Making complex systems more human.
Field notes on IT leadership, AI automation, systems, travel, and the road.
I'm Rico Tan, an IT and operations leader based in San Francisco. This is my public notebook for what I'm learning, building, breaking, fixing, cooking, riding, photographing, and thinking through.
Some notes are technical.
Some are personal.
Some are experiments in progress.
The common thread: making complex systems more understandable, useful, and human.
CURRENT SIGNAL
Mode
Building
Location
San Francisco
Focus
Practical AI automation, IT operations, and systems thinking
Question
How do we reduce context switching without creating another dashboard?
Exploring
AI agents, human approval gates, audit trails, motorcycle routes, and better coffee.
SECTIONS
/field-notes
Practical lessons from IT leadership, automation, security, governance, and operations.
/builder-log
Experiments, workflows, broken things, rebuilds, AI agents, home lab systems, and lessons learned.
/road-notes
Motorcycle trips, travel reflections, food, photography, and places worth remembering.
/photo-notes
Visual field notes from travel, food, motorcycles, and photography.
/now
What I'm currently exploring, building, reading, and learning.
LATEST NOTES
all notes →
The AI Tool Stack That’s Actually Worth Paying For in 2026
The AI Tool Stack That’s Actually Worth Paying For in 2026 I run AI across multiple organizations —…
I Used AI as My Research Layer Traveling Southeast Asia — Here’s What It Got Right and Wrong
I Used AI as My Research Layer Traveling Southeast Asia — Here’s What It Got Right and Wrong…
What Schools Get Wrong About AI (And What Actually Matters)
What Schools Get Wrong About AI (And What Actually Matters) By Rico Tan — IT Director & AI…
Bandung’s Café Culture, Dago, and Braga at Night: What’s Behind the Hype
The café was full at 2pm on a weekday. Every table occupied, a steady stream of people at…
I Built a Personal Command Center with AI — And It Updates Itself
What if your morning routine didn't start with checking five different apps? I stopped treating AI as a…
What Background Jobs Taught Me About Reliable AI Agents
Moving 18 scheduled AI jobs from cloud to local looks like a cost exercise. It is really a…
VISUAL LOG
