Honest writing, built in the open.
Production projects, decisions made, mistakes owned, lessons taken. No demos, no toys. No hype, no highlights reel.
- 2026
- #0018
The £0-build myth: what AI-assisted software really costs you
You can build software with AI faster and cheaper than ever. That does not make it free. The costs just moved somewhere less obvious — and pretending they vanished is how projects quietly go wrong.
- #0017
What AI is genuinely good at in a small business (and what it still isn't)
Past the hype and the doom, there is a practical question most businesses never get a straight answer to: what is AI actually useful for right now, and what should you still keep well away from it? Here is an honest map.
- #0016
Off-the-shelf or build it? A decision framework for non-technical founders
Build it or buy it is one of the most consequential decisions a founder makes, and it is usually made on instinct. Here is a simple framework for making it on purpose.
- #0015
“We'll just use a spreadsheet” is a strategy — until it isn't
The humble spreadsheet runs more of the business world than any SaaS platform. That is fine, right up to the point where it quietly becomes the thing holding you back. Here is how to spot the moment to graduate.
- #0014
What managing cruise-ship crews taught me about building software people use
Build for the best case and your software works in the demo. Build for a tired person on bad Wi-Fi in the middle of the ocean, and you end up building something that works for everyone.
- #0013
The casting industry runs on email. It shouldn't.
Auditions are coordinated through a chaos of email threads, spreadsheets and lost attachments. It works, barely. Here is what the casting world taught us about the cost of ‘it works, barely.’
- #0012
Compliance is a UX problem
Crew compliance sounds like a paperwork problem. Spend time with the people doing it and you find it is really a design problem — and the design was making it far harder than it needed to be.
- #0011
Stop prompting, start specifying: clarity is the new moat
The skill that gets the most out of AI is not clever prompting — it is the old, unfashionable ability to say exactly what you want. As building gets cheaper, clear thinking becomes the thing that is actually scarce.
- #0010
AI won't fix a broken process. It'll just make the mess faster.
Bolting AI onto a process you have not fixed does not remove the problem — it accelerates it. The teams getting real value from AI did the boring work first. Here is the order that actually works.
- #0009
Your business runs on tribal knowledge. That's the real risk.
The most important systems in most companies are not software — they are things a few key people simply know. It works, until someone leaves. Here is why writing it down is the cheapest transformation you can make.