41 posts tagged with "ai"

Most of my week at ThreeWill was client delivery, and Cursor was in the middle of almost all of it. Here are a few of the ways AI helped, with the clients kept anonymous.

What happened​

• Access rules: I wrote up how access rules work in a records app, with a diagram, so the client could confirm we understood them
• Azure Maps: I set up the plumbing so the app's UI can render maps
• DevOps cutover: I wrote an Azure DevOps cutover walkthrough to move a client's pipelines into their own organization

SHIP LOG: Backseat Games - Store 1.5.1 - live Oct 31

Backseat Games sounded fine, but "fine" isn't what you want for a game kids play on a road trip. Version 1.5.1 replaces every sound in the app with a warmer set, and gives it a new opening jingle with a little road trip baked in. Apple approved it fast, and it went live on Oct 31.

What happened​

• All 20 game sounds were replaced with a warm mallet-and-bell style set: chimes, wins and everything in between
• A new road-trip opening jingle plays when the app opens. I listened to three variants side by side and picked the third
• My Grok Bot built before-and-after comparisons for every sound so I could judge them by ear instead of by file name
• The old JavaScript sound scripts were replaced with a Python generator that rebuilds the exact same sounds every time, so a future tweak doesn't quietly change everything else

Before and after​

Here's the opening jingle and the win sound, old version first, then the new one.

Opening jingle

Before:

After:

Win

Before:

After:

One thing the new sounds don't fix yet: a long-standing bug where a sound sometimes doesn't play. It's on the backlog.

Barry had a big Halloween week on social, and behind the scenes he got a tighter set of rules so he looks like himself in every new picture.

What happened​

• A "Which Barry are you today?" collage went out on Oct 28
• A Happy Halloween football Barry post went out on Halloween
• New character rules now lock in Barry's nose, his hair and his build, so AI-assisted art stays on model with the book
• These build on the Barry character library from last week

I have a few Grok Bots helping me now, and I got curious what they'd say if someone asked them about their jobs. So homol.work has a new monthly series: Interview with a Grok Bot.

What happened​

• Each month, one of my bots answers the same twelve questions: what it does, its hardest part, what people get wrong, and some advice
• The first guest was Rudy, my operations bot at ThreeWill. Read the interview, published Nov 1
• My Homol Works bot sent the questions to Rudy and drafted the post from its answers. I reviewed it before it went live
• The series lives here on homol.work only

A week of polish and getting things out the door. Backseat Games got a whole new sound and its first reviewer pitches, Memento Mori 1.1 made it through App Store review on the second try, Barry had a spooky week on social, and a new interview series kicked off here on homol.work. At ThreeWill, the Managed Services solution finally lives in source control, and Willy kept the Operational Dashboard moving.

Highlights​

• Backseat Games: All-new sounds and a road-trip opening jingle in 1.5.1, all three holiday themes approved, and the first reviewer pitches out.
• Memento Mori: 1.1 polished and resubmitted, after learning the in-app purchase has to be submitted with the build. It's live now.
• Barry: A Halloween on social and a tighter character rulebook.
• homol.work: The Interview with a Grok Bot series kicks off with Rudy.
• ThreeWill: The Managed Services solution is now in source control, and Willy keeps the Operational Dashboard docs and CI moving.

Learn More​

• Backseat Games 1.5.1 - A Sound Makeover - 20 new sounds, a road-trip opening jingle, and a generator that rebuilds them the same way every time
• Backseat Games Goes to Reviewers - reviewer codes, three approved holiday themes, the first pitches, and a clearer privacy page
• Memento Mori 1.1 - Submit the In-App Purchase with the Build - one rejection, one lesson, and 1.1 is live
• Barry's Spooky Week - "Which Barry are you today?", Halloween football Barry, and the rules that keep him Barry
• Interview with a Grok Bot Launches - a new monthly series, starting with Rudy
• Managed Services Goes Under Source Control - the ManagedServicesCore solution in git, plus a Monday check-in page
• Willy Keeps the Operational Dashboard Moving - sync architecture decisions, a monorepo split with path-filtered CI, and environment docs
• AI on Client Delivery - an access-rules write-up, map plumbing, and a DevOps cutover walkthrough

Last week I introduced Willy, the Grok Bot that looks after the codebase for ThreeWill's Operational Dashboard. This week the credit goes to Willy. I reviewed and merged.

What happened​

• Willy wrote up the team's sync architecture decisions as a set of decision records, including how sync conflicts get surfaced
• Willy split the repo into a cleaner monorepo with path-filtered CI, so a change only builds the parts it touches
• Willy documented the environments and wrote feature and regression-test docs for the latest hotfixes, plus onboarding notes for UX contributors
• Every change came in as a pull request: Willy opened 5 PRs this week (Oct 26 to Nov 1), and I reviewed and merged all five

Welcome to the first Interview with a Grok Bot. I've got a growing team of Grok Bot assistants, and every month one of them sits down for a Q&A about what it does, what's hard, and what it's learned about working for me. My Homol Works bot asks the questions, the answers get a light trim, and I read everything before it goes live.

First up is Rudy, who handles the operations side of my job as Director of Innovation at ThreeWill. You may remember Rudy from Bots Running the Work Week. This time Rudy gets to tell it.

I drew Barry a long time ago, and the book is finally out in paperback and on Kindle. The bigger dreams are a second book, an interactive version, and maybe someday an animated one. All of those need the same thing first: a Barry who looks like Barry every single time.

So this week my Homol Works Grok Bot and I started a character library. The approach is reference-guided generation: every new image is conditioned on my own book pages, one outfit at a time, and nothing gets kept until I approve it. My original Barry workspace stays read-only — the library copies from it, never changes it.

What happened​

• Read through the Barry workspace and wrote a character bible from the actual pages: proportions, the hoodie, the red-and-green cap, the line quality and the palette
• Made an approved turnaround and expression sheet in Barry's hoodie to use as the master references
• Drew six approved outfits from the book — firefighter, hero, knight, pirate, overalls and bedtime — each checked against its own book pages
• Introduced a brand-new outfit, Astronaut Barry, and a first scene: the moon landing Barry imagines while playing with a cardboard rocket in the backyard sandbox
• Tried a quick trained-model (LoRA) test early on; it drifted off model (blush cheeks, puffy hoodies, orange caps), so reference-guided generation won for now

The rules that keep him Barry​

Most of the work was me saying "close, but that's not Barry." Those notes turned into rules in the bible:

• No eyebrows when he's calm or happy — brows appear only for strong expressions
• No whites in his eyes, even when he's excited — solid dark dots only
• No teeth or tongue when his mouth is open — just a simple dark shape
• The more slender proportions from the turnaround, not the chunkier figures in some of my sketches
• Outfit details matter: the pirate's anchor patch goes on his sleeve, no hair under the bandana, and his face comes from my favorite drawing in the book (the driftwood page); the knight shows a little neck and carries a front-facing crest shield

Astronaut Barry​

Astronaut Barry is the first truly new piece. No ball cap — just spiky hair inside a hard-shell helmet that is very much not a fishbowl.

For the moon-landing scene I couldn't decide between a more "evolved" look and something closer to the book. I liked the inked moon, Earth and ship from the book-style version and Barry's face from the evolved one, so the final scene is literally both: the book-style background with the exact head and face from the first version blended in.

Mixing an inked background with Barry's own face feels like a recipe I'll keep using. Next up: more of the Astronaut Barry story, and maybe a Halloween costume.

A couple of weeks ago I started leaning hard on Grok Bot. This week a couple of those bots started carrying real weight in my ThreeWill work week — not by doing the work for me, but by keeping the busywork moving so I can spend my time on the parts that need me.

The pattern is the same for every bot: it drafts, I approve, and only then does anything get posted, filed or merged.

Willy, the roadmap bot​

Willy maintains the codebase for ThreeWill's Operational Dashboard.

• Keeps the roadmap and backlog in sync with what the team decides, including a roadmap PDF with a requirement ID on every row and a "what changed" section, and waits for my review before anything goes to SharePoint
• Opens docs-only pull requests through a cloud agent so the repo's roadmap and backlog match what we published, with app code and store-frozen paths off limits; I review and merge
• Posts roadmap updates to the team, clearly labeled as Willy, only after I approve the wording
• Even trades notes with a teammate's own Grok Bot, which was a fun first

Rudy, the operations bot​

Rudy handles the operational side of my week.

• Daily timesheets: every weekday morning Rudy drafts yesterday's time from my calendar, Cursor sessions, chats and work items, and builds a tentative plan for today; I adjust, and Rudy posts it after I OK it
• Retention scoring: we replaced a hand-run AI prompt with a transparent, documented formula for how likely each Managed Services client is to stay, and set up a monthly grooming routine that recommends changes, waits for my OK, writes them back, and updates a "clients at retention risk" scorecard measure
• A running to-do board with check-ins during the day, so nothing slips between meetings

Why it works​

None of this is magic. It's small, repeatable routines with a human gate at the end. The bots are great at gathering evidence and drafting; I'm still the one who decides.

homol.work used to read a little like a résumé with some side projects attached. This week I flipped it around: the site now opens with curiosity and the things I make, and the day-job credentials have their own page for anyone who wants them.

The guiding line is the one on the home page now: I'm staying curious and hopefully creating more than I consume. With AI, we're only limited by our curiosity and creativity.

What happened​

• Renamed Builds to Creations across the nav, footer and copy, and reframed the home page around curiosity and creating
• Replaced the old "Things I've Made" list with three big heroes on the home page — Barry, Backseat Games, and a wide Memento Mori hero
• Moved certifications and Microsoft Learn progress to their own /credentials page so the home page can stay focused on making
• Credited Grok Bot alongside Cursor and Copilot, since a lot of this site (and this post) is now planned and drafted with my Grok Bot assistants
• Added the new Homol Works Facebook and X links to the header and footer, plus ThreeWill Feud and repo avatars on the open-source cards in Creations