I gave a talk at my company’s ten year expo this week and wanted to share the recording here. It's a high-level look at some of the ways we're putting AI to work in an automation manufacturer, and I got a lot of nice compliments from folks afterward. I walk through three levels, and each one gives the agent more context than the last. The first is a quote auditor that runs on a checklist. It reviews a 200-line vendor quote against our drawings and order summary and hands back the five lines that actually need my attention. The second is a panel generator that runs on an engineer's rulebook. It turns a pile of components and about a hundred layout rules into a draft electrical panel, taking a job that could eat days down to as little as 15 minutes. The third is a portfolio assistant that runs on the whole company. It sits in on every meeting through a transcription app we built ourselves, so nothing leaves the building, and it connects what it hears across all our projects. That being said, the theme I think everyone here can take away has nothing to do with automation. It's not about the tools you use or keeping up with the latest model. Out of the box, these models give you average output. What makes them valuable is your expertise, written down and handed to an agent. The same message you see me trying to explain in all of my content, highlighted with real examples. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Playing around with new Claude mods functionality and this plugin I just made will let you dive deeper into where all your context is being used. Works in terminal or the desktop app and sits right above the text input box. https://github.com/donroy26/context-drilldown I always looked at the context menu and wondered exactly what tools or memory is being used in each session and now it’s part of the UI. Let me know what you think or if this gives you any other ideas what you’d like to see next!

My company is celebrating our 10 year anniversary with an expo today. I’ll be giving a talk at 12 EST about some of the ways we’re using AI to amplify our organization. Come check in throughout the day if you want to see some other talks about general manufacturing automation. Link to the live stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/1tWpUdh7Mx4?is=ViiYfEvVwlXCaoy8

Post your results! My daily ICM puzzle game. Test your foundations knowledge by fixing a new broken workflow every day! http://donsbookshelf.com/icmadness/

Hopefully all of us here are past this, but I still feel obligated to make a reminder when I start to see things like what I reacted to in this video. So many people are still on the vicious cycle of drifting to every new release out there and spending more time on the news cycle than curating their own context layers. Focus on yours and your own expertise. Not what specific tool you are using. Your journey will lead you to what you actually need along the way.