Thoughts on product management, WordPress, WooCommerce, leadership, and coaching from Chris Lema.https://chrislema.com/https://chrislema.com/your-voice-wont-die-from-using-ai/https://chrislema.com/your-voice-wont-die-from-using-ai/The real threat AI poses to your voice isn't reduced typing, it's the erosion of your taste every time you approve a suggestion instead of overruling it. Keep your voice upstream (the deciding) and confine AI downstream (the executing) by making four non-delegable calls before you generate a word.Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIFor CreatorsAI Contenthttps://chrislema.com/youve-installed-a-claude-skill-and-its-not-working-how-to-fix-it/https://chrislema.com/youve-installed-a-claude-skill-and-its-not-working-how-to-fix-it/You installed a Claude skill someone else published and it just sits there, never running. That isn't a broken skill, it's how skills load. Here's why it happens, how to tell, and two ways to fix it, including one that needs no editing at all.Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIFor CreatorsClaude Skillshttps://chrislema.com/the-video-youve-been-putting-off-takes-five-minutes-now/https://chrislema.com/the-video-youve-been-putting-off-takes-five-minutes-now/You shipped something real and nobody knows it exists. Video used to mean gear, a crew, and an edit. Now it's a short script and about five minutes, which moves the hard part to whether you've got something worth watching.Sun, 21 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIFor FoundersAI AdoptionAI Contenthttps://chrislema.com/encoded-judgment-cheap-model-performs-like-expensive/https://chrislema.com/encoded-judgment-cheap-model-performs-like-expensive/I ran a product team that captured every customer question into a playbook before handing it off. That old loop is exactly how you make a cheap AI model carry expensive work.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIEncoding ExpertiseAI EconomicsFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/loop-engineering-dumber-models-smarter-code/https://chrislema.com/loop-engineering-dumber-models-smarter-code/My take on loop engineering: push judgment onto dumber, cheaper models and smarter code over time, so a long-running agent gets cheaper and more trustworthy with use.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIAgentic SoftwareEncoding ExpertiseAI EconomicsFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/using-ai-to-organize-my-blog/https://chrislema.com/using-ai-to-organize-my-blog/I put AI to work on the boring part of my site: reading 74 posts to surface the topics, audiences, and cross-links that were hiding in them all along.Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIAI ContentAI AdoptionFor Creatorshttps://chrislema.com/inside-the-claude-skill-that-builds-assessments/https://chrislema.com/inside-the-claude-skill-that-builds-assessments/I open the hood on the Claude Skill that builds mirror assessments — the eight-step pipeline, the single spec it compiles, and the checker that won't ship broken.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkClaude SkillsEvalsFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/claude-skill-converts-leads-with-a-quiz/https://chrislema.com/claude-skill-converts-leads-with-a-quiz/I gave a one-page brief to a new Claude Skill and got back a working lead-gen quiz — a design doc and a hostable assessment. Here's how the skill does it.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkClaude SkillsEncoding ExpertiseFor Consultantshttps://chrislema.com/custom-assessment/https://chrislema.com/custom-assessment/Everyone needs a custom assessment, and when you think of your own experiences, you'll agree with me.Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkEncoding ExpertiseFor Consultantshttps://chrislema.com/five-paradigm-shifts-to-embrace-about-ai/https://chrislema.com/five-paradigm-shifts-to-embrace-about-ai/Five paradigm shifts from three years building with AI: design time over runtime, judgment over prompts, real feedback loops, conversation, and knowledge that's built, not stored.Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkEncoding ExpertiseAI EconomicsFor Foundershttps://chrislema.com/scoreboard-lying-to-you/https://chrislema.com/scoreboard-lying-to-you/A pizza shop's flyer contest shows why your AI scoreboard can climb while the work gets worse - and why a measure that can't be gamed is the real job.Sat, 30 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkEvalsFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/knowledge-isnt-stored-its-built/https://chrislema.com/knowledge-isnt-stored-its-built/Why storage is the wrong question for knowledge, and how decomposing content into a graph builds answers no document ever held. The MCode Coach story.Thu, 28 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIEncoding ExpertiseFor Consultantshttps://chrislema.com/ten-conversations-before-vibe-coding/https://chrislema.com/ten-conversations-before-vibe-coding/One prompt gets you something. Ten conversations get you something better. Here are the ten you should have with Claude before any code gets written.Tue, 26 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkVibe CodingFor Foundershttps://chrislema.com/stop-burning-ai-budget/https://chrislema.com/stop-burning-ai-budget/Companies are blowing through AI budgets, but pricing isn't the real cause. Two habits keep my bills flat without rolling back what AI lets me do.Sun, 24 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIAI EconomicsFor Executiveshttps://chrislema.com/the-key-comes-before-the-song/https://chrislema.com/the-key-comes-before-the-song/When you build with AI doing the content generation, the obvious move is QA at the end. But if that's your whole strategy, you sat down at the piano without picking a key. Here's how I'm thinking about evals for a new product — and why guardrails belong upstream, not downstream.Fri, 22 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkEvalsFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/claude-session-more-questions-not-answers/https://chrislema.com/claude-session-more-questions-not-answers/Most Claude sessions produce transcripts because users ask for answers. The posture that produces real specifications looks different. Here's what it requires.Wed, 20 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIAI AdoptionFor Foundershttps://chrislema.com/stop-selling-privacy-policy-ship-privacy-protocol/https://chrislema.com/stop-selling-privacy-policy-ship-privacy-protocol/When both sides have IP, current AI privacy answers force one of them to bleed. The fix isn't a better policy or a clever cryptographic trick. It's a design discipline: stop protecting what crosses the wire and start designing what's allowed to cross in the first place.Mon, 18 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkFor EngineersFor Foundershttps://chrislema.com/own-the-architecture/https://chrislema.com/own-the-architecture/AI is changing everything and nothing at the same time. So where should you spend your scarce time? Three things will always matter: your domain, systems thinking, and architecture. And architecture isn't what most people think it is. It's the load-bearing decisions you care about, written down before the AI builds the wrong thing.Sat, 16 May 2026 17:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkVibe CodingFor Foundershttps://chrislema.com/four-scans-ai-assisted-projects/https://chrislema.com/four-scans-ai-assisted-projects/There are no magic prompts. But there are four scans I run after every first pass on AI-assisted code: race conditions, concurrency, idempotency, and dead code. Each one catches issues you'd otherwise debug months later.Thu, 14 May 2026 13:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkEvalsFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/lovable-cardboard-model-problem/https://chrislema.com/lovable-cardboard-model-problem/Most people who have ideas aren't developers, so their ideas live and die in one head. Lovable changes the cost of building a cardboard model to roughly zero. Here's what that means for the conversations you can finally have.Tue, 12 May 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkVibe CodingFor Foundershttps://chrislema.com/the-harness-is-the-craft/https://chrislema.com/the-harness-is-the-craft/Most engineers pick a model they trust, eyeball a couple of runs, and ship. I don't ship that way. Here's what eval-driven development actually looks like, and the seven principles I'd hand to anyone shipping LLM systems.Sun, 10 May 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkEvalsFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/what-is-a-claude-skill/https://chrislema.com/what-is-a-claude-skill/A Claude Skill teaches AI to work the way you want, not the average way. Here's a walkthrough of one I built (Expert Profiler) and the install pattern you can reuse for any technical setup.Fri, 08 May 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIClaude SkillsFor EngineersFor Foundershttps://chrislema.com/ai-bill-too-high-architecture-fix-saves-40-percent/https://chrislema.com/ai-bill-too-high-architecture-fix-saves-40-percent/Most companies run their AI like a doctor's office. The ones that scale run it like an ER. Here's the architecture decision that cuts AI costs by 40%.Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkAI EconomicsAgentic SoftwareFor EngineersFor Executiveshttps://chrislema.com/agentic-software-crm-no-ui/https://chrislema.com/agentic-software-crm-no-ui/I built a CRM this weekend with no UI. Just tools an AI agent can call. Here's why agentic software is the next decade of building.Mon, 04 May 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkAgentic SoftwareFor Engineershttps://chrislema.com/vibe-coded-something-that-works-now-what/https://chrislema.com/vibe-coded-something-that-works-now-what/Vibe coding tools get you to a working draft in an afternoon. The next pass has a name and a shape. Five layers your AI can add for you.Sat, 02 May 2026 12:00:00 GMTAIProduct WorkVibe CodingEncoding ExpertiseFor Founders