Blog on LB

Meet Workshop, My App for Other Apps

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Small everyday tools have a predictable lifecycle.

First, you build a tool, a script, a skill, something that solves one irritating problem. It lives in a terminal command, a generically named repo, a Google Doc, or a file somewhere on your local disk. You did a good job, so the tool becomes indispensable very quickly.

Then something changes. You go on vacation or whatever and you don’t need that tool for a few days or weeks. So you forget it exists and end up frustrated one day, months later, when you half remember that some part of your workflow used to be easier. Where the heck did you save that dang script? Even Codex can’t find the skill you’re talking about… Did you actually set it up in Claude?

The Problem Is Usually Not the Prompt

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Spent any time on LinkedIn lately? My ENTIRE feed has been taken over by AI: predictions about the market, advice for using it better, moaning about human review and job stealing, etc. From what I’ve been exposed to, the advice is always some form of “prompt better,” in one of these disguises:

Choose the right phrases.
Learn my secret perfect wording.
Add more context.
Add less context.
Tell it to act like a senior engineer, a strategist, a copy chief, a therapist, a war criminal, whatever.
Just keep fiddling with the prompt until the machine gives you something usable.

Some of that probably works, sometimes.

Notes From a Marketer Building a Real CLI With Codex

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At no point in my ten years working in technology before now did I imagine ever building a CLI myself. Hell, for most of my ahem years on this planet I didn’t know WHAT A CLI WAS. So, please believe me when I say that “build a CLI” is not my native solution to virtually any problem I’ve ever encountered. But, last week I found myself fed up with a recurring, deeply irritating problem, and as it turned out, a CLI was the solution to the problem: I wanted to save complete ChatGPT conversations in a format that did not make me want to fling my laptop forcefully into a decorative pond.

The Content Resonance Framework: Beyond Engagement Metrics

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve watched more than one team celebrate a content report like it was a victory parade.

Spoiler: The pipeline didn’t get the memo.

Traffic up. Time on page up. Engagement up. “Our SEO is really working.”

Meanwhile, the pipeline is flat. Sales is still explaining the same thing on every call. Support is still answering the same questions. Product adoption looks like a sad little plateau. And leadership is doing that quiet thing where they stop asking for updates and start updating their mental org chart.

Brand Signals Decoded: When Quiet Marketing Outperforms

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re trying to understand quiet vs loud brand signals, you’re probably feeling a familiar tension: you want your brand to be memorable, but you don’t want it to feel… try-hard. You want attention, but you also want credibility. You want momentum, but you don’t want to sound like every other company shouting the same three adjectives into the same crowded feed.

The tricky part is that “quiet” and “loud” aren’t just aesthetic choices. They’re signals. They tell your audience what kind of brand you are, what kind of work you do, and most importantly, whether you’re the kind of team they should trust.

Responsible AI Content Creation Is a Human Problem

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last two years, AI has quietly integrated itself into all of our content workflows. We use it to sketch outlines, smooth paragraphs, and quickly summarize concepts.

And now it feels like AI is everywhere — shaping language, structure, and tone — while the systems around it have remained vague. Everyone has opinions on where it’s appropriate and how much review it needs. These opinions rarely agree, and no one is consistently holding the reins.

Technical Storytelling: Bridging Engineering and Narrative

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I was first getting started, I assumed technical content failed for fairly obvious reasons. Either the underlying technology wasn’t very good, or the explanation itself was wrong. Bad assumptions, incorrect diagrams, missing steps (classic technical failures).

I was lucky enough in my early roles to be learning from incredibly talented technical storytellers, who taught me to recognize the more common failure mode: the explanation is technically correct, carefully reviewed, and still ineffective. Not because it’s inaccurate, but because the reader never quite makes it far enough (or deep enough) to understand what’s actually being said.

Why Alice's Restaurant Matters

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I listen to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree (Revisited) every Thanksgiving morning.

I used to hear it on the radio when I was younger, one of those regional, seasonal things that felt inevitable rather than intentional. Later, when radio stopped being part of my life, I kept the ritual anyway, but now with Spotify instead of a DJ on an oldies station. Eventually, I started making my boyfriend, now my husband, listen to it too. Not as a discussion or a lesson. Just as this is what happens on Thanksgiving morning.

Content Systems: How You Move from Content Chaos to Content That Works

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a specific piece of understanding that is missing when teams are scaling content, and it’s dead-obvious on the surface, but often not clear when you dig in: A content system is not the same as your CMS. In reality, a content system is the architecture and process built on top of your CMS. It’s the the invisible rails that make content production repeatable, sustainable, and actually useful.

This distinction between tools and systems is subtle in conversation but catastrophic in practice. A content management system is not a content system. The former is software; the latter is an operating model. And confusing the two is why so many teams end up with publishing chaos, fragmented processes, and content that gets neither engagement nor clarity.

Category Creation Is Calling Your Shot, Not Manifesting Your Destiny

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a particular kind of room, especially in Silicon Valley, where someone eventually leans back, folds their hands like a prophet, and announces, “We’re going to be iconic. We’re going to define a category.”

Maybe you’ve been in that room. Big dreams, big decks, big adjectives. Someone name-drops Uber or Kleenex as if becoming a verb is a go-to-market motion instead of a weird historical accident.

In my career I’ve gotten to be in a few rooms like that, all at companies that were developer-focused and convinced they were on the cusp of “creating a category.”

The MSV Equation in an AEO World

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you build your content strategy around monthly search volume, you are optimizing for a world that no longer exists.

MSV used to be a rough proxy for opportunity. Big keyword, decent intent, top three ranking, some predictable flow of traffic and leads. You could mostly get away with planning around that. It was not perfect, but the errors were tolerable.

Now AI Overviews and answer engines sit on top of those same keywords and quietly intercept attention. People still search. The volume line looks fine. The part that breaks is the click. The largest studies we have show that when an AI summary appears, users click traditional results roughly half as often as they do without it, and informational queries with AI Overviews see organic and paid CTR fall off a cliff. The demand is still there. Your line of sight to it is not.

Leadership Communication Skills Every Leader Needs

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Effective leadership communication is how exec teams create shared understanding around direction, priorities, and decisions. It’s the difference between an organization that knows what’s happening and one that knows what actually matters.

This is where leadership communication diverges from everyday communication. It isn’t just about conveying information or running meetings efficiently. It’s about helping people understand why decisions are being made, how their work connects to the bigger picture, and what’s expected of them next.

How to Manage Up When Your Founder Isn't a People Manager

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s the thing no one says out loud: if you’re reporting to a founder, you’re reporting to someone who loves your work but doesn’t have the bandwidth (or playbook) to actually enable you, or manage your growth. That’s where you have to show up for yourself. I’ve been reporting to CMOs, CEOs, and founders for most of my career, so managing up was mission critical early on for me.

These aren’t vibes or high-level frameworks. These are tactics I’ve used, broken, and rebuilt across five startups.

What Is Developer Marketing? A Guide from the Trenches (2025)

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Or: A practitioner’s guide to winning the hearts (and wallets) of developers

TL;DR: Developer marketing is the art, and frankly the street fight, of getting cynical, caffeine‑fueled engineers to notice your tool, try it, and recommend it to someone in Slack. If you think that sounds like regular marketing, kindly step away from the buzzwords and keep reading.

Why Another “What Is Developer Marketing” Post?

Because I’m a content marketer, and most of the top‑ranking answers are either (a) dictionary definitions wearing LinkedIn makeup, (b) listicles with the nutritional value of styrofoam, or (c) whitepapers that confuse word count with insight.

Good Developer Content Is a Conversation, Not a Broadcast

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Or: Why developer content that listens is way better than content that just talks

I’ve been doing developer marketing for almost a decade now, and one of the first things I learned, which still proves itself true every day, is that developers are smart and impatient. They’re quick to spot marketing fluff and even quicker to bounce if your content wastes their time. Respect that intelligence and impatience, reward their time with usefulness, and you’ll earn their attention.

Building Docs with an Arc-Reactor (and a Bit of AI)

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Or: How I distilled years of tech-writing muscle memory into two reusable playbooks — and turned them into an assistant called GuideForge

I adore the smell of fresh Markdown in the morning, but there’s a hard limit to how many times a human can type “Step 1: Obtain an API key” before questioning their life choices. Somewhere around iteration #73 I realised I wasn’t writing, just copy-pasting tribal knowledge and hoping I hadn’t missed the GDPR footnote.

I Built a Custom AI Assistant Because My Brain Refused to Use Notion

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Or: The Only Organization System My ADHD Brain Hasn’t Mutinied Against

Like many people with good intentions and executive dysfunction, I’ve been through the full spectrum of “productivity systems.” I’ve color-coded Trello boards. I’ve had beautifully themed Notion pages. I’ve even gaslit myself into believing Asana was changing my life.

Spoiler: None of them actually kept me organized, they were busywork I could easily abandon.

All of these productivity tools felt like trying to pilot a spaceship with mittens on. Too much structure, not enough intuition. Too many rules, not enough adaptability. My brain doesn’t want a system. It wants a conversation.