The COO's Job Is Building the AI Operating System
The COO's job in an AI-first company is to build the operating system the company runs on. Here is what that OS looks like and how to build it.
Topic · 31 essays · page 2 of 3
Engineering
Agents sort business relationships — not destroy them
Agents won't kill business relationships. They'll sort them. The ones doing low-value information work will quietly become unnecessary. The ones doing the hard human jobs will become rarer, and more valuable.
Five Things AI Can't Replace — and Why Combining Them Is the Real Moat
Five things AI can't replace: trust, context, distribution, taste, and liability. These aren't product categories. They're structural layers that become more valuable as AI gets better, not less.
The Problem Wasn't the Model
I spent the first three months treating AI like a calculator. Type a question, get an answer. Occasionally useful, mostly generic.
Don't wait too long to learn Claude Code
You're probably sick of being told to learn AI tools. But this isn't that post.
You want skills, not agents
The agent hype isn't about AI capability. It's about human org design, and we're copying the wrong thing.
Delegation vs Automation
Unpopular opinion: building AI workflows that stop for human confirmation isn't careful design. It might just be discomfort dressed up as caution.
Why Branding Still Matters in an Agent World
The brand work we did at Wild Earth was real. We were selling through Instagram and Facebook, and on those channels emotional resonance isn't a nice-to-have, it's the mechanism. The photography, the dog stories, the community, the tone of voice. People were scrolling and we had about two seconds to make them feel something. It worked. Brand investment drove revenue in a way that was measurable and direct.
My AI Stack — Running Work Through a Terminal
My goal: run my entire work life through a terminal. I'm about 60% there. Here's what the setup looks like.
I Replaced HelloFresh with an OpenClaw Skill
OpenClaw is the fastest-growing open-source AI agent of 2026, with over 100,000 GitHub stars and a skills ecosystem anyone can extend. I built a skill that replaced my HelloFresh subscription, and what it took to build it says something about where a lot of billion-dollar convenience businesses are headed.
Human UX vs Agent UX
Urgency works on humans. Scarcity works on humans. Beautiful photography works on humans. You've spent years getting these things right — the above-the-fold her
Why Amazon Blocking Agent Crawlers Is the Most Telling Signal in Agentic Commerce
Amazon blocks agent crawlers. That's not a technical decision. It's a strategic one.