Build reality-graded systems

Everything we know about management theory exists because humans are emotionally expensive to coordinate. Strip that layer out and what remains is a clean systems problem. Running seven AI agents taught me why management practices exist — not just that they do.

We tried to add video to a brand-new voice-note podcast. The laptop overheated, OBS hung, life intervened — and the failure mode was the lesson. Reality doesn’t say ‘no’. It rate-limits you until your pipeline matches your ambition.

I recorded a voice note while cooking dinner, describing a feature I wanted. By the time the onions were done, the feature existed — as the blog post itself. A builder's honest account of two weeks running an AI orchestrator, the maddening overhead of making it work, and why the compound returns are worth it.

The cognitive handoff didn't stop at productivity. It kept going—into therapy, teaching, coaching. The economics are brutal, and we're approaching a fork: wake up or become indistinguishable from the algorithms feeding us.

After years of feeding the digital noise, I met two men without phones: one who built Silicon Valley, one who lives in Morocco. Their shared gravity revealed what I had been ignoring: the signal lives in presence, not timelines.