A month without my AI agent
· 3 min read
Reflections on a month away from self-hosted AI agents, the stress of vibe coding on my phone, and what a calmer setup could look like.
Read the title before the text
· 3 min read
Sean Goedecke suggests reading code in layers: first the overall structure, then the sub-structure, then the details. That reminded me of a 1972 experiment by Bransford and Johnson about how much a title changes what you understand.
I wrote a decision record for my life
· 2 min read
I used AI as a consultant for a personal decision this week, until its agreeableness made the conversation go in circles. So I borrowed Architecture Decision Records from software engineering and wrote one for my own life.
Which skills are still worth mastering?
· 3 min read
I spent a week in my hometown without my AI agent and barely touched social media. It felt like vacation, even without days off. A video on dopamine habits, a flea market and a friend's new hobby made me wonder which skills are still worth mastering.
This post may contain traces of AI
· 2 min read
I want to be transparent about how I use AI when writing. Reading ingredient lists for my gluten-free diet gave me a way to think about it: there's a difference between a post that was AI-generated and one that may contain traces of AI.
Is It Still Worth the Time?
· 3 min read
I wanted my AI agent to handle listing my old stuff on online marketplaces. Building the skill took so many rounds of checking that I could have listed everything ten times over. An old xkcd chart explains why I stopped.
Screen time doesn't measure attention
· 3 min read
My screen time said 6.6 hours a week. My chat logs said a whole day. Why the two are so far apart, and why I'm rethinking how I talk to my AI agent.
My AI agent gets his own calendar
· 3 min read
I want my AI agent to manage appointments for me, but he doesn't get access to my private calendar. Instead, he got his own calendar. I subscribe to it on my phone.
I think I used the Hermes Agent wrong
· 3 min read
Three weeks after switching from OpenClaw, I dug through my agent's database and found it had searched its long-term memory 9 times across 1,990 messages. The reason: me, not the agent.
AI could have written this post
· 1 min read
It's Wednesday night, I have nothing ready, and my AI agent could mimic my style well enough. Why I didn't let him.
I didn't plan to let an AI manage my to-do list
· 5 min read
I never set out to hand over my to-do list. It started with a Telegram problem, went through a shared Obsidian vault, and ended with an agent that ranks my tasks against my six-month goals.
What it felt like to hit the Hacker News front page
· 4 min read
11,000 page views in an hour, 48,230 unique visitors in a week, and a burger I could barely eat. Eight weeks after publishing my first post ever.
I turned my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper to stop reading on my phone
· 3 min read
I built a small tool that turns my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper, so I can read my favorite blogs on a pocket e-reader instead of my phone.
1899 missed the Roomba
· 3 min read
Everyone predicts AI will take over writing code. I don't doubt it, but the prediction bores me since it misses the actual innovation. Some French postcards from 1899 show why.
Running OpenClaw on a Raspberry Pi
· 7 min read
My early experiences running OpenClaw on a Raspberry Pi 4. Covering setup, security, token management, and why I named my little helper Eddie.
Don't become the oracle
· 2 min read
Building with AI means someone has to define what 'correct' means. Do it up front, or you'll be stuck checking every result by hand.
What is an agent harness?
· 4 min read
2025 was the year of AI agents. But lately I keep reading another term more and more often: the harness. A short explainer of the machinery around the model.
Motivating Passwords
· 3 min read
Passwords are annoying. Here's how to make yours strong, easy to remember, and actually motivating.
Welcome to the Single Tasking Islands
· 2 min read
Multitasking leaves me drained and makes it hard to switch off after work. Here's the obvious solution.
The Slot Machine: How I Got Out
· 4 min read
YouTube and Reddit pulled me in for longer than I'd like to admit. Here's the three-step process I used to escape the algorithm.
The Slot Machine in Your Pocket
· 3 min read
We all know YouTube and Reddit are useful, but why is it so hard to put them down? In this post I explore what I think is actually going on. These apps work a lot like slot machines, and not by accident.