Logbook 2026-10-29

Today the backlog actually went through. More than a hundred Safari tabs, a first handful of feeds and about sixty newsletters turned into sources the system can read, sort and come back to.

The main feeling was relief. For a while I had been telling myself that the tools were probably ready for something like this. Seeing it work moved me from that guess to a plain fact: it’s possible, and a semi-automated system can take shape around how I work. A latent mental load lifted.

Then came the question of what the system should pay attention to. Rather than writing my interests down from memory, I looked at what this first batch actually contained and picked seven themes from it, alongside the long-term ambition I started with: design systems and how AI agents use them, the semantics of design, the designer’s changing role, taste and craft, the front end, AI at work, and personal knowledge tools. The themes confirmed my interests and gave me confidence in the system, and that matters. I intend to keep my critical thinking and to write my own conclusions, but I’m going to hand over a fair share of the groundwork, and that groundwork will shape what I end up reading and deciding. I need to trust the system’s sense of what matters to me.

Before letting it sort everything, I tried the triage on a small sample and adjusted the rules. Reflective essays that hold a sustained argument now count as substance, and pages about tools stay as references even when they don’t deserve a note of their own.