There was a Mac mini in the house that wasn’t doing much, so I gave it a job.

Man and Machine: The Computer I Wasn’t Using Became a Workshop

I was already spending plenty of time with AI, asking questions and testing models. But the work had a familiar weakness. A good answer arrived, I closed the window, and the idea stopped moving. When I came back, I often had to rebuild the context, the decisions, and the files around it.

I wanted continuity. I wanted a place where an idea could become a brief, then a prototype, then something I could open and use. I also wanted that experimentation kept away from my everyday computer and completely separate from my employer’s systems and information.

So the Mac mini became the Workshop.

The name changed what I expected from it. A chatbot is somewhere you visit for an answer. A workshop is where the work stays on the bench. The first agents could research, write files, run code, and keep a few scheduled jobs moving after I stepped away.

That quickly taught me the harder part. More activity didn’t always produce more useful work. A job had to leave something behind that I could inspect: a document, an application, a verified change, or a clear question for me. “It ran” was no longer the same as “it worked.”

The agents could keep working after I stepped away, but I still had to inspect what they left behind and decide whether it was useful. That remains my job.

-dg

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