Writing
Notes from the work.
Fewer pieces, kept current, each answering one question an operator actually asked. The operating doctrine itself lives on the method page; this is the working commentary around it.
What this is, and how to read it
These are field notes: observations written down while building and operating the systems this site describes, published when they hold up. Each piece starts from something concrete — a workflow that broke, a tool that surprised us, a claim we tested against our own operation — and stays with that one thing until it is answered. None of it is produced to fill a calendar, and none of it is written for a search engine first. If a note stops being true, it gets revised or removed rather than left standing.
The pieces assume a reader who runs something — a company, a practice, a team, a heavy operating day — and who cares less about where the industry is going than about what to do on Monday. That is the standard each note is held to: it should leave you with something you can check against your own operation, not an opinion to agree with.
If you are new here, the notes will make more sense with the foundation under them. The method page carries the operating doctrine the commentary keeps referring back to, and the book page holds the published, longer-form version of the same thinking, with a preface excerpt on the page and the full excerpt behind a free registration. The product pages show what the doctrine looks like when it is running as software rather than sitting on a page.
New notes are added as they are ready rather than on a schedule, so the list below grows unevenly on purpose. Every note carries its publication date, and a note that has been materially revised says so. The newest piece sits at the top; nothing below it is kept for volume.
Agents Are Getting Real, and So Is the Work
The industry is moving from smart answers to systems that act. On my side that means crude scripts, real workflows, and five questions I keep asking.
When the spreadsheet is already the system
The spreadsheet running your production schedule is not a failure of discipline. It is a working system with three specific weaknesses, and only one of them is worth fixing first.