Insights

Notes on AI and automation

Longer-form writing on building AI agents, automation systems and connected workflows, grounded in real client projects rather than generic advice.

n8n vs Make

n8n vs Make: How I Choose for Client Projects

Most n8n vs Make comparisons read like a feature checklist copied from both platforms' pricing pages. I've built production workflows on both — often for the same client — so this is the version grounded in what actually changes the decision: who maintains the workflow after I hand it over, what the workflow touches, and how much it needs to scale.

7 min read

AI Agents

AI Customer Support Agent That Knows Your Shopify Orders

Most AI customer support tools answer from a generic script or a static FAQ. The Shopify AI support agent I built does neither: it looks up the customer's actual order before drafting a reply, and it's built to admit when it shouldn't answer at all.

6 min read

CRM & Operations

Notion Client Portal: Syncing HubSpot, Calendly and Slack

Notion is a good place to see the state of a client relationship. It's a bad place to see it if someone has to manually copy that state in from three other tools every day. This is how I connected Notion to HubSpot, Calendly and Slack so it stays current on its own.

6 min read

Lead Generation

Lead Generation with n8n and Python: What I Actually Build

"Lead generation automation" gets used to describe everything from a paid list-selling tool to a fully custom pipeline built around one business's actual criteria. What I build is the second kind, and it's almost always two connected pieces rather than one: a Python scraper and an n8n workflow, each doing the part it's actually good at.

6 min read

AI Agents

When an AI Agent Should Escalate to a Human

The easiest way to make an AI agent look impressive in a demo is to have it answer everything. The easiest way to make it fail in production is the same thing. The Shopify AI support agent I built is designed around the opposite instinct: knowing when not to answer is the actual product.

6 min read

Healthcare Operations

Cliniko, Notion and Make: Keeping Healthcare Operations in Sync

A healthcare practice running Cliniko, spreadsheets and Notion side by side doesn't have a software problem, exactly — each tool does its job. What it has is a synchronization problem: three places that need to agree, and no automatic way to make sure they do.

6 min read

Business Automation

Three Years Running One Business's Automations: What Keeps Them Working

Most automation advice is about the build. The part that decides whether a business actually benefits is everything after: the field that changes upstream, the run that fails overnight, the person who has to understand the workflow when whoever built it isn't available. This is what an engagement running since April 2023 has taught me about that part.

6 min read