My assistant created the same task three days running. The fix has a name: idempotency.
A tiny automation bug taught the same lesson payment systems learned years ago: the question isn't whether it runs, it's what happens when it runs again.
Remco Livain
Four versions of the same email sat in my drafts. This morning, the tool just edited one.
Claude's Gmail connector now updates drafts in place instead of duplicating them. A small fix — and exactly the kind that turns AI tooling from a demo into something you trust daily.
A context window is working memory, not a hard drive. Feel that, and you manage AI differently.
The AI doesn't remember everything you've told it. It has working memory, and it's finite — here's the cheap trick I use to hear it filling up, and the fix when it does.
The real test of a system is whether the work moves when you've left the desk.
A week away, not too many meetings, and the clients' work kept moving — because the mechanical parts run on their own. On building systems that outlast your presence, and the judgement that can't be automated.
Everyone budgets for the VAT. The thing that blocks your listing is the recycling scheme.
Planning an Amazon move into France, Italy and Spain: everyone asks about the VAT, but it's Extended Producer Responsibility — the recycling scheme — that actually gates your listing.
I asked AI for my best quotes. It handed me things people told me in confidence.
I built a system to surface the best quotes from everything I'd saved. The best lines were things said to me in confidence — and the model couldn't tell. Why the boundary is judgement, not a smarter model.
Someone has to own the learning. Most networks never staff it.
Parallel experiments only compound if someone verifies the wins, writes them down, and redeploys them, and if the culture lets markets share honestly.
The revenue climbed. I assumed we'd spent our way there. We hadn't.
Sales rose on a marketplace and my first instinct was that we'd spent more. We hadn't — the budget was mostly idle. Why structure, not spend, is the real lever in retail media.
The ways to work with me now live in WhatsApp. Openly.
I rebuilt my WhatsApp Business catalog into a seven-item ladder of ways to work together — from a free snapshot to ongoing leadership. Value first, with the budget clarity companies plan by.
Give every market one bet a quarter. Watch the network compound.
If every market runs one focused go-to-market bet each quarter and reports back, a distributor network compounds learning faster than any single HQ roadmap.