Sheet 02 — Index of built things
Built, not bought
A company, a handful of systems, and the tools I use to run them. Built to hold up, then improved a season at a time. The land and the garden are on Life. Five entries are still in progress.
AI & the desk
4 entries
No. 03 · Flagship
The AI second brain
Seven thousand plain-text notes and an agent that runs on a schedule — it reads the intake channels, files what arrives, refreshes the dashboards, and leaves me the judgment calls. I stopped doing the filing. That was the whole point.
Read the write-up →No. 19 · The desk
The Command Center
One local app that the second brain feeds: what needs a decision today, what the scheduled jobs did overnight, and what failed loudly. It reads the vault and writes nothing back without me. Shown here as architecture, not screenshots.
Read the write-up →No. 20 · AI transformation
Patterns for AI at Work
The handful of patterns I bring to any organisation adopting AI: two brains with a one-way gate between them, guardrails written before the automation, failures loud and successes silent, and a named human for every decision a system touches.
Read the write-up →No. 06 · Content operations
The Docket
No CMS, no database, no admin login. Markdown files in version control, a static build, and exactly one approval gate between a draft and the internet. Boring on purpose — boring is what still works in five years.
Read the write-up →
Operating instruments
3 entries
No. 18 · Operations
The KPI Dashboard
Four numbers on top, each reported as its distance to the line that matters rather than as a value — coloured by which direction is good, and honest enough to show a grey tile where nobody has set a defensible target yet.
Read the write-up →
No. 04 · Operations
Operating Instruments
The devices that make an operating surface honest enough to brief a board from — a provenance line on every artifact, confidence tags so proposed money cannot look like base, weighted progress, and a retired board that explains its own errors.
Read the write-up →
No. 05 · Service design
Customer-First Service Website Concept
Service sites are built around the org chart; customers arrive with one of six questions. A short set of pages, each chosen to solve one hard accessibility pattern once, and an ending that states plainly what it has not proven.
Read the write-up →
The venture
2 entries
No. 01 · In development
Common Ground Grow Co.
A modern barn-building company — rebuilding essential food systems at a human scale. Raised-bed systems, a planning platform, and a way for a household to feed itself a little more every year. Not open for business yet; built right first.
Read the write-up →Visit the site ↗No. 02 · The platform
Marigold (The CGGC Platform)
The software underneath the company. A customer lays out their space, and one pass produces the materials list, the tax-inclusive quote, and a branded proposal — no spreadsheet, no back-and-forth about what a bed actually costs. It has run end to end.
- Status
- Run end to end
In the field
3 entries
No. 09 · Under management
My 'Deere' Tractor
Eight years of a compact diesel run on memory and one messy note, audited and rebuilt — then given a cockpit that knows what is due, what is overdue, and what it has no honest record of. The audit took an afternoon. The cockpit did not.
Read the write-up →No. 12 · Provision
HuntStand — The Hunting System
A decision engine for hunting ground that has never once said go. Forty-one stands, none validated, every area on hold — which is the system working, and the scorecard is published because hiding it would defeat the point.
Read the write-up →No. 11 · On the water
The Angler Angle
A depth chart built out of public state survey data — one file, no server, no network — and the scoring engine underneath it, which spends most of its time refusing to recommend a trip on evidence it does not have.
Read the write-up →
Not finished yet
5 entries- 13
My 'Built Ford Tough' F-150
The tractor’s maintenance pattern, pointed at a 2019 F-150. Built second, which is the interesting part.
In progress→ - 14
MowLines
A mobile app for planning mowing patterns. It has not yet passed the only test that counts, which is mowing my own lawn with it.
In progress→ - 15
My House Studio
Architectural blueprints for the house, regenerated from one structured model, plus an interactive 3D version.
In progress→ - 16
GroundSight
The map underneath the hunting system, being rebuilt onto one-metre lidar. It works, and it stays on one laptop.
In progress→ - 17
The Fantasy Dynasty Engine
A model of a fantasy league that never resets. Used in the September draft; the season is the test.
In progress→