Thinking

Notes on AI, evaluation, and building things that work

Perspectives on AI strategy, adoption, and implementation for business owners, not developers.

Why we let AI run the interviews (and why we never let it pretend to be human)

AI-conducted interviews compress weeks of stakeholder discovery into days, standardise what gets asked, and lower the guard that distorts honest answers.

Building 7 min read 24 July 2026

How AI capability actually moves through a business

The decisive variable in SME AI adoption is the human absorption sequence, not the tooling. A working framework from observation across WA businesses.

Adoption 14 min read 19 July 2026

AHPRA advertising rules for psychologist websites

Recovery stories, 'specialist', 'clinical psychologist', and endorsement titles are where psychology sites breach the National Law. A practical read-through.

Evaluation 7 min read 18 July 2026

Customer service AI has finally grown up

Chatbots and AI receptionists earned their bad reputation. What changed, why the trick is in the data, and how the mature version answers every call without replacing anyone.

Adoption 6 min read 17 July 2026

Who can use the titles 'Dr', 'Specialist', and 'Surgeon'?

AHPRA restricts 'specialist' and 'surgeon' to specific registrations, and 'Dr' has its own rule. What health practice websites can and cannot claim.

Evaluation 6 min read 17 July 2026

Your best people hate writing reports

The operators you promote are brilliant at the work and allergic to reporting. A scheduled AI call interviews them, drafts the briefing, and they approve it. No ego, no politics, no blank page.

Adoption 5 min read 17 July 2026

Your website isn't just for humans anymore

How to build a chatbot that keeps itself up to date, can't leak client information, and won't answer beyond what you've published. The answer was sitting in plain sight.

Building 6 min read 17 July 2026

Can you show Google reviews on your health practice website?

AHPRA bans clinical testimonials, even true ones, but service reviews are fine. What that means for the Google reviews widget on your practice site.

Evaluation 7 min read 16 July 2026

What AHPRA's advertising rules mean for your website

Your practice website is advertising under the National Law. What AHPRA's rules prohibit, who is responsible, and how to check your own site.

Evaluation 7 min read 15 July 2026

Is it safe to paste client data into ChatGPT?

What ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot promise about your data, what the Privacy Act requires, and the honest answer for professionals handling client files.

Evaluation 8 min read 14 July 2026

What a good AI audit actually delivers

The audit report named one recommendation specific enough to check. What the Build engagement that followed looked like, shown through one real engagement, generalised.

Evaluation 6 min read 13 July 2026

AI and video, Mid-2026: the models can watch now, not just listen

AI could always transcribe video. It can now read the frames as well, and every hour of footage a business owns becomes something it can question.

Evaluation 7 min read 6 July 2026

Why the privacy case against cloud AI memory isn't paranoia

An AI knowledge base concentrates everything sensitive a business holds. Dated 2026 incidents show what cloud custody means once legal process gets involved.

Technical 5 min read 6 July 2026

Your AI knowledge base is an attack surface

A knowledge base an AI agent can read and write is a productivity tool, and dated 2026 incidents show it is also somewhere an attacker can plant instructions.

Technical 5 min read 3 July 2026

The real asset in an AI knowledge base isn't the notes

In every AI-maintained knowledge base, one file carries the owner's judgement and compounds. The wiki pages are the least valuable part.

Adoption 5 min read 30 June 2026

The missing measurement in the AI second-brain boom

Every claim about AI knowledge bases saving time is self-reported. The one controlled experiment measured token economics, not benefit.

Evaluation 5 min read 24 June 2026

From evidence base to delivery: a production AI methodology

How we delivered 34 evidence-anchored AI briefings to a WA peer-advisory chapter: fact-checked literature review, multi-agent verification, one method.

Building 11 min read 23 June 2026

The six functions of a working AI system

A working AI system is six functions doing six jobs. When all six connect, hallucinations get caught, outputs hold steady, and models become swappable.

Technical 9 min read 20 June 2026

Supervised autonomy: the middle path for AI architecture

Between drafts you approve and agents you hope about sits the middle path: an envelope of authorised routine work, supervised, audited, and yours to widen.

Technical 7 min read 20 June 2026

The state of applied AI in Mid-2026

Our literature review of applied AI in mid-2026: ten capability categories, three fact-check passes, written for operational leaders.

Evaluation 5 min read 14 June 2026

AI in building inspections, Mid-2026

AI defect detection is strong on obvious defects and weak on the subtle ones where liability lives. Which capabilities fit inspection work in 2026.

Evaluation 8 min read 13 June 2026

AI in property valuation, Mid-2026

AVMs are reliable enough for triage, not for the final word on contested property. What has shifted in valuation work by mid-2026, and what has not.

Evaluation 8 min read 13 June 2026

AI in family law, Mid-2026

Federal Court practice note GPN-AI makes AI verification a professional obligation. What the courts now require, and what the evidence says about legal AI.

Evaluation 8 min read 13 June 2026

How to design a PHI redaction system for clinical AI

PHI redaction is part of a clinical AI tool's architecture, not a feature you add. What the literature says it should look like, and how we built it.

Technical 9 min read 17 May 2026

How we built on-device de-identification so AI never sees real names

Most AI privacy is a policy. Ours is architecture: an NER model runs in the browser and strips names before anything leaves the device.

Building 9 min read 9 April 2026

Your agency's clients are about to ask why this costs so much

A solo consultant built in three weeks what your agency quoted twelve for. The client doesn't know why yet. The agencies that survive change what they sell.

Technical 7 min read 14 March 2026

What do you love doing? What do you hate doing?

Ask people what they love doing and what they hate doing, then show them AI is coming for the second list. Why the reframe works, and how it fails.

Adoption 6 min read 13 March 2026

Why I don't use n8n (and what I do instead)

n8n demos well. But a compelling demo and a reliable production system are different things, and the distance between them is where businesses get hurt.

Technical 7 min read 12 March 2026

Your codebase was not built for AI. That's the actual problem.

Amazon's mandatory meeting about AI breaking production is an architecture story: codebases built for human maintainers only, now maintained by AI.

Technical 10 min read 11 March 2026

Your team has AI licences. You don't have an AI system.

Fifteen people, fifteen separate AI accounts, no shared context. The problem isn't the tool; it's the architecture around it. Here's the fix.

Adoption 4 min read 10 March 2026

Your $2,000 day starts the night before: our system keeps you on the tools, not on the phone

Optimised routes overnight, automatic customer notifications, and promises the system keeps or corrects. A scheduling system that protects your daily rate.

Building 7 min read 8 March 2026

The fastest way for an executive to get across AI

AI moves faster than any executive can track. One focused conversation, one written report, and a decision you can act on: your time stays on the business.

Evaluation 4 min read 6 March 2026

Your IT department will take 18 months. You need this working by next quarter.

Senior leaders know what they need built; the gap is time. A prototype gets the tool working now and hands IT a validated blueprint for later.

Building 6 min read 4 March 2026

What if you had perfect memory across every client?

Every practice captures more than it can recall. AI gives practitioners perfect memory across every client, so preparation becomes thinking time.

Adoption 4 min read 3 March 2026

We built an AI invoice verifier. Here's where it hits a wall.

We built an AI invoice verifier and watched a fake beat a real invoice. Why document analysis alone cannot stop fraud, and the five layers that can.

Building 8 min read 1 March 2026

How to build an AI chatbot that doesn't lie to your customers

Woolworths scripted its AI to talk about its mother. The business fix is honesty; the technical fix is architecture that prevents fabrication by design.

Building 5 min read 28 February 2026

Why AI safety features are load-bearing architecture, not political decoration

The 'woke AI' label came from real failures, but they were engineering failures, not safety failures. The difference matters wherever errors have consequences.

Technical 9 min read 28 February 2026

Woolworths' AI told a customer it had a mother. That's a problem.

Woolworths' AI assistant Olive was scripted to talk about its mother and uncle. When callers realised, trust broke instantly. The fix is honesty.

Adoption 3 min read 25 February 2026

Google is no longer the only way your customers find you

Customers now find businesses through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. The sites AI cites are structured differently to the sites Google ranks.

Evaluation 5 min read 24 February 2026

Two types of AI audit: and how to know which one you need

Where do we start with AI? It depends on whether you need to find the opportunities or reclaim the time. Two audits, two perspectives, one goal.

Evaluation 4 min read 23 February 2026

The personal workflow analysis: what watching a real workday reveals about automation

People describe the work they value, not the work that eats their time. Recording a real workday reveals the automation opportunities interviews miss.

Evaluation 4 min read 16 February 2026

AI audit that starts with your business

An operations-first AI audit starts with how your business actually runs, and only recommends AI where the evidence says it will work.

Evaluation 4 min read 2 February 2026

What production AI teaches you that demos never will

The gap between a demo and a working system is where the useful lessons live. Architecture, framing, privacy, adoption: the patterns repeat every time.

Building 6 min read 2 February 2026

The psychology of why your team won't use AI

You buy the tool, run the demo, and three months later nobody is using it. Five predictable psychological barriers, each with a strategy that works.

Adoption 6 min read 26 January 2026

Stop telling AI what NOT to do (and what to say instead)

Instructions built on prohibitions make AI cautious and generic. Describing what you want instead transforms the output, and the reason comes from psychology.

Technical 4 min read 19 January 2026

How we turned generic AI into a specialist: and what that means for your business

Mediocre AI output is rarely the model's fault. Three structural changes that turn the same model from generic to specialist-grade.

Building 5 min read 5 January 2026

Your business has 9 customer touchpoints. AI can fix the 6 you're dropping.

You pay to get customers to your door, then lose them to missed follow-up. AI can handle the six touchpoints most businesses drop.

Evaluation 5 min read 29 December 2025

What happens to your data when you press 'Send' on an AI tool

Businesses send customer data to AI tools without knowing what happens during processing. The spectrum of AI privacy is wider than you think.

Technical 5 min read 22 December 2025