Why I started writing about AI.
I work in tech. Specifically, I work in AI sales at a big-tech company. Which means my whole job is helping customers understand what AI can actually do, and what it can't. It's a good job. But a while ago I noticed a thing.
The people I spoke to every day, mostly smart, senior, curious professionals, were asking the same kinds of questions. How does this actually work? What's a vector database and do I need one? Is this fine-tuning thing useful or is my vendor just trying to upsell me? Should I build an agent?
Good questions. The problem was that most of the content out there was one of two things: deeply technical, aimed at engineers who already know what a token is, or marketing slop that said "AI will change everything" without ever telling you how. There wasn't much in the middle.
So I started building things. Small things at first, then bigger.
I'm not a lifelong engineer. I'm someone who works in tech, got curious about AI, and started building stuff anyway.
That outsider-who-learns-by-doing view is what I want this blog to have. I'll tell you what I got working, what broke, and what I thought was obvious but turned out wasn't. I'm a beginner-to-intermediate Python coder. I still google basic git commands. I ship things anyway.
What you'll find here
Four kinds of posts, roughly:
- Build logs, something I built, how I built it, what broke.
- Hot takes, opinions, backed up with experience, not vibes.
- Beginner guides, a term or a concept explained like you're a smart human who hasn't heard of it.
- Tool reviews, honest takes on AI tools and frameworks. What's real, what's overhyped.
What you won't find here
Thought-leadership takes. Breathless vendor lists. "As a thought leader in the AI space…" posts. I'm not that. I'm a guy who works in tech and likes building things.
Start with these
If you want to see the kind of thing I mean by "build log", start with the HIKI build log, the full story of how I gave Claude a memory by building my own MCP connector to a markdown wiki on a Mac mini at home.
If you're new to the AI space and half the words in that sentence mean nothing, start with What the hell is an MCP, actually? - a plain-English explainer.
Welcome in. Let me know what you think - matt@matthitchman.com.
Matt, somewhere in New Zealand