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 position
- 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.
Route legend
- Field Notes Practical lessons from IT leadership, automation, security, governance, and operations. 18 notes
- Builder Log Experiments, workflows, broken things, rebuilds, AI agents, home lab systems, and lessons learned. 21 notes
- Road Notes Motorcycle trips, travel reflections, food, photography, and places worth remembering. 32 notes
- Photo Notes Visual field notes from travel, food, motorcycles, and photography. 4 notes
- Decision Notes Choices, trade-offs, and the reasoning behind them — written down so future-me remembers why. 1 note
Latest notes
All notes →Visit Japan Web: What to Prepare Before You Fly
Prepare your Japan arrival information, understand the immigration/customs code, and make an offline backup plan before you reach…
When You Tell an AI to Stop, What Actually Stops?
A quiet voice assistant may still be working. Learn the difference between interruption, cancellation, and undo—and what to…
You Can’t Govern AI You Haven’t Found: A Practical AI Inventory Starter Guide
Build a useful AI inventory with owners, data boundaries, permissions and evidence. Includes a starter table and a…
OpenAI’s 10,000-Agent Math Run: Why a Formal Proof Still Needs Independent Review
OpenAI has released a claimed Navier–Stokes solution and Lean formalization. Here is how to separate agent scale, proof…
Inside STEP SF 2026: What Founders, Investors, and Builders Are Actually Saying About AI Agents
STEP SF 2026 brought founders, investors, and builders together for panels on AI agent deployment, global venture capital,…
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
All photo notes →
