Writing

Short lessons from real systems: what I was building, what broke or surprised me, and the rule I kept afterward. Newest first.

Lessons

31 lessons

From work

Building internal finance and operations systems for a commercial solar contractor. Concepts only: no company, client, or financial data.

Documentation & AI context · Aug – Oct 2026 My docs said one number. The disk said another. Old notes, context packs, and portfolio copy kept describing versions of the system that no longer existed.
Data pipeline · Oct 2026 The string that sorted after every date A date column silently held a text value instead of a date. Because text sorts after every real date, a cleanup step could never reach the rows it corrupted.
AI tools audit · Sep 2026 Check the grant, not the description I audited the AI tools I use and found that what a tool says it can do and what it's actually allowed to do are different things.
AI-assisted workflow · May – Sep 2026 A decision that isn't recorded gets asked again I kept answering the same question in different AI sessions, and once an AI's guess got filed as a decision I never made.
AI agent workflow · Sep 2026 Authority was the bottleneck, not work Most of what was waiting on me wasn't work I hadn't gotten to. It was AI agents asking permission for things that were already built, tested, and reversible.
Daily pipeline · Sep 2026 Built, tested, green, and never run My pipeline reported success while some steps had failed, and some of my checks passed because nothing ever called them.
AI agent orchestration · May – Sep 2026 I built a team of AI agents, then took most of it apart More specialist agents meant more coordination, and the coordination layer started becoming its own product.
Procurement checks · Sep 2026 Check the math both ways An equipment order where every figure looked reasonable on its own, and two of them were wrong. Computing the same total two independent ways is what caught it.
AI agent workflow · Sep 2026 Working correctly and reaching no one are different problems A warning fired correctly every single day for months. Nobody had ever wired anything to read it.
AI agent workflow · Sep 2026 The rule that didn't exempt itself My own operating rules explicitly banned bloating the rules file with incident stories. The day I added that rule, the file grew by about a quarter anyway.
AI agent orchestration · Sep 2026 Routing work is not delivering work My multi-agent setup routed tasks perfectly. Then nothing happened, because the worker was asleep.
Operational metrics · Sep 2026 Unreadable is not zero A file failed to read, became an empty result, and the dashboard proudly showed zero problems.
Reporting pipeline · Sep 2026 A fresh timestamp can hide stale data A report regenerated on schedule and looked healthy every day, but the data underneath had stopped moving.
Finance & operations platform · Sep 2026 Three copies of one export are not three confirmations Three tables agreed with each other. They were all copies of the same partial export.
AI agent workflow · Aug 2026 Evidence before architecture Outside reviewers argued my AI agent setup was bloated and should be cut down. Every argument for cutting it turned out to be a measurement error.
AI agent workflow · Aug 2026 Unattributed is not the same as unattributable I could not find who depended on a piece of code, and reported it as if nothing did. Those are two different findings.
Finance & operations platform · Aug 2026 The dashboard is a view, not the truth The same fact lived in accounting software, spreadsheets, a local database, and a dashboard. I had to decide which one was allowed to be right.
Data warehouse · Jun 2026 The abbreviation that lied for months A local database shared its name with two unrelated systems, and for months that caused real confusion about what was actually being read.
QuickBooks import automation · Apr – Aug 2026 Fail closed before QuickBooks Every rule in my import checklist came from a failed import. Writing them down didn't stop the mistakes. Putting them in code did.
Reconciliation engine · Spring 2026 The bank was ahead of the books My first reconciliation run found real cash with no accounting trail. That changed what I thought reconciliation was for.

From personal projects

My data lake, local AI lab, solar build, and side projects.

Guides

Data · Excel Intermediate

Excel Formulas for Data Migration Validation

Advanced Excel for validating migrations — XLOOKUP, IF chains, INDEX/MATCH, and date validation.

You'll build A validation-ready Excel workflow for ERP migrations

ExcelXLOOKUPINDEX/MATCH

6 min read Apr 2025

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Web · Dev Tools Beginner

Updating My Site with Bolt, VS Code, and GitHub

My workflow for editing this site across Bolt, VS Code, and GitHub — with clean version control.

You'll build A clean edit-test-commit-deploy loop for a personal site

BoltVS CodeGitHub

8 min read Apr 2025

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Dev Tools · Git Beginner

Git Basics: Cloning a Repo and Pushing to GitHub

The essential Git commands for cloning and pushing, with step-by-step examples.

You'll build Confidence cloning repos and pushing your first commit

GitGitHub

5 min read Apr 2025

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Earlier notes

From the TripleTen data science program and my first data analyst role.

12 min read 20 Apr 2025

Sprint 1: Python Fundamentals Review

Programming

A deep review of Sprint 1 fundamentals from the TripleTen program — data types, control flow, and early pandas.

Learn More

6 min read 1 Apr 2025

Data Migration and Analysis at Keeley Companies

Data Analysis

Notes from a contract data analyst role at Keeley Companies: validating a SAGE 300 CRE to CMiC migration with ETL checks on large departmental datasets.

Learn More