Lucy Liu
Writing

Notes from the build

Real systems I shipped with AI tools under supervision. What worked, what broke, and what a founder can reuse.

Watercolor illustration of a small paper airplane gliding between three connected dotsAugust 2026 · Directing AI

I Replaced Our CRM With a Telegram Bot

Nobody was logging sales notes into the CRM, so I stopped asking them to open a CRM. Now they text what happened and the bot handles the rest.

Split composition: locked cloud service vs open local voice dictation — open source winsAugust 2026 · Directing AI

WisperFlow vs Handy: Why the Open-Source Tool Trend Matters

WisprFlow costs $12-15/month and sends your voice to the cloud. Handy is free, open source, runs locally, and transcribes at 5x real-time speed. The shift toward open-source alternatives isn't just about saving money — it's about control.

Timeline with checkmarks and a silent gap — scheduled agents need monitoringAugust 2026 · Directing AI

Putting AI Agents on a Schedule: What Actually Breaks Overnight

Scheduled agents sound like free labor. But silent failures, expired tokens, and compounding errors mean you need the same monitoring habits you'd give a junior hire working nights. Here's what I learned running four live scheduled agents.

Watercolor illustration of a wooden workbench with four distinct tools laid out in a row, each casting a long shadowJuly 2026 · AI for Small Business

The Actual Tool Stack Behind a Fractional AI Operator

When people ask what tools I use to run operations across companies without writing code, they expect a list. The list is the wrong answer. The real stack is four roles, and the connections between them.

Watercolor illustration of a row of dominoes with the first few tipped overJuly 2026 · AI for Small Business

What to Automate First in a Small Company

The first thing to automate is not the flashy thing. It is the handoff where information dies between two people.

Watercolor illustration of five small potted plants in a row on a windowsillJuly 2026 · Founder Lessons

What Five Care Homes Taught Me About Systems

I learned operations in senior care, where a dropped handoff is not a lost lead: it is a person not getting attended to.

Watercolor illustration of a magnifying glass resting on a folded sheet of paperJuly 2026 · AI for Small Business

Verification Is the Job

The real skill of shipping software with AI when you are not a coder is verification, not prompting.

Watercolor illustration of a bamboo water fountain tipping over a stone basinJuly 2026 · Founder Lessons

The Operating Rhythm Most Startups Are Missing

Most early-stage companies do not have an idea problem, they have an execution problem: no source of truth, no operating rhythm, and a founder doing work a system should do.

Watercolor illustration of three graduated zen stones — large, medium, and small — connected by a single fine ink lineJuly 2026 · Directing AI

The Model Routing Setup That Cut My AI Coding Bill

I run seven AI agents across three tools. Routing every task through the most expensive model was burning money. Pinning tiers by job type fixed it.

Watercolor illustration of a stream flowing between stones under a crescent moonJuly 2026 · Operator Systems

The Lead Pipeline That Runs While I Sleep

How I built an automated lead pipeline: web form to Slack to Google Sheets to email, with no manual handoff, and the silent failure that almost sank it.

Watercolor illustration of a calligraphy brush beside a blank sheet of paperJuly 2026 · Directing AI

How I Shipped Our Website Without Writing Code

I'm a VP of Operations, not a coder. I shipped our company's website end to end: page structure, copy, legal pages, browser checks, and Vercel deploy.

Watercolor illustration of ginkgo leaves drifting into a small open wooden boxJuly 2026 · AI for Small Business

Every Receipt Files Itself Now

How a non-coder VP of Operations stood up a self-hosted document system that files our accounting records automatically, and why the real work was writing the safety rules.

Watercolor illustration of five stepping stones crossing calm waterJuly 2026 · Operator Systems

Client Onboarding Without Dropped Balls

How I built our company's client onboarding email system: a written template for every stage, automated delivery, and the rewrite that made it sound like a person instead of a bank.

Watercolor illustration of three origami paper cranes waiting in a rowJuly 2026 · Directing AI

A Shared Queue for My AI Agents

I run Claude, Codex, and GLM like a small team, through one Notion queue with claim rules, receipts, and a ban on guessing.