AI

19 posts in this category
A cozy indoor scene showing a decorative brass birdcage with one yellow and green budgie inside, along with a mirror where the bird’s reflection is visible, a water dish, and a perch. The cage sits on a wooden table next to a potted plant. To the left, a window overlooks trees with two birds perched on a branch singing. A stack of books and part of an armchair are visible in the foreground, and beige walls with vertical paneling complete the warm, homey setting.

You’re in the driver’s seat: will you choose to stay awake with AI?

| In AI
| 16 minute read

„Nah ist / Und schwer zu fassen der Gott. / Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch.” — Friedrich Hölderlin, Patmos (1803)

(Near is, / and difficult to grasp, the god. / But where danger is, grows / the saving power also.)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post titled Thinking with Claude: why Cyborg writing works better than Centaur writing. In the LinkedIn comments, a reader named Christopher pushed back: Leaning on AI to help me write, he argued, was training my brain to “surrender executive function to external sources.” Examples: freed prisoners overwhelmed by everyday choices, ex-military struggling with civilian life, people leaving long-term institutional care. The source doesn’t matter, he wrote. The offloading pattern is the same.

While my initial answer was along the lines of “using your executive function is a choice”, I think it’s not that simple, after all, and I owe Christopher a real answer. In fact, his comment pushed me into a weeks-long thinking journey, during which I looked for research, came across interesting related articles, and reflected a lot on my own AI use. I also jammed with Claude, and yes: I used the very tool Christopher warned me about to think harder about his warning. We’ll get to that contradiction later.

A cheerful yellow rubber duck toy wearing red boxing gloves and red shorts with a white waistband, standing upright against a white background. The duck has large black eyes with white highlights, an orange beak, and orange feet.

AI is the rubber duck that pushes back

Note| In AI
| 4 minute read

Last month I sat down with Cris Roata to record an episode of her podcast, Catching More Green Lights in Life. It went live today! Cris asked me what I tell people who are afraid of AI, and I gave the answer I usually give: treat it like an intern, train it patiently, expect the first attempts to be…

A Chibi-style cartoon illustration of Constantin as a smiling man with a beard wearing an orange jacket and teal shirt, standing next to a small white robot with blue accents and a yellow star on its chest. Both characters are giving thumbs up gestures. In the background, faded office elements including laptops, tablets, and checkmark icons are visible, suggesting a technology or productivity theme.

Michael Leibovich: How I Built My AI Chief of Staff

Link| In AI
| 2 minute read

Detailed write-up by Michael Leibovich on how he used Claude Code (inside the Claude Desktop app) for implementing his own Chief of staff setup.

As someone running a very similar setup myself, I particularly liked his use-case descriptions and the insights coming out of “externalizing your thinking”. I can totally relate to that!

Also, I agree that installing Obsidian and giving Claude access to it through its REST API plugin and MCP are great for giving it a structured, extra memory layer beyond its own memory mechanism. Claude can write Obsidian-style Markdown documents directly to the file system which is faster than going through the MCP/API, but the real value is the ability to search for existing documents through MCP that allows Claude to discover notes, make cross-correlations and more.

I would add a few things from my own perspective here:

In a Marvel comic-style recreation of the nucleological center from *The Fifth Element*, a futuristic command hub features glowing orange controls and blue monitoring stations. A man in a blue suit with a red tie grimaces as a woman leans in to whisper to him, with a speech bubble reading ‘You have 19 more meetings after this one.’ Behind them, several crew members in blue uniforms work at stations, while a large illuminated circular portal or control interface dominates the center wall with its warm orange glow. The scene captures the iconic sci-fi aesthetic of the original setting, reimagined in bold comic book art style.

Welcome Claude, my Chief of Staff

| In AI
| 28 minute read

Most people use AI like a search engine with extra steps. Ask a question, get an answer, move on. I did too, until I accidentally stumbled into something completely different.

Over the week, I’ve turned Claude into my personal Chief of Staff. What’s a Chief of Staff, you might ask? Think of these people who follow executives around, whispering important things into their ear, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks.

If you’ve watched The Fifth Element (go watch it, if you haven’t, it’s a great movie!), you know the scene: the president’s aide leans in and whispers something absurdly specific like “You have 19 more meetings after this one.” That’s essentially what Claude does for me now. Except I’m not a president. And thankfully, I have less meetings. I’m a freelance consultant living near a forest in Bavaria.

This post is a bit of a recap: how it happened, what the system actually looks like, three lessons I learned along the way, and, at the end, an unedited interview where I asked Claude seven questions about what it’s like to be my Chief of Staff, with some interesting insights. Don’t miss it!

A screenshot from a video showing a thermal POS printer displaying a list of AI-related examples. The printout shows items 6 and 7, including ‘Shell Game Podcast’ and ‘This Video Itself,’ with descriptive bullet points about each. On the right side is a close-up of Constantin, looking directly at the camera with a slight smile. Large purple text at the bottom reads ’7 ACTUAL EXAMPLES.’ The overall layout suggests this is from a YouTube video discussing real-world applications or examples of AI technology.

Video: What I actually do with AI every day

| In AI
| 2 minute read

Here’s a video I just uploaded to YouTube, walking through 7+1 examples of how AI has woven itself into my daily life — from the mundane to the surprisingly useful. No demos, no hypotheticals, rather what an actual week with AI looks like for me.

A futuristic landscape featuring a glowing neon blue digital grid flowing like a river through a vast valley surrounded by golden-lit mountains. The grid pattern illuminates with cyan electric lines against dark terrain, with scattered rocks and golden vegetation visible along the valley floor. A bright sun sets on the horizon, casting warm golden light across jagged mountain peaks, while stars dot the darkening sky above. The scene blends natural mountain terrain with digital technology aesthetics.

How to stop engineering prompts and start delegating

| In AI
| 18 minute read

TL;DR: The best “prompt engineering” technique isn’t engineering at all—it’s delegation. Transfer intent, not instructions. For quick tasks, tell the AI what success looks like and why (the Intent Prompt). For complex work, equip it with context, deliverables, and decision principles so it can navigate on its own (the Delegation Brief). You already have these skills. This post helps you apply them to AI.

A terminal window displaying a command execution log titled ‘mlx_whisper –task 1/V/V/P/2026-01-13_YT_Starting_a_new_new_job’. The screen shows multiple timestamped entries in cyan text, each with a time range in brackets (like 02:16.220 to 02:17.420) followed by the repeated message ‘Learn the terrain.’ The timestamps progress from 02:16 to 02:29, showing the sequential execution of tasks during what appears to be a machine learning whisper model processing job.

Local audio transcription with mlx-whisper: what actually works

Note| In AI
| 4 minute read

I’ve been transcribing my YouTube videos locally for a few months now. It took some trial and error to get a setup that actually works reliably, so here’s what I learned. The problem I wanted good subtitles for my videos—for accessibility, but also so I could feed the transcripts to Claude for gener…

A tabby cat with striking amber eyes sits at a desk in warm, golden lighting, surrounded by an open book, stacked papers, and a glowing desk lamp. Digital icons representing WiFi, images, shopping, and other technology symbols float in the air around the cat, suggesting connectivity and digital communication. The scene is bathed in warm orange and yellow tones, with a window visible in the background showing an evening sky.

We’re still living in the cat pictures era of AI

| In AI
| 7 minute read

Most people use AI the way our parents used the Internet in 1995. They’d dial up their modem, check the weather forecast on Yahoo, maybe look up a recipe, and call it a day. The idea that this same technology would eventually let them video call their grandchildren, run a business, or access humani…

A watercolor illustration of a solitary figure in dark clothing standing on a vast, layered desert landscape. The scene features rolling sand dunes in warm tones of beige, tan, and gold, with deep burgundy and rust-colored bands flowing across the foreground. A golden sun or citrus slice appears in the upper left corner. The composition conveys a sense of isolation and contemplation in an arid, minimalist environment.

When Claude Suggested Brian Eno: Building Art You Can’t Control

| In AI
| 11 minute read

On constrained serendipity, learning by doing, and whether the system is the art. I’m chatting with Claude, kicking around ideas on building a tool that generates AI images, but without the prompting. I like to start these chats by brain-dumping ideas into it. In this case it’s about auto-generating…

A blue background with wavy patterns features the text ‘INVITE YOUR HEROES INTO AI!’ in white letters with red outline. On the left is a person in a purple suit with a dancing pose. Next to them is a large yellow pointing hand gesture towards a robot with a square head, round eyes, a red triangular nose, and a yellow bulb on top. On the right is a cartoon illustration of Constantin, wearing a dark green hoodie, with a thoughtful hand gesture near his chin.

Invite your heroes into your AI conversations

| In AI
| 7 minute read

I had a problem.

I wanted to create a YouTube channel and had my first video ready to go, but then… nothing. Weeks passed. I had ideas, I had equipment, and I’d watched enough tutorials to edit like a pro. But I couldn’t get myself to shoot video number two.

Classic procrastination.

So I did what I often do when I’m stuck: I talked to Claude. But this time, I didn’t just ask for advice. I invited two experts into the conversation to help me figure this out.

Screenshot of Seth Godin in a video on Udemy, in front of a bookshelf with books, explaining some concept.

Seth Godin on Udemy: Thriving in an AI future

Link| In AI
| 1 minute read

Just finishing this course by Seth Godin on Udemy, and it’s great!

Udemy: Thriving in an AI future

The best insights on AI don’t come from the technologists. They tend to be too deep inside the matter, often missing the human connection, the creativity angle, or the bigger picture.

And that’s exactly what you’ll get from this course.

Fun fact: Seth Godin used to work with SF authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury, building interactive computer games and early digital media projects in the 80s. He says he’s basically preparing himself for the advent of AI for decades, so he has some good insights here.

Disclosure: I got access to the course for free as part of a different project Seth is working on (more on that, later). I do think the price of € 69,99 (or whatever it is in your local currency) is worth it.

Any opportunity to learn from people like Seth Godin is priceless. Don’t miss the final Q&A sections, they contain lost of nuggets of wisdom!

Update (2025-09-19): Changed the generic post picture to a screenshot of Seth Godin from his course.

YouTube video screenshot showing a man in a dark green button-up shirt over a black t-shirt who sits casually in a modern living room with large windows showing a garden view. He appears to be speaking or presenting, with built-in shelving visible in the background and natural lighting from the windows.

I don’t use AI. I work with it.

Link| In AI
| 1 minute read

Great intro to the “why” and “how” of using AI in your everyday life by Stanford adjunct professor Jeremy Utley. His background is design, not tech, and thus, he has a very different, human-centric view on AI, which I find refreshing.

Abstract digital landscape with flowing wave-like forms in vibrant magenta, purple, and cyan colors, overlaid with glowing geometric patterns and data visualization elements against a starry black background.

This time I coded it myself: using AI as a teacher

Note| In AI
| 7 minute read

If you’re a returning visitor, you might notice the header image on this blog looks more sharp and crisp—that’s because it is! ✨ After creating my own URL shortener, I wanted to modernize my header image. I built it back then in 2022 using p5.js, but the resolution wasn’t great. Now I wanted a more …

Abstract, wave-like structures, like sand dunes, from blue-green to yellow.

Zed does Agents now

Note| In AI
| 4 minute read

About two weeks ago, Zed, my favourite code editor, introduced agentic coding, replacing its previous assistant panel on the right of its UI. A blog post walks through the way agents work in Zed now. The documentation now has an Agent Panel section. I’ve used it a bit for tweaking some stuff around …