Field notes & essays.
Working notes, lessons, and the occasional opinion — from building websites, software, and AI systems for real businesses.
The full archive.
Every post, in chronological order.
How To Get Anthropic Fable 5 Back in Claude Code
Fable 5 is coming back to Claude Code, but it may not appear immediately. Here is the clean reinstall, update, and model-selection path for macOS, Windows, Linux, npm, Homebrew, WinGet, apt, dnf, and apk installs.
Should You Let AI Crawlers Read Your Website? Robots.txt, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, and Google-Extended
A plain-English guide to AI crawler controls for business websites: what GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Googlebot, and Google-Extended actually mean.
AI Search Optimization for Service Businesses: How to Get Found in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity
A practical AI search optimization guide for service businesses: what changed, what did not, and how to make your website easier for AI search systems to find, trust, and cite.
The True Cost of Cheap Websites: What $500 Builds Actually Cost You
The hidden math behind cheap websites: lost leads, security risk, vendor lock, rebuild costs, and maintenance debt — with real numbers for service businesses.
Disaster Recovery for Your Website: Backups, Runbooks, and the Day Things Break
A practical disaster recovery guide for small business websites — the 3-2-1 backup rule, RTO/RPO, runbooks for common incidents, and communicating outages.
API-First Business: Why Your Systems Should Talk to Each Other
What data silos actually cost, REST vs webhooks vs events, picking integration platforms, master data management basics, and avoiding vendor lock-in.
Microcopy: The Tiny Words That Decide Whether People Buy
A practical guide to microcopy for service business websites: button labels, form helpers, error messages, empty states, and confirmations that actually convert.
Google Search Console: The Five Reports Every Business Should Check Monthly
The five Google Search Console reports every small business should check monthly: Performance, Pages, Core Web Vitals, Sitemaps, and Manual Actions — with concrete actions.
Choosing a Web Agency: The Questions That Separate Good From Bad
The questions that separate good web agencies from bad ones: process, communication, team continuity, post-launch support, references, and pricing transparency.