QSTVE

Ideas
for a more
human economy

The Commonplace Book

One line from every piece.

A sentence worth keeping from each essay and field guide, word for word. Pick one and read the piece behind it.

68 lines from 68 pieces across 4 series

A layoff has a date and a group of people who know what happened to them.

Which Day Are We On? ·

Read: The Disappearing Ladder
We removed the latest unproven piece, kept the useful foundation, and changed the rule: show me each visible improvement before the next layer begins.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: Show Me the Simple Thing
Another system should be able to verify the agent's authority without relying entirely on the agent's transcript or interpretation of an earlier instruction.

AI Operator ·

Read: Your Agent's Prompt Is Not Its Mandate
The scorecard says what happened, but it usually does not tell you what to do next Saturday morning when you have an hour and a bucket of balls.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The Practice Plan
I have been thinking about a quieter use for personal AI: helping a family remember someone properly before the stories get too scattered to recover.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The Family Archive
Just a way for Oscar and Jamie to help preserve the part that matters: what we liked, when we liked it, and why.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The Wine Memory
Over the weekend, the pool ledge bubblers became the sort of household mystery that looks simple until you start following the pipes.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The Pool Bubbler
Before a machine can help with a workflow, the human has to make the work legible: what matters, who decides, what is allowed, what changed, and where the latest version lives.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The Readable Company
The better move is to build quiet into the system: clear sources, narrow authority, proof before promotion, and healthy loops that can stay out of sight.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The Quiet Receipt
When the primary model hit a usage limit, the fallback path did what it was designed to do and reached for another model.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The Fallback Test
Here's what stopped me: I built the same thing, independently, without ever comparing notes with Brad.

Man and Machine ·

Read: Man and Machine: The #Scroll

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