Series

From Prompt to Operating System

An operator-led series on useful AI workflows, and the operating problem they reveal at scale. Five tutorials and a capstone, written for founders, COOs, and owner-operators.

8 memos in this series.

  1. From Prompt to Operating System

    A lot of the conversation about AI in companies right now starts with the wrong word. The word is ‘agent’. An agent, in the way most people use it, is a piece of software that goes off and does a job for you, handles the steps in between, and comes back with the result. It […]

    May 2026 5 min read

  2. Building a competitor brief workflow for a Dubai agency

    What we’re building A weekly competitor brief that lands in your drive every Friday morning. It reads what your three to five closest rivals are doing in public, drops the raw material into a folder, and writes a one-page summary you can hand to a strategist or a client. The summary covers what changed since […]

    May 2026 8 min read

  3. The inbox is an operating surface

    What we’re building A daily review queue that takes everything an owner-operator received yesterday across Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp exports, web form notifications, and forwarded internal requests, classifies each message into a small set of buckets, drafts a CRM note or a todo for the ones that need one, and stages a reply where the message […]

    May 2026 9 min read

  4. Reducing bookkeeping typing without removing review

    What we’re building A weekly intake assistant that turns the pile of receipts and supplier invoices a small UAE business accumulates into a structured intake sheet your accountant opens on the day they post. The assistant extracts the fields a UAE tax invoice has to carry (the words ‘tax invoice’, supplier name, supplier TRN, date, […]

    May 2026 8 min read

  5. Turning messy updates into a weekly operating review

    What we’re building A weekly operating review (WBR) that lands on the COO’s desk Tuesday morning, drafted from the messy updates the department leads sent on Monday. The draft is the COO’s editing surface, not the COO’s whole job. It compresses three hours of synthesis into fifteen minutes of editing, and it produces a single […]

    May 2026 8 min read

  6. Before you approve the AI tool, red-team the operating assumptions

    What we’re building A red-team workflow that takes any AI vendor proposal or internal AI initiative, reads the deck and the email thread and the demo notes, and writes a one-page red-team note for the executive who has to decide whether to take the next meeting or fund the next phase. The note has four […]

    May 2026 9 min read

  7. Why useful AI workflows get clogged

    Five workflows. A competitor brief on Friday morning. A daily inbox queue you work twice and then once. A weekly bookkeeping intake your accountant opens on Wednesday. A WBR draft your COO edits on Tuesday. A red-team note before every vendor meeting. Built well, each can justify the time spent on it within the first […]

    May 2026 8 min read

  8. How to actually start

    Pick one of the five. Not all five. One. The one whose pain you feel most clearly today. If the inbox is your daily cost, build the inbox router. If Friday afternoon is the one you keep losing to competitor research, build the brief. The third option is the bookkeeping intake, which is the one […]

    May 2026 3 min read

Subscribe

A roughly monthly dispatch from karlbaz.com. Links to the month's memos, plus a short note on what matters now.

Roughly monthly · No promo · I do not sell or share your address · Unsubscribe anytime