AI

Turning a 232-Page Manual Into Something an AI Could Use

Late last year, I spent a couple of days getting a manual into a shape an AI could use. The language it described wasn’t new, and I wasn’t changing it. It was for a legacy scripting language that had been running workflow and event logic for over a decade. It was also thoroughly documented: a 232-page technical guide, cataloguing a couple of hundred built-in functions, each with its parameters and an example. For once, the problem wasn’t that nobody had written the rules down. The problem was that the 232 pages had been written for humans, and the thing that needed to read them this time was an AI.

Sunday, August 9, 2026 | 5 minutes Read

Millions a Month to Save $600,000 a Year

I was drinking my coffee last night and reading about Curative, the US health insurer whose CEO has been talking up how much of their operation now runs on AI agents. One line stood out and stopped me. They’re spending millions of dollars a month on AI, and the headline they’re celebrating is cancelling a $600,000-a-year Salesforce contract because they vibe-coded their own CRM. Saving $600k a year is a good day. It just looks a bit different sitting next to a bill climbing into the millions a month, and it got me thinking about what actually gets counted when a story like this gets shared.

Wednesday, July 22, 2026 | 7 minutes Read

Our AI Bill Went From About $120 a Month to at Least $2,000

California just gave every one of its state agencies access to Claude at half price, and extended the same deal down to local councils and cities. As an arrangement it’s hard to fault - cheaper AI for public servants, training included, one place to buy it through instead of forty. If I ran a government I’d probably take it too. But the number I keep coming back to isn’t the discount. It’s what it costs to leave, once a whole government has quietly built its work around a single vendor.

Monday, July 13, 2026 | 5 minutes Read

The Sovereignty Question Just Got a Compliance Date

A new whole-of-government cloud policy came into effect on Wednesday, and outside of Canberra I’m not sure many people noticed. The DTA’s Cloud Policy took effect on 1 July, and it lands alongside the updated AI-in-government policy, where the first mandatory requirements kicked in on 15 June and the rest arrive by December. Worth being precise about scope: this is a Commonwealth policy, so it binds federal (non-corporate Commonwealth) entities, not the states - though I’d be surprised if the states don’t drift the same way over time. If you don’t work with government you can be forgiven for scrolling past all of it. If you do, the thing worth paying attention to is a bit subtle: a question that has been a comfortable think-piece for years just turned into an audit item.

Thursday, July 9, 2026 | 4 minutes Read

Build vs Buy Didn't Get Easier. The Bill Just Moved.

A survey did the rounds last week — Retool surveyed a few hundred people who build internal software, and a third of them responded saying they’d already replaced a SaaS tool with something they’d built themselves. This is worth taking with a grain of salt, it’s a company that sells a build-your-own-tools platform asking builders if they like building tools. But the direction matches what I’m seeing and reading, and more neutral voices are saying the same thing. The advent of AI (LLMs specifically) has made “build it in a week” feel real, so the build-vs-buy question is open again.

Thursday, July 2, 2026 | 3 minutes Read

My First Public Talk — What Actually Stuck With Me

I gave my first public talk a few weeks ago. Then I spent four days proving my own point — not on the AI, on the slides. It was at the Adelaide Azure User Group. Thanks to Simon Cook from Encode Talent for the introduction and nudge to speak, and to Sam Fernando for running it. I dragged my coworker Simeon from Biz Hub along for the ride. The talk was about practical AI implementation in enterprise environments. The central theme was simple: the AI model is usually the easy part. Everything around it is where the real work happens.

Friday, June 12, 2026 | 3 minutes Read

Using AI to Surface Insights From Two Decades of Audit History

A couple of months ago, I met with a client to explore how AI might help streamline some of their internal processes. Their application contains nearly two decades of audit history, yet despite the volume of data, it wasn’t being actively used. Last week, they reached out with a specific request: could we generate a summary of the past three years of audits so that auditors could quickly understand recurring issues and common themes when preparing for an upcoming audit?

Tuesday, May 13, 2025 | 3 minutes Read