Thinking
Notes on AI, evaluation, and building things that work
Perspectives on AI strategy, adoption, and implementation for business owners — not developers.
How We Built On-Device De-Identification So AI Never Sees Real Names
Most AI privacy is a policy. Ours is architecture. We run a named entity recognition model inside the browser to strip identifying information before it ever leaves the device. Here is how it works, what we tested, and where it applies.
Your Practice Needs an AML/CTF Program by July 1. Here's What That Actually Looks Like.
AUSTRAC's Tranche 2 reforms hit accountants, real estate agents and settlement agents on 1 July 2026. We built a complete compliance program for a small practice in three days. Here's the process, the output and the boundaries.
Your Agency's Clients Are About to Ask Why This Costs So Much
A solo consultant just built in two weeks what your agency quoted eight for. The client doesn't understand AI yet; but they will. The agencies that survive aren't the ones that cut costs. They're the ones that change what they sell.
What Do You Love Doing? What Do You Hate Doing?
Most AI rollouts fail the same way. Leadership announces efficiency. Staff hear replacement. A developer at a recent peer group meeting offered a reframe that changes everything; the psychology of why it works tells you how to deploy AI without destroying trust.
Why I Don't Use n8n (And What I Do Instead)
If you've been pitched an AI system recently, there's a good chance you saw n8n in the demo. It demos well. But a compelling demo and a reliable production system are different things; and the distance between them is where businesses get hurt.
Your Codebase Was Not Built for AI. That's the Actual Problem.
Amazon's mandatory meeting about AI breaking production isn't an AI tools story. It's an architecture story. The codebases AI is being pointed at were never designed to be understood by anything other than the humans who built them.
Your Team Has AI Licences. You Don't Have an AI System.
Fifteen people, fifteen separate AI accounts, no shared context. The problem isn't the tool; it's the architecture around it. Here's what fixing it looks like.
Your $2,000 Day Starts the Night Before: Our System Keeps You on the Tools, Not on the Phone
Your route is optimised overnight. Your customers are notified automatically. When something changes mid-day, every affected customer gets told without you picking up the phone. A tradie scheduling system that protects your daily rate.
The Fastest Way for an Executive to Get Across AI
AI is moving faster than any executive can track. The alternatives: learning it yourself, sitting through vendor pitches, hiring a consultant who arrives with a hammer, all waste your scarcest resource. There is a faster way.
Your IT Department Will Take 18 Months. You Need This Working by Next Quarter.
Senior leaders often know exactly what they need built. The gap isn't technical; it's time. A prototype approach gets the tool working now and gives IT a validated blueprint to build from later.
What If You Had Perfect Memory Across Every Client?
Any practice managing dozens of ongoing client relationships captures more than it can recall. AI gives practitioners perfect memory across every interaction, so preparation time becomes thinking time, not retrieval time.
We Built an AI Invoice Verifier. Here's Where It Hits a Wall.
We built an AI invoice verifier and watched a fake beat a real invoice. Here's why document analysis alone cannot stop invoice fraud; the five layers of detection that most businesses never reach.
How to Build an AI Chatbot That Doesn't Lie to Your Customers
Woolworths deliberately scripted its AI to talk about its mother. The business fix is simple: be honest about the bot. The technical fix is harder: architecture that prevents fabrication by design, not by hope.
Why AI Safety Features Are Load-Bearing Architecture, Not Political Decoration
The 'woke AI' label came from real failures; but they were engineering failures, not safety failures. Understanding the difference matters for every organisation deploying AI where errors have consequences.
Woolworths' AI Told a Customer It Had a Mother. That's a Problem.
Woolworths' AI assistant Olive was deliberately scripted to talk about its mother and uncle during customer calls. When callers realised they were talking to an AI pretending to be human, trust broke instantly.
Google Is No Longer the Only Way Your Customers Find You
People are using ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini to find businesses. The sites that get cited are structured differently to the sites that rank on Google. Most businesses are optimising for one and invisible to the other.
Two Types of AI Assessment: And How to Know Which One You Need
Most businesses considering AI face the same question: where do we start? The answer depends on whether you need to find the opportunities or reclaim the time. Two assessments, two perspectives, one goal.
The Personal Workflow Analysis: What Watching a Real Workday Reveals About Automation
When asked how they spend their day, most people describe the work they value, not the work that consumes their time. Recording a typical workday closes that gap, revealing automation opportunities no interview could surface.
What a Good AI Audit Actually Delivers
A useful AI audit produces two things: a written report with specific, costed recommendations and a working prototype you can test. Not a slide deck. Not a proposal for more work.
Your Website Looked Great Five Years Ago. Now It's Costing You Customers.
The signals that used to build trust online (polished design, stock imagery, aggressive calls to action) now trigger scepticism. Most businesses don't realise their digital presence is working against them.
AI Audit That Starts With Your Business
Most AI consultants arrive with a toolkit and look for places to use it. An operations-first audit starts with how your business actually runs, and only recommends AI where the evidence says it will work.
What Production AI Teaches You That Demos Never Will
The gap between AI that works in a demo and AI that works in your business is where the useful lessons live. Architecture, framing, privacy, and adoption; the patterns are the same every time.
The Psychology of Why Your Team Won't Use AI
You buy the tool, run the demo, and three months later nobody is using it. The reason is not the technology; it is five predictable psychological barriers. Each one has a specific strategy that overcomes it.
Stop Telling AI What NOT to Do: The Positive Framing Revolution
Most businesses get poor results from AI because they instruct it with constraints and prohibitions. Switching from negative framing to positive framing transforms output quality, and the principle comes from psychology, not computer science.
How We Turned Generic AI Into a Specialist: And What That Means for Your Business
Most businesses get mediocre AI output and blame the model. The fix is almost never a better model; it's a better architecture. Three structural changes that transform AI from 'fine' to 'actually useful.'
Your Business Has 9 Customer Touchpoints. AI Can Fix the 6 You're Dropping.
You are spending money to get customers to your door. Then you are losing them because you cannot personally follow up with every lead, nurture every client, and ask for every review. AI can handle the touchpoints you are dropping: quietly, consistently, and at scale.
What Happens to Your Data When You Press 'Send' on an AI Tool
Most businesses are sending customer data, financials, and internal documents to AI tools without understanding what happens during processing. The spectrum of AI privacy protection is wider than you think; recent research shows that even purpose-built security can have structural flaws.