Kia ora {{ First name | friend }},
We’re exploring the light and shadow of technology, with a focus on efficient AI workflows to free up your time.
This week’s edition features
Thanks for being here.
Featured Workflow: Idea > Telegram Message > Airtable
Ever get hit with ideas or tasks at random moments — and lose them because your notes are unorganised?
Me too. I built a simple workflow to fix it.
Instead of juggling tabs, endless reminders, or trying to remember a midnight thought, this system turns a simple message into a categorized item across all your projects.
Here’s how it works:
Capture on the fly: Send a message directly to Telegram Bot, using hashtags to define what it is (#idea, #todo, #note) and which project it belongs to (#upstream, #life, etc).
Smart routing: Telegram automatically passes the message to Airtable.
Auto-organization: Airtable reads the hashtags and sorts everything into the right tables — “Ideas,” “Tasks,” “Notes” — and tags them by project.
Single source of truth: Within seconds, your thoughts are captured, categorized, and waiting for you next time you sit down to work.
This is free, it took me 10 mins to set up, and is already a gamechanger for my productivity. I hope it can be for yours too.
This is essentially a frictionless database pipeline and the easiest way I have found to manage ideas across multiple projects without ever opening another app.
Hit me up if you’re interested in this and I can share how I made it.
Featured Product: OpenAI ChatGPT Agent Builder
The whole world is hammering on about AI Agents lately so I thought it’d be relevant to share some stuff here. Full caveat, Agents are not quite as simple as the people on your sponsored ads may say.
Anyway, the AI frontier is slowly shifting from “chatbot” to “autonomous assistant”—and Agent Builder is right at the centre. Agent Builder lets you craft multi-step workflows (or “agents”) via a visual drag-and-drop canvas: you connect nodes representing tasks, tools, decision-points and guardrails to build an agent that operates on your behalf.
How it works: You pick a template or start from scratch, add a “Start” node, attach tool-nodes (for web search, file access, APIs), routers/transformers for logic and conditionals, and then publish a version. That agent can be embedded via ChatKit or exported as code.
What it does / supports: For businesses, you could build a customer-support agent, a data-intake assistant, or a research summariser. It speeds up prototyping, cuts orchestration time, and bridges engineering + subject-matter logic in one interface.
Risks & limitations: While marketed as “no-code,” it still demands logic-thinking and often conditional expressions (so closer to low-code). This can be a barrier to entry. If it is, I highly recommend asking ChatGPT 5 Thinking model to help you write the code. Agents may drift, fail on novel edge-cases, or raise safety/privacy concerns (especially when granting tool-access). You’ll still need governance, versioning and human oversight.
If you’re keen to see it in more detail, watch OpenAI’s Agent Builder 101 video.
Here’s a few interesting technology updates:
New Zealand is working towards Digital ID system (alongside UK & Australia), including Digital Driver’s licenses, and more. Educate yourself on this as it will become increasingly important for us to set boundaries in the next year or two. Read more.
OpenAI announce erotica/NSFW conversations for ChatGPT in another step towards our digitally intertwined world. Very strange times. Sam Altman was surprised to hear that people were critical of the time. Learn more.
Chinese drone show went haywire, dropped flaming thermite on audience (see video below). 🤯 Check out the full video.
Pew Research ran a survey that shows “nervousness outpaces optimism” on global feelings about AI. They interviewed 28,000 adults from 25 countries, and returned these results here.
Google just rolled out Veo 3.1, a new video generation model that claims quality improvements, better realism, upgraded image-to-video capabilities, and a series of new editing features directed at filmmakers and creative control. Check it out.
Proton released an article about password security which is a useful way to think about your internet sovereignty. Read it here.
Prompt: Create a Content Engine with ChatGPT Or Claude
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to create rapid content that is consistent, on-brand and easy when juggling other things. Here’s a prompt that can hopefully help you to do the same. Notice the prompt structure too (“Role”, “Task”, “Context”), which is useful to take in to your other engagements with AI.
ROLE: Act as a senior content strategist and copywriter specialized in personal brand growth for solo founders in the [NICHE] space.
TASK: Plan and draft a 1-week content calendar including:
3 LinkedIn posts (or social platform of your choosing)
1 email newsletter
1 optional lead magnet idea
CONTEXT: The business serves [TARGET AUDIENCE] and solves [PROBLEM]. The founder’s tone is [friendly / expert / witty], prefers storytelling blended with actionable tips, and wants to position as a thought leader while generating leads. Audience pain points include [PAIN POINTS].
CONSTRAINTS:
Posts must avoid jargon and platitudes.
Content should include personal anecdotes or relatable examples.
Email should have a clear CTA to book a call or download a resource.
EXAMPLES OF DESIRED OUTPUT:
LinkedIn post: Hook → story → insight → CTA → hashtags. (Max 250 words.) •
Newsletter: subject line + intro + 3 bullet takeaways + 1 CTA link (Max 150 words.)
Lead magnet: Title + format + 2–3 bullet benefits.
FORMAT: Present the output as:
1️⃣ Weekly Content Calendar Table: Date | Platform | Topic | Hook | CTA
2️⃣ Drafts of all 3 LinkedIn posts + email
3️⃣ Lead magnet idea at the end.
TONE: Conversational, insightful, slightly witty, authoritative but approachable.
OPTIONAL FOLLOW‑UP: At the end, suggest 2 tools (e.g., Canva, Publer) to help schedule and design the posts.
Caveat, all of this still requires your attention, will and clarity to get it right. It’s not a silver bullet, but it will definitely help to move the needle in terms of your own productivity.
{{ First name | friend }}, thanks for sticking around. Share this with a mate who you think could benefit from it. :)
Stay human,
Billy