Writing · 04Tokyo · Incoming Cambridge HSPS
Working notes.
Short notes from inside the work: building solo with AI agents, operations, and shipping. Written when there is something concrete to say.
W-012026-08-01i’d put the AI tutor inside the teacher’s workflowWhy AI tutors earn trust when goals, notes, and next actions stay inside the teacher’s workflow.→W-022026-07-3011 weeksWhat 11 weeks and a 50-participant cap reveal about bounded execution, ambition, and visible progress.→W-032026-07-29what actually turns AI tutoring into a real market?UK school AI funding signals demand and makes safety and learning impact part of the product trial.→W-042026-07-28a durable student record should outlast whoever delivers theWhy durable student records improve handoff continuity and make personalization measurable in education.→W-052026-07-27use this filter before building an AI tutoring productA field note on why AI tutoring products need teacher workflows, student goals, tutor notes, and clear next actions.→W-062026-07-24a growing market gives you permission to testA growing market permits testing, while changed learner behaviour in one narrow workflow provides the real demand signal.→W-072026-07-23a growing market is permission to run a narrow test, nothing moreA field note on testing one learner workflow and measuring whether it improves the next decision this week.→W-082026-07-22the uk is putting up to £23m behind safe, evidence-based AI andWhy evidence-based AI and edtech trials need measurable outcomes and safety controls before schools adopt them.→W-092026-07-19AI reaches families when proof and safety ship with the productWhy builders in high-trust domains need proof and safety controls in the product before distribution.→W-102026-07-18start with the tutor notesAI tutoring becomes useful when tutor notes, learner goals, session evidence, and one next action stay connected.→W-112026-07-17an accelerator calendar is useful when it makes the user resultA field note on using accelerator deadlines to force clearer product evidence and user results at every milestone.→W-122026-07-14are education products ready for this kind of jump?Japan’s Japanese-language institute enrollment rose 23.5% in 2025, showing why education products must support cross-border transitions.→W-132026-07-13a commit is a hypothesisA commit is a hypothesis. Live verification decides whether software actually does the job people need it to do.→W-142026-07-13most people building ai tutoring think the hard part is theAI tutoring earns family trust through auditable progress evidence and real safety controls before the tutoring experience itself.→W-152026-07-11git said the feature shippedA commit is halfway: software ships when you watch a customer complete the intended action live.→W-162026-07-10a commit is just a checkpointA commit is only a checkpoint; i call work done after verifying it in the live environment the user actually experiences.→W-172026-07-09a green diff lied to me last weekA green diff passed tests while prod stayed broken, and the fix was a rule to verify the live thing.→W-182026-07-07spent an hour last night chasing a bug that was never a buga stale copy of the same api key in an env file caused a machine-only failure until secrets moved to one OS-backed store.→W-192026-07-06why are secrets still living in env files and shell history?Centralizing secrets in one store and loading them at runtime makes rotation boring and stops drift across env files, shells, and deploy targets.→W-202026-07-03a merged pr is not a shipGreen CI proves the code matched expectations; live verification is the receipt that shows it actually worked.→W-212026-07-02an agent budget breaker for your ai toolinga hook that hard-blocks subagent dispatches at 8 per day. installed after a 132-dispatch week burned 85% of a max plan, and what the cap actually taught me about routing.→W-222026-07-02your outreach needs a validatora hard gate for outreach drafts: single line, product link required, em dashes banned, template clones rejected. it failed 358 of the 414 drafts sitting in my queues.→W-232026-07-01the real bar is live verificationa passing test can still miss the real user experience; live verification in the real environment is the standard that matters.→W-242026-06-26moved every runtime secret into the OS keychain and ripped themoving runtime secrets into one canonical OS keychain made rotation and recovery a one-place problem across four services.→W-252026-06-25a commit is a checkpointA commit is a checkpoint, and shipping only starts after live verification exposes the hidden failures.→W-262026-06-24when is a change actually done?A change is done when the live service is verified end to end, because repo-local green can create false confidence.→W-272026-06-23your offline backup is not your source of truthA backup you write to is just a second thing to keep in sync; a backup you only read from in a disaster actually saves you.→W-282026-06-22a green checkmark in your repo is not proof of anythingA green checkmark in the repo can hide a stale live endpoint, and the only reliable receipt is a live request you make yourself.→W-292026-06-20shipped a feature last weeka green build and clean merge can still miss the user path; if nobody walked it live, the feature was not shipped yet.→W-302026-06-19production verification is part of doneproduction verification belongs in the definition of done, because the live check is where the answer shows up.→W-312026-06-18one source of truth for repos, services, creds, automationsA single source of truth keeps repos, services, access details, and automations in sync by updating the record with the change.→W-322026-06-17Moving every secret into one canonical store made our env files boring againMoving secrets into one canonical store made env files boring again and made rotation and drift easier to manage.→