A one-line fix passed every check and merged cleanly, yet the live website kept serving the broken version for five minutes while a real person sat there unable to save her work. Every signal said done. None of them was watching the thing that mattered.

Mar 4, 2026READ →

Building a conference sign-up form on tools we already had.

From the build log. A medical conference needed a sign-up page. The interesting question was not which services to pay for, but whether we could build the whole thing without renting anything new, and what that saves the next client.

Feb 25, 2026READ →

Why event email belongs on an API, not an SMTP relay.

From the build log. The hardest part of a registration system was the bit everyone assumes is solved: sending the "you're booked" email. It looked finished long before it actually worked.

Feb 18, 2026READ →

When a client job is actually a product you needed anyway.

A single medical conference needed a way to take registrations. Halfway through building it, we stopped and asked a harder question: were we building this once, or building the thing our own organisation had needed all along?

Feb 11, 2026READ →

CASE NOTE4 MIN

A whole firm's client database, on a stack that costs nothing to run.

From the build log. A small South African accounting firm wanted one place to see its clients, its fees and its overdue returns. We built it in a single session, put it online, and the monthly bill came to nothing. Here is why that is the right answer for a firm this size, and where it stops being the right answer.

Feb 4, 2026READ →

Why the user accounts existed but nobody could log in.

From the build log. We set up login accounts for a small team the quick way, by writing them straight into the database. Every account showed up in the records. Not one of them could actually sign in.

Jan 28, 2026READ →

The comma that quietly splits your automation in half.

An automated workflow passes every test you write, then breaks the first time a real person types a comma in their address. Here is why, and the three habits that stop it.

Jan 21, 2026READ →

METHOD6 MIN

Sizing an AI budget means three honest layers, not one number.

From the build log. When someone asks what AI will cost them next year, a single figure feels like the answer they want. It is the answer most likely to be wrong. The honest version has three moving parts, and the most useful thing you can hand over is not a number at all.

Jan 14, 2026READ →

METHOD4 MIN

We built a leadership site with no framework on purpose.

From the build log. The people who needed this page couldn't have told us why it was broken if it broke. So we built it out of the one thing that doesn't break.

Jan 7, 2026READ →

TEARDOWN2 MIN

The process that lives in someone's head.

Every operations leader has one. The hire who knows how everything works. When they take a Tuesday off, the wheels come off. Here's how we extract it.

Apr 2, 2025READ →

TECHNICAL2 MIN

Why Zapier can't save you (and when it actually can).

Drag-and-drop tools handle the easy 60% of automation. The painful 40% is where exceptions live. We map exactly where the line falls.

Mar 22, 2025READ →

POSITION4 MIN

Fixed scope or nothing.

Hourly billing rewards the side that takes longer. Retainer billing rewards staying necessary. We bill fixed scope because we're paid to finish, not to be needed forever.

Mar 8, 2025READ →