Articles
Field notes from building in public — the Pivot, brainstorms, whiteboards, and more.
Why my 80-minute live stream vanished and what I learned
An 80-minute live stream with two full whiteboards of ideas disappears into silence — and the failure becomes the most honest lesson of a 28-day pivot.
Why prompting skill beats coding skill in the AI era
Precise prompting is now the highest-leverage skill a builder can develop, and the gap between vague and specific prompts is already separating winners from everyone else.
How I cancelled $1,800 in SaaS on day 24 of live vibe coding
After 24 days of live vibe coding on YouTube, I have cancelled Salesforce, Riverside, Opus Clips, MailChimp, and Squarespace — and replaced every one of them with software I built myself using Claude Code.
How I learned to think objectively after 10 years of unlearning
Charles Botensten maps a decade-long framework for escaping distraction, embracing humility, and thinking closer to objective reality on a whiteboard.
China's AI lag is shrinking — what happens when it hits zero
China's open-weight models are closing a gap that once measured a full year, and the geopolitical summit that ended with Boeing jets and no AI deal tells the whole story.
Why I have no content after 35 days of vibe coding
Thirty-five days of daily vibe coding produced a habit but no funnel and no content — and a live brainstorming session exposed exactly why.
How I burned months and hundreds of dollars building a Salesforce replacement
A real estate agent with a $50,000 Salesforce build discovers Claude's code artifacts and spends months rebuilding it from scratch — three times.
Why I never answer "what are you building" directly
Refusing to answer "what are you building" is the most honest thing I can do — because I'm still finding out, and so is the person asking.
The Leash Tightens: Why AI’s Grand Autonomy Experiment Is Quietly Failing.
For a brief and dizzying window, the tech industry convinced itself and tried to convince everyone else that AI agents were ready to be set loose.
Claude Opus 4.8: Anthropic’s Latest “Upgrade” Leaves Many Wondering If the Hype Cycle Is Finally Breaking
Claude Opus 4.8 - A Mirage or Gold at the end of the rainbow.
Vibe coding gets harder as your project grows. Not because the AI is dumb, but because it doesnt understand your codebase
Early on it's magic. You describe what you want, the AI writes it, everything works. But as your project grows, you start spending more prompts giving the AI context than actually building. "No, that function is used in three other places."
China’s AI Reckoning: How Radical Efficiency, Domestic Chips, and Ruthless Iteration Are Shaking Western Dominance
China is rewriting the economics of AI with high-performing models at a fraction of Western prices, accelerating domestic chip breakthroughs that blunt U.S. sanctions, and embedding intelligence across industry at astonishing speed
The Rise of Creative Play: Why Closed Communities Need Drawing Games
Building a strong, deeply engaged closed community requires more than just standard text-based discussion threads. To truly connect members and foster organic relationships, platforms are increasingly turning to interactive, creative features.