Artifacts created for the email
Tools, frameworks and research that started life in a Saturday edition of Saturday AI Thoughts. Every one began as an essay, a reader question or a week's argument.
17 artifacts, grouped by what they are for.
Try it on your organisation
Answer the questions and get a read on where you actually are. Nothing is stored; the results are yours.
AI Maturity Diagnostic
20-question quiz. Which of five phases is your organisation in?
AI Value Map
Where is AI value for your team, and how much have you captured?
AI-Native Team Calculator
Director, Builder, Auditor. What ratio does your team need?
AI Usage Spectrum
Three tool types, three usage levels. Where are your people?
Frameworks
Ways of holding a problem still long enough to decide something. Each one came out of a week's argument.
New · 4th August 2026
The Four Freedoms
Four questions that tell you what any AI agent is actually free to do: Reach, Tools, Memory and Guardrails, comparing Cowork and Claude Code side by side.
New · 18th July 2026
The Five Questions
The simplest model for the second phase of AI transformation: five questions, three owners. The board decides, the enablement capability equips, the business units execute.
The CEO Gap
How close AI gets to the right answer, what it costs to close the gap, and why the checking keeps shrinking. Check, Edit, Own.
New · 3rd June 2026
Three Generations of AI
Chat, Agent, Employee. What you're managing at each level.
From What's True to What to Do
Three facts, one decision, consequences either way.
Research and deep dives
The workings behind an essay, published in full. Sources shown, so you can check them.
New · 25th July 2026
The Environmental Cost of AI
What a prompt, a task and a day of AI actually cost in energy, carbon and water, and the subtraction that decides whether the work was worth it. Every number sourced.
Updated · 8th August 2026
How the AI Story Was Told
Three and a half years of AI coverage across ten titles, from MIT Technology Review to McKinsey, charted. When each idea arrived, what faded, and where this email's arguments sit against the press.
We've Had This Conversation Before
Is AI making us dumb? A long line of moral panics about new tools.
New · 18th July 2026
Futures and Fears: The Full Record
What twenty readers see coming, the fears from one week's postbag, and a practitioner panel on AI that remembers, perceives and acts on its own.
Work in progress
AI Deployment Atoms
The building blocks of AI capability and how they connect.
Guides and behind the scenes
How to run the thing, and how this email itself gets made.
New · 23rd July 2026
Getting Executive Teams Hands-On with AI
A planning guide for AI sessions at retreats and leadership conferences: six goals, what works, what doesn't, and six formats, from three and a half years of running them.
Work in progress
Turning It On
The agentic tools are here and most organisations have not switched them on. A roadmap for closing the gap, for the person whose job it is to close it.
How This Email Gets Made
What's human, what's AI, and where the two overlap.