Notes
What building this taught me
Short pieces with the numbers in them, written as the work happens. The commit log is the changelog; this is the part of it worth a paragraph.
31 October 2026Bookkeeping with Claude: what it does, and the five things it can'tPurchase orders, stock, the bank reconciliation, sales tax and the month end, kept by talking, and the five acts no agent is allowed, whatever its role.
31 October 2026Tracking a mortgage and a car loan with AIEach payment split into principal, interest and escrow, the lender's balance checked to the cent, and what an early payment taught the due list.
31 October 2026A job search tracker for ClaudeRunning my own search with Claude on the record: the same job through three agencies, fifteen dates left as unknown, and a total Gemini got wrong.
On portlandaiworks.comInside hostelHow the Mac app is built and why it exists: a local model host that gets MCP right for a small model, with Saybooks as the first thing it talks to.
24 September 2026 · on portlandaiworks.comA local model keeps the booksThe measurements, with the diagrams: the same model going from one task in four to four in four when only the layer between it and the books changed.
16 September 2026Smart model, average MCP. Small model, smart MCP.A day of getting a 26B local model to keep a set of books over MCP, on a laptop, with nothing leaving the machine, and the six things it forced me to fix in the tools rather than the model.