For twenty-five years I built software and led consulting teams. Now I build my own agents: the one that runs my training and sleep over Telegram, the memory layer behind my writing, the systems that hand me back my mornings. AI scales what you already know. Twenty-five years of judgment goes further with it than a weekend of prompts does, if you put in the time to keep up. What's left is the question of what you point it at, and I write about that every week.Twenty-five years building software for other people. Now I build my own agents. AI scales what you already know, if you put in the time to keep up. What's left is what you point it at. I write about that every week.
Claude Code for Non-Coders. Thursdays: one consequential idea, free. Tuesdays: the hands-on build, paid.
We automate tasks that enhance human flourishing. We resist automation that encroaches on human judgment.
That is not a position against AI. It is a position against handing over the one part of the work that was always yours: the judgment that made you worth listening to in the first place.
On the drawing, coral marks where judgment stays with me. Merges, sends and payments wait for a tap on my phone, and every agent is a real terminal I can sit down at and take over.
When AI saves hours, someone keeps them, and by default it is the firm, not the person who did the work. The fight isn't AI versus jobs. It's who keeps what the machine saves. Build so it's you.
The risk isn't that AI replaces you. It's that it quietly demotes you to sign-off. Keep your hands on the decisions that carry weight.
Use the frontier models. I do. Just understand how your system fits together so you can always move, and never build on a foundation you can't leave.
No one is coming to authorize you. The barrier was never a credential. It's the hours, and those are yours to control.
Every earlier productivity jump needed an institution's money to run. This one you can own and master end to end, whether you run it yourself or rent the inference.
None of this is the point on its own. Owning the tools only matters for what you can finally aim them at: your health, your family, the problems that money and access used to put out of reach. Keeping your judgment valuable is the foundation. Building a life worth living is the point.Owning the tools is the foundation. Building a life worth living is the point.
Everything else runs downstream of it. I publish twice a week for senior technical people who built careers on judgment, stopped writing code years ago, and are working out what coding agents change for them. Thursdays are one idea developed in full, free and open to everyone. Tuesdays are the hands-on build, for paid subscribers.
A new writing series about how we get from here to a future everyone can share. Science fiction wrote the destination and the warning, then skipped the part in between. We have been living in that part for years, and the hard work is planning, organizing and building a present that makes the future possible. It runs in its own section of the newsletter, one installment every Thursday, starting October 8.
Conversations with people who left something they hated and built something better: a career, a business, their health. Each episode follows one reinvention and the system behind it, the part you could copy. The series makes the argument for everyone; the podcast makes it one person at a time.
The argument only counts if I'm living it, so here is the stack I actually own.
The drawing beside this is the whole stack. Select any part of it, or use a card below, to see what it is and what it connects to.The whole stack, drawn. Tap any part of it to see what it is and what it connects to.
It started as a memory platform for AI. It's now a context graph for multi-agent architectures: the shared record my agents read and write, with the relationships between things drawn in. A product I build and sell under D. E. Williams + Co.
A Claude Code agent that runs my training, sleep, and health logging over Telegram. It's the clearest proof I have of the whole thesis: I built it, I own it, and it guards the mornings I care about instead of billing them to someone else.
One Telegram bot out front and a team of Claude Code sessions behind it: a coordinator, health, legal/records, the books, family travel, homeschool (planned), and a pair that builds and reviews changes to the system itself. Every one is a real terminal I can sit down at and take over.
zvec-go and agent-harness. The smaller pieces, built in the open, that the larger systems stand on.
Single-file browser games and scenes built with coding agents: a sailing and fishing simulation on a real-time 3D ocean, and a party game with its own physics and synthesized sound. The sea on this page started there.
I did this at scale for other people before I did it for myself. That story is below, in About.
A few companies a year bring me in on their specific problem: what to build, what to buy, where AI actually belongs in the operation, and how to keep their people the decision-makers instead of the assistants. I take the ones I can genuinely move. It's inbound only, and it sits downstream of everything I publish here.
I also give talks and run workshops: keynotes for leadership teams, hands-on sessions for the people who have to build the thing. If you want me in the room, start here.
I started as a software engineer on the platform that let the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, the IMF, and the BLS share statistical data. From there it was consulting. At Booz Allen I won more than $9M in new business and built a FISMA-compliant internal cloud that cut a research program's data-center cost by two thirds. Then Toyota and Lexus, whose digital properties I ran across a $35M portfolio. Then Pariveda, where I built a national practice from nothing to $6M a year and grew one account from $28K to $4M in nine months.
Somewhere in there the job changed. I stopped being the person who writes the code and became the person who decides what gets built and why. That seam is exactly what AI is now tearing open for everyone who made the same move.
So I do both again. I build my own tools, I write about how, and I advise the companies that want the same thing for their teams. I work in a window from early afternoon to evening, on purpose, because the mornings belong to my family, to fitness, to reading, and to being in the room instead of half inside a meeting in my head. I live on the coast of Virginia with my wife and two sons. Building a life worth living is the point.
One note for advisory or speaking. If I can genuinely move it, you'll hear back within two business days.
The point is family and health. The machinery goes to the machines, and the time comes back.
// Start hereOne consequential idea, free every Thursday. Thirty-four thousand people read it.
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