§ A publishing practice by Freerk Kalsbeek
Named beforeit was obvious.
I work one layer below where the conversation is happening. Curiosity put me there: I'd rather take a thing apart than take its description on faith. Building taught me to see the structural shift before it has a name.
Right now that's AI, and not at the product layer. I'm less interested in the tools than in what they're changing underneath. How agents will carry intent when they talk to each other. What memory becomes once you stop mistaking retrieval for it. What software becomes when the interface is a conversation.
Not a publication list, just the questions that wouldn't leave me alone. I write essays when the pattern is clear and tinker when it isn't, building a venture only when the idea earns it. Available to think with you on the hard ones.
From the desk
03 / 03- № 001
The shifts aren't shifts
Every wave so far moved which labor paid without changing that labor paid. AI is the first one that turns thinking itself from something you hire into something you own, and I spent my career on the side of that trade being repriced.
- № 002
It knows more, you decide
I told an AI it was wrong, then caught myself about to fold when it argued the opposite more cleanly than I could. It out-reads me and out-argues me, and I almost handed it the call on my own turf. But knowing more and getting to decide were never the same job.
- № 003
The line you cross without noticing
An agent did a full day's work while I slept. An hour later the same model couldn't move an inch without me. Don't sort your AI use by what you asked for, sort it by what's left when you close the laptop: an answer, a machine you built without meaning to, or a mind that got sharper against the resistance.
§ The list
Essays in your inbox
New writing when the pattern is clear. No cadence, no filler.