Fieldway.org

I caught myself today typing the same long prompt into Claude Code for the third time.

Wanted it to search my Obsidian vault, find my research notes, interpret them, and use that data in what it's building. Every. Single. Time.

Then I stopped and thought: "This is dumb."

So I built a Claude Skill that does all of that automatically. Now it knows how to search my research, pull the right context, and use it – without me typing anything.

This reminded me of Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month" from the 1970s. He described teams having a "Tool Smith" – someone whose job was building custom tools so everyone else could work better. Back then, they were creating new programming languages and syntax.

Turns out I'm the Tool Smith now. Claude Code is how I'm building.

The funny part? I have a skill for making skills. So every tool I build makes it easier to build the next one.

I'm not sharing this to flex. I'm sharing it because if you're a product professional still doing repetitive manual work – sprint planning updates, stakeholder report formatting, data analysis prep – you can build your own tools now too.

You don't need to be technical. You just need to notice what you're doing three times.

What's the one thing you do every week that makes you think "there has to be a better way"?

Also, want to get started learning this stuff? Check out https://fieldway.org/resources/build-your-ai-consultant

Everyone's talking about using AI to build the next billion-dollar company.

I upgraded to Claude Max yesterday for a much simpler reason: I want to cut two hours off my workday.

Not to ship a product. To build a private tool that solves a problem only I have. That's it.

I started my career in IT building bash scripts and shell scripts – any way I could automate my work so I could either rest more or think more creatively. Vibe coding is that same instinct multiplied by a hundred.

And here's the thing that actually matters for your career. When your company looks around wondering who's producing, you want to be the person with the secret sauce. Not the person paying for AI access just to make pictures – the person who built a personal toolset that makes them faster, sharper, and harder to replace.

It's not about the subscription. It's about getting your time back and making yourself more valuable.

If you want to get started, I've got a free beginner course called Build Your AI Consultant on fieldway.org. It walks you through using AI to build a tool that saves you real time.

https://fieldway.org/resources/build-your-ai-consultant