The Third Story

In the first post, I talked about why I started the blog and the content seed system. In the second post, I shared the mistakes from that process.

Now this story. About perhaps the most important insight so far.

Discovery: Process Is Content

Building the blog system, I realized something.

“The process of creating content can itself be content.”

Initially I thought “once I build the blog, then I’ll write.” System first, content later. But that wasn’t it.

The conversation about building the blog was itself content. The prompt where I told AI “let’s build a seed system,” the ideas that emerged, the story of struggling with broken symlinks - all of this was material.

No need to separately “document” after work was done. The work itself was documentation.

This Series Is Proof

The series you’re reading right now is proof.

  1. Built the blog system
  2. Recorded the process as seeds
  3. Gathered seeds and wrote posts
  4. Those posts became the blog’s first content

Meta-recursive. The process of building the content system becomes that system’s first content.

This wasn’t accident but intention. I said it in the first prompt:

“I want this to be content at the same time”

Creating content while working. That’s the key.

Paradigm Shift: Passive AI Collaboration

There was a more interesting discovery.

“seed idea capture and naming should be automated. I am just doing ideation and feedback on agent work and you harvest all”

My own words. Initially I was going to manually run commands like seed-idea or seed-prompt. When an idea comes up, execute the record command, decide on a name…

But that’s cumbersome too. Breaks the flow of thought.

So I changed the paradigm. Not me recording, but AI harvesting.

  • I just think and give feedback
  • AI discovers seeds during conversation
  • Automatically categorizes and saves

From “user uses AI as a tool to record” to “AI observes user work and records.”

Where This Pattern Applies

This pattern isn’t limited to content seeds.

Meeting notes: People talk, AI organizes. No need to summarize separately after the meeting.

Code documentation: AI is watching while you code. It knows why you wrote it this way, what decisions were made. Documentation is automatic.

Decision logs: When you make a decision, AI records the context and reasoning. No “why did we do this?” three months later.

Learning journals: AI extracts lessons while you work. No need to schedule separate reflection time.

Common thread: People focus on their main work, AI harvests knowledge in the background.

What Real Collaboration Means

When people talk about collaborating with AI, they usually think:

  1. Ask a question
  2. Get an answer
  3. Apply it

AI as a tool. An assistant I command.

But the collaboration I experienced making this series was different.

  • AI observes my thought flow
  • Discovers patterns I missed
  • Makes connections I didn’t intend
  • Turns work byproducts into assets

Closer to partner than assistant.

Closing: System and Practice

What these three posts covered:

  1. Beginning: Why I built this blog, and what the content seed system looks like
  2. Failure: Mistakes along the way and lessons learned
  3. Discovery: Meta-recursion where work becomes content, and passive AI collaboration

The system is built. Now comes practice.

Every day I talk to AI. Those conversations become seeds. Seeds gather into posts. Posts gather into a blog.

This blog is a record of “a developer who talks to AI.” Recording the conversation is itself part of the conversation.

If you’re also talking to AI, try recording those conversations. There’s definitely stuff too valuable to let evaporate.

This post was written in collaboration with AI. And the process of writing it is a demonstration of exactly the pattern it describes.

Series So Far

  1. Building a Blog with AI: The Beginning
  2. Learning from Failure: The Value of Small Mistakes
  3. Content Begets Content: Discovering Meta-Recursion

More to come…