Notes on craft · est. 2026
Building with AI is a craft, not magic. Magic is just technique nobody's explained yet.
First-person field notes by Skakeny — product person, chef by training, learning the work from zero again.
Featured
01 essayThere's No Recipe
The tool will build you the wrong thing fast and look pleased about it. One move comes before all the rest: working out what you're actually making, and who for.
Writing
05 entriesSmall Plates
I asked for the whole UI overnight. I got it, and it cost a week. The banquet wasn't the mistake — ordering it from a kitchen with no canon was. Cook in small plates; the plate grows as the canon does.
The Station Tour
A tour of one real working station, boot to last breath: the skill, the handoff, the pass, the will. No recipe — just the shapes, so you can build your own with your AI this afternoon.
AI Mise en place
A new cook walks in every session knowing nothing. Kitchens have run on strangers for centuries — they wrote the station down. The four pages that let the work outlive the session.
The Ingredient Lies
Every tool you've used fails loudly. This one fails politely — wrong, fluent, confident, plated. You're not talking to Claude; you're talking to a Claude, gone by morning. So you taste everything.
What's Not on the Menu
AI deleted the constraint that used to scope your work for you. Deciding what you won't build is the last scarce decision left — three edges, drawn against one plain sentence.