Archive
Builder Log
Builder Log is where I document experiments with agentic AI, automation workflows, local systems, and the messy work of making useful tools reliable. These notes are less about the tool itself and more about what the build teaches.
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 — a children’s…
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 chat tool…
Adding Real-Time Web Search to Your AI Agent: Tavily, Exa, and What Changed
Tavily and Exa add dramatically better web search to an AI agent. What each does, when to use which, step-by-step…
Personal Finance Automation with Firefly III, SimpleFIN, and an AI Agent
Self-hosted personal finance tracking without SaaS subscriptions. Firefly III for accounting, SimpleFIN for bank feeds, and an AI agent to…
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 reliability audit:…
When AI Memory Gets Too Complicated: Lessons from Replacing a Broken Plugin
A memory plugin that controls what the agent remembers controls the agent. What I found when I audited mine, why…
What a Week-Long AI Gateway Incident Taught Me About Reliability
A week of gateway instability reveals failure modes that stable operation hides. What I rebuilt — and the five design…
The Hook System Trap: Three Gateway Crashes and One Design Lesson
Three real crashes from the same misconfigured hook pattern — and the architecture insight that finally stopped them. The lesson…
The Heartbeat Problem: Monitoring an AI Agent That Never Stops Running
An always-on AI agent that is up but silently failing is worse than one that crashes loudly. The monitoring architecture…
What AI Agents Should Remember — and What They Should Never Store
Credential discipline and memory architecture for a self-hosted AI agent. The practical rules that prevent security nightmares and memory drift.
