Issue 012 · live automationdiary.com
RSS feed 27 · 05 · 2026

Built from inside actual work.

Most writing about AI tools is produced by people whose job is producing writing about AI tools. This site is the opposite of that.

The archive · three departments

Three sections.
One standard.

▮ Does it survive real work?
§01 · Workflows4 filed

Tactical,
step-by-step

The exact automation that replaced a manual step — including the two steps that got thrown away before it worked. Every article shows you what broke before showing you what works.

Browse §01
§02 · Tool Decisions3 filed

Long-term
assessments

Head-to-head comparisons and multi-month assessments in real consulting contexts. Not "is it impressive in a demo" but "is it still here eighteen months later."

Browse §02
§03 · Systems2 filed

Thinking with
the machine

Longer-form essays on how to think when the machine can do the first draft. Less about tools, more about the professional judgment that tools can't replace.

Browse §03
The stack · everything used here

Every tool in this archive
runs in production right now.

▮ no sponsored placements
▮ affiliate links disclosed every time
Claude
Primary reasoning engine

Drafts, critiques, and generates the contrast that makes a weak argument visible. The tool used most here — and the one written about most critically.

Obsidian
Knowledge base

Every client engagement note, every workflow failure, every pattern from fourteen years in supply-chain consulting. The vault that becomes this archive.

Frase
Content intelligence

Validates topics before committing to write them. Ensures each article addresses questions practitioners are actually asking, not just interesting ones.

Beehiiv
Newsletter delivery

The briefings — shorter, faster, more tactical than long-form articles. Delivered directly to practitioners who can't check a site every week.

Lemon Squeezy
Digital products

The templates and prompt chains extracted from articles. The same systems, packaged to drop into your vault and run in forty minutes.

Methodology · how each article is made

Every article starts from
real friction, not a content calendar.

01

Gather

A live engagement, a broken workflow, a tool decision made under deadline pressure. The source material has to cost something — time, frustration, or a $300 tool subscription tried for three months and then dropped.

→ Raw field notes
02

Compress

Strip the client-specific context. Extract the replicable pattern. The test: can someone with equivalent experience run this workflow in forty minutes, from only this article?

→ Draft structure
03

Provoke

Where does this workflow break? What would make you delete it? The failure mode is as important as the method itself. An article that doesn't show how to break it hasn't told you what it actually is.

→ Published briefing
Current role
Director · Big-4 Consulting
Supply-chain technology
Education
MBA, NITIE
Supply-chain & operations
Experience
14 years
Pharma, FMCG, energy clients
Focus
AI automation
Consultant & solo operator niche

Who writes this

A senior technology consultant with fourteen years in supply-chain systems — demand planning, inventory optimisation, and S&OP implementations for clients in pharma, FMCG, and energy. Currently at Director level in a Big-4 consulting firm. MBA from NITIE.

That background shapes the standard applied here: I think about AI tools the way I think about a planning platform. Not "is it impressive in a demo," but "does it still earn its place in the workflow eighteen months in, when the novelty's gone and the edge cases have shown up."

This isn't written by a full-time creator. It's filed while holding a demanding client-facing role, which is part of the point — the workflows here have to work for someone with no spare hours, because there are none.

What "shown, not sold" means

Only what I actually run. Not what's trending, not what an affiliate program paid the most for. If a tool isn't genuinely in the stack, it doesn't appear here.

The failures stay in. Every workflow includes the parts that broke — the step that got automated and had to be deleted. The failures are usually more useful than the successes.

Every affiliate link is disclosed, every time. You'll always be told which links earn a commission — and when something I tried didn't make the cut, including things I could have earned a commission on.

Audience · who this is written for

Written for practitioners,
not observers.

Consultants

Billing 2,000+ hours a year

Every tool has to earn its place in a workflow with no slack. The standard here is whether something survives the Friday afternoon when you're preparing for a Monday client session.

Solo operators

Building alongside a demanding schedule

No team. No spare hours. Every automation has to run without babysitting, or it doesn't run at all. The workflows here are built to that constraint.

Knowledge workers

Paid to think, not to type

Managing complex information environments where the bottleneck isn't access to tools — it's knowing which tools to eliminate. These articles are written for people who make that call.

One real workflow, in your inbox, when it's ready.

No schedule. No filler. No sponsored placements. A new build goes out only when it's worth your ten minutes — usually every 2–4 weeks.

"I'll only send you something I would have written even if nobody paid me to. The day that stops, the newsletter stops."

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