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Blog
Thoughts on product management, building with AI, and learning in public.
Boil the Oceans
Everyone says "don''t boil the ocean." That advice assumed the cost of ambition stayed high. It doesn''t anymore.
Ctrl-Alt-Elite
Book Bot and the Case for Personal Software
A designer with no coding background built a personalized book recommendation engine in eight hours. Not for a client. Not for a startup. For herself.
Architecture Beats UX: Root Cause Diagnosis in Product
Most teams optimize UI when the problem is system structure.
Scoring Systems as Strategy
How explicit weights expose hidden assumptions and make better decisions at scale.
The Demo-Adoption Gap
VCs fund demos. Organizations fail because demos dont translate to daily use.
Designing for Creative Professionals Differently
Creative professionals have emotional stakes in their tools. Design for that.
The Organizational Memory Crisis
Discovery sessions get repeated. Decisions get unmade. Here is how to fix it.
The Hidden Complexity of Scaling AI-Assisted Development
The tools that make individuals productive with AI can actively harm team collaboration if not redesigned for sharing. Here's a framework for getting it right.
Why Automation Failed: The Human-in-the-Loop Thesis
The industry bet on removing humans. The systems that actually work do the opposite.
How I Built a 40% Response Rate with Multi-Dimensional Scoring
Multi-dimensional scoring with configurable weights beats gut feel every time. Here's the pattern I used to improve my job search response rate from 5% to 40%.
I Open-Sourced My Job Search System
I built a CLI that turns Claude Code into a job search co-pilot. It qualifies listings, researches companies, and drafts applications—all with human approval at every step.
Ctrl-Alt-Elite
Introducing Control Alt Elite
Control Alt Elite is a small working group I started to make AI exploration practical and social—less "AI inspiration theater," more "I used this on real work and it saved me time.
How I Built This Website
How I built samzoloth.com using Next.js, Claude Code, and an obsessive attention to interaction design.
How I Turned Claude Code into an Autonomous Operating System
How I built a personal AI infrastructure around Claude Code that learns my preferences, runs background automation, and coordinates multiple agents.
Making of the DreamWorks Case Study
The challenges of documenting a live engagement, balancing confidentiality with storytelling, and the technical decisions behind embedded prototypes.
Release Notes
Release Notes: Week 4
Claudio voice assistant, Pastey clipboard manager, shopping cart prototype, and 57 Claude sessions.
Ctrl-Alt-Elite
The Keyframe Model: A Better Way to Pitch AI Projects
Dave McMahon's storyboard approach to AI pitches, and why boxes-and-arrows diagrams have already lost.
Release Notes
Release Notes: Week 52
Personal site launch sprint and setting the team up for success during my time off.
Release Notes
Release Notes: Week 51
Personal site from scratch and translating stakeholder needs into actionable backlog.