The Debrief
What really happened, and what I built from it.
True stories from real infrastructure, the tools and frameworks I build, and the AI prompts I lean on. No spin, take what's useful.
On the prompts and tools: they're starting points, not gospel. AI gets things wrong and makes things up, so verify every fact, name, number, and date before you rely on it.
The Tail Doesn't Wag the Dog
Write the press release before the project starts, or spend two years finding problems worthy of the solution.
Nobody Would Have Blamed Us for Waiting.
Half the world's computers blue-screened on the same July night. Waiting for CrowdStrike to fix its own bug would have been the easy, defensible call. We went and found the fix ourselves.
AI Output Is Cheap. Proof Is Expensive.
AI is writing everything now, and almost nobody checks it. Five lessons from rebuilding WriteAssist into a real platform, on making AI work prove itself and what that proof costs.
We Had Disaster Recovery on Paper. I Wanted to Know It Was Real.
Nobody asked me to fail over the whole company. I did it anyway, because a recovery plan you've never run is just a hope with good formatting.
WriteAssist
Keep AI from losing the thread across an entire book. Free and open source.
AWS Wanted $60,000. We Built It for Pennies.
Two infrastructure guys, not developers, shipped what a $60,000 consulting team would have built. We leaned hard on AI. We came in cheaper, did it faster, and it came out better, the three things you're told you can't have at once.
The Override
Three lines that stop AI from handing you the shallow version.
Reverse Prompting
Stop writing the request. Have the AI write it for you, then run it.
Chain of Verification
Make the AI argue with itself before you ever trust the draft.
Multi-Persona Prompting
Write it once and get every audience version in a single pass.
Adversarial Prompting
Turn the AI into your toughest critic before the meeting does it for you.