Dave Merwin

One month into a personal AI memory system, the most useful thing wasn't search or recall. It was seeing patterns across client conversations I'd completely missed. Every thought captured makes the next insight more likely.

Postgres isn't exciting. It's not VC-backed. It's not chasing a growth metric. That's exactly why it's the right foundation for your AI memory. You want boring infrastructure when everything else is changing fast.

Platform memory is a lock-in strategy. You spend months building context, then switching tools means losing all of it. Your knowledge shouldn't be hostage to someone else's business model.

The thing that determines how useful AI is in your daily work isn't model selection. It's memory. Fix the memory layer, everything downstream gets better.

Claude's memory doesn't know what you told ChatGPT. ChatGPT's memory doesn't follow you into Cursor. That's not memory. That's five separate sticky note piles on five separate desks.

Building one personal tool does something unexpected — it makes you see the next five. Each jig reveals the need for the next one. The first isn't the destination. It's the key that opens doors you didn't know existed.

Filter for what personal tool to build first: does it save you real time AND are you curious to build it? Efficiency without engagement becomes boring maintenance. Engagement without efficiency becomes a distraction.

Making something scalable takes 10x more time than building it for one person. And the one-person version is often the best version — no edge cases from other users, no feature requests, no compromise.

The cultural reflex to ask "could this be a startup?" is exactly what stops people from building their first personal tool. A jig that works for you is complete. It doesn't need a landing page.

Woodworkers build custom jigs for their own shops — fixtures you won't find in any catalog. Software can work the same way. The best tool you'll ever use might be the ugly thing you built for yourself in an afternoon.

The "ask why" method: When your AI agent does something unexpected, just ask it to explain its reasoning. 80% of the time, it catches its own mistake without you providing the fix.

Build Your Own Jigs: Why the Best Software You’ll Ever Use Is the Ugly Thing You Made for Yourself open.substack.com/pub/davemerwin…

AI agents don't get tired from context switching like humans do. So why structure your day around rapid task switching? Dedicate full days to functions instead. Let the agents wait.

The unit of software creation is changing. From contributing to large codebases to orchestrating swarms of specialized services. You become the architect of your own ecosystem.

Micro-apps that work like Legos. Each does one thing perfectly. Authentication. Email. Forms. Data viz. The Queen Bee just tells them how to work together for each specific use case.

Personal ecosystems vs platform compromises. You're building exactly what you need instead of using 10% of someone else's features while missing the one thing you actually want.

We've internalized software scarcity as natural law. What if custom solutions cost days, not months? The constraint shifts from "can we build this?" to "what exactly do we want?"

Plot twist: Building 25 apps per year teaches you 7,200x more than building 2 apps per year over 5 years. The learning compounds exponentially, not linearly. Each iteration makes the next one faster.

Process is like salt: essential but easy to overuse. Quarterly ask: "What if we simplified this?" If nothing breaks, you've found your opportunity to streamline. #ProcessMinimalism #Simplicity #BusinessEfficiency

The "lone genius innovator" is a myth. Every breakthrough comes from collision-rich environments where ideas evolve through connection. Innovation is a team sport played across time and space, not a solo eureka moment. #Innovation #TeamWork #CreativeCollision