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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

What shipped today

Planning session only — no code shipped. Ran /start to review yesterday’s carry-over and the current queue. The session was a quick check-in with no new work started.

Completed

  • None

Carry-over

  • GH-8: Product blog syndicated content separate from main feed (parked)
  • Newsletter automation as polymathic-h hooks (matching podcast pattern) — no issue created yet
  • CLAUDE.md still references non-existent paulos newsletter test/send and paulos blog sync commands

Risks

  • None

Flags and watch-outs

  • paulos notify editorial hook still untested on a real content commit
  • CLAUDE.md newsletter and blog sync documentation is stale

Next session

  • Create GH issue for newsletter send automation as a polymathic-h hook (pre-commit or post-commit, matching the podcast audio pattern)
  • Update CLAUDE.md to remove stale paulos newsletter test/send and paulos blog sync references, document actual Brevo API workflow
  • Test paulos notify editorial notification on a real content commit
  • Pick up GH-8 if ready to tackle syndicated content feeds

Why customer tools are organized wrong

This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.

Infrastructure shapes thought

The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.

Server-side dashboard architecture: Why moving data fetching off the browser changes everything

How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.

The work of being available now

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The practice of work in progress

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Manual fluency is the prerequisite for agent supervision

You cannot responsibly automate what you cannot do manually. AI agents speed up work for people who already know how to do it. They do not replace the need to learn the work in the first place.

The gun you didn't need

Every organization has loaded weapons lying around that nobody remembers loading. The most dangerous capability in any system is the one you built 'just in case.'

Nobody promotes you to operator

There's a moment in every project where the work stops being about building and starts being about keeping things running. Nobody announces this transition. Nobody gives you new tools for it. And most people keep building long past the point where they should have stopped.