Blog

I Can't Tell Which of My Own Tools Are Helping Anymore

Steve Glen•

I wrote custom commands, instructions, and agentic rules to prevent problems commonly caused by dumb agents. But now the agents are much better, and I probably don’t need those instructions anymore. T…

AIengineeringagentsclaude-codeopinion
Read more →

What Is Brand Engineering?

Steve Glen•

In a recent Tiktok/Reel, brand strategist Eugene Healey introduced the brand engineer as “the newest role in marketing”: a role that codifies how brand is implemented through every part of the busines…

brandingAImarketingdesign-systems
Read more →

Output Is Table Stakes

Steve Glen•

I got a cold email last week from a marketing automation vendor. It opened with “In today’s rapidly evolving digital world” and promised I could “generate 500 personalized emails in under two minutes.…

AImarketing-automationcontent-strategyopinion
Read more →

The Expanding Circle Now Includes the Thing We Built

Steve Glen•

I went vegan in 2016. Even then, before the current wave of AI had really started, I had this persistent thought: the way we treat animals is going to matter for reasons beyond animals. Not in a karma…

AIethicsveganismalignmentopinion
Read more →

The Slight Touch

Steve Glen•

I always get nostalgic in the fall. I’m not really sure why, but I think it’s the end of summer and the memories of yellow leaves and a new school year. For me, this time of year is more meaningful th…

craftmarketingexperiencecareer
Read more →

Venturing Past What the Model Can Do on Its Own

Steve Glen•

I’ve spent most of my development over the last year, time and tokens and energy, on custom slash commands, skills, and the scripts the agents activate. I packaged the whole thing into a plugin for Cl…

AIengineeringagentsclaude-codedeepseekopinion
Read more →

LLM Pipeline Architecture: The Airlock Pattern

Steve Glen•

Talking about yourself is hard. If you’re a humble person and don’t really think your achievements are that special, you might be tempted to hand the job to a language model. So you paste your résumé…

AIengineeringarchitectureautomationopinion
Read more →

Designed to Be Forgotten

Steve Glen•

I opened ten SaaS dashboards last week and honestly could not tell you which was which. Ten ecommerce stores and ten portfolio sites went the same way. The same rounded sans-serif type, the same airy…

UXdesignopinionanalogskeuomorphismemotional-design
Read more →