Why I'm Starting to Write During the AI Transition

Twelve years building in tech. Mostly head-down, sharing in private. Just shipped, went home, did it again the next day.

So why now?

The shift is too big to sit out

I've lived through plenty of transitions at Meta. Mobile-first. React Native. The pivot to short-form video. Each one changed how we worked. None of them changed what work is.

AI is different. It's not a new platform or framework — it's rewriting how we build software. The engineers around me are writing code differently. The way we scope projects, review code, think about what's worth automating — all of it is moving.

And in the five months since Opus 4.5 started feeling like a real teammate, the pace hasn't let up. Opus 4.7 dropped last month and stretched the autonomy further still. The gap between "AI helped me" and "AI did this" keeps narrowing.

I'm in the middle of all this every day. Keeping the lessons private stopped feeling like humility. So here we are.

What I'm building

Five months ago I started a side project: an AI assistant. I called him Max.

It started as a weekend hack — what if Claude could read my calendar and tell me what's next? It's grown into something that handles a real chunk of my life admin. There's a parallel one for my wife Carmen — we call hers Ella. Both run 24/7, both have boundaries we set, and both are already part of our daily flow.

What I want to explore

Three threads I keep coming back to:

The first is engineering in the AI era. What changes when AI can write code faster than engineers can review it? What happens to career growth, mentoring, the definition of craft? I have a front-row seat. I don't have all the answers.

The second is building with AI, in production. Not the demo — the real thing. Tool use, system prompts, context windows, hallucinations, the gap between "it worked once" and "it works reliably." Max is my lab.

The third is the human side. Career inflection points, life as an expat in Singapore, the tension between ambition and purpose. The parts that don't fit a technical post but matter more than most.

How I'll write

I'll write while I'm figuring it out, not after. Some posts will be technical deep dives. Some will be half-formed thoughts. All of them are first-person.

If you're working on similar stuff — engineering changing, building with AI, figuring out what any of this means — I'd love to hear what you're seeing.