Ongoing thinking · Vol. I

Memory
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Adapting to AI isn’t a one-time decision. It’s an ongoing process of understanding change, testing ideas, and refining how your business operates. Here’s what we’re noticing.

01

Featured · This month’s most-read

Jul 2026 · 2,103 words

Kimi K3 playedmove 37.

Perspective · AI

Kimi K3 played move 37.

The export controls worked. That is exactly the problem. Denied the hardware, Moonshot AI built a frontier model at four bits per number and published it for free. Capital expenditure does not scale down to a phone. Efficiency does.

Nigel Price · 25 Jul 2026 · 10 min read

Read the essay →

02

The archive.

23 essayssince 2023
Sorted newest first

The threevibe coding traps.

Perspective · AI· 15 Jul 2026

The three vibe coding traps.

Vibe coding works right up until it doesn’t — and it fails in three predictable ways. Why confidence peaks exactly where competence is lowest, why the model never applies the brakes, and why the bill always arrives late.

Context iseverything.

Perspective · AI· 6 Jul 2026

Context is everything.

AI slop is not a tools problem — it is a context problem. The plan, the shared object model, and the specialised agents that turn AI from a faster way to make a mess into a genuine multiplier — and why discipline makes you faster, not slower.

The moat youcannot buy.

Perspective · AI· 1 Jul 2026

The moat you cannot buy.

A competitor can license the same models by Friday. What they cannot buy is a year of AI having learned your business, pointed in one disciplined direction — a structural gap that widens through use, and was never for sale.

Someone else’spermission slip.

Perspective · AI· 30 Jun 2026

Someone else’s permission slip.

The US switched frontier models off worldwide to enforce export controls — for everyone, including its own citizens. Being on the “trusted partner” list isn’t safety. It’s the clearest argument yet for owning your own capability.

What is your AIoptimising for?

Perspective · AI· 28 Jun 2026

What is your AI optimising for?

Ukraine didn’t bolt AI onto the old way of fighting — it rebuilt the whole strategy around it. Optimise with AI, not for it. What you point it at, and how, matters more than whether you use it.

The map wasalways the point.

Perspective · AI· 8 Jun 2026

The map was always the point.

Copilot moved to token-based billing and the invoices are brutal. Why I spent eight months mapping my code for AI agents with GraphRAG — and why context efficiency is now the line item that decides your bill.

They said AIwasn’t ready.

Perspective · AI· 25 May 2026

They said AI wasn’t ready. I built the future anyway.

Two years ago everyone dismissed AI as not ready. Today we’re delivering ecommerce platforms and AI-powered systems at 100x the pace of competitors. The real risk was waiting too long.

The eraof builders.

Perspective · Leadership· 24 Mar 2026

The era of builders.

The people who ship are separating from the people who strategise. Why the next decade rewards operators who can actually make the thing, not just name it.

How I stoppedusing Google.

AI · Discovery· 23 Jul 2025

Why soon opening a browser will be something different — and what it means for retailers.

A week without Google. What replaced it, what didn’t, and what it means for retailers whose discovery funnels still start at a search bar.

Death bya thousand stores.

Retail · Transformation· 12 Jun 2025

Why reinventing the future matters more than revisiting the past.

Retailers still expanding their physical footprint while the ground shifts underneath them. A field report on the ones that see it, and the ones that don’t.

Traditional searchis dead.

AI · Search· 20 Jun 2025

The future of finding your business is AI.

The shape of the new discovery layer — what it rewards, what it ignores, and how to be on the right side of it before everyone else catches up.

Trust when AImakes decisions.

Leadership· 30 May 2025

Trust when AI starts making decisions.

When systems start making decisions on your behalf, the question shifts from “what can AI do?” to “who do you trust with the keys?”

Will AI chooseyour brand?

AI · Brand· 12 May 2025

Will AI choose your brand?

AI tools are starting to shape what customers see and trust. Here is what makes a brand easier to find and recommend.

Moto ManualGPT.

Case study · AI· 4 Jul 2025

Building a custom GPT — Moto Manual Assistant.

How we turned a shelf of workshop manuals into a conversational assistant for the country’s best Indian Motorcycle workshop.

APL PerformanceBikes.

Case study · E-commerce· 20 Sep 2024

APL Performance Bikes: a digital transformation success story.

Behind the scenes on a rebuild that turned a workshop-first business into a modern e-commerce operation — without losing what made them good.

TEMU &gamification.

E-commerce · Retail· 21 Dec 2023

Deepening the digital retail experience: TEMU and gamification.

Part one of a longer look at what the new generation of e-commerce players actually get right — and what Western retail keeps missing.

Ops · CRM· 8 Nov 2023

How HubSpot CRM revolutionised my client relationships.

Record traffic, record engagement, and a small company that finally stopped dropping balls. Personal lessons on picking a CRM that actually fits.

Chaosinto calm.

Case study· 8 Nov 2023

Transforming chaos into calm: a Digital Discovery success story.

A client came to us mid-collapse. Six months later, the business ran itself. What we changed, in what order, and what we’d do differently.

First monthreflections.

Podcast· 23 Aug 2023

Reflecting on my initial month with Digital Discovery Podcast.

What I learned launching a podcast from zero — the bits that were harder than expected, and the bits that surprised me on the way up.

Join theconversation.

Podcast· 27 Aug 2023

Join the conversation on Digital Discovery Podcast.

An open invite. What the show is really about, who should be on it, and how to get involved if you’ve got a perspective that deserves hearing.

Desireddigital paths.

Strategy· 9 Jun 2023

Desired digital paths.

What good digital transformation actually looks like from a customer’s point of view — and why the paths most businesses design aren’t the ones people walk.

Digital marketingbasics.

Marketing· 6 Jun 2023

Digital marketing basics — customer acquisition.

The fundamentals people skip because they’re busy chasing tactics. A working checklist for anyone who’s still building the flywheel.

Websites· 6 Jun 2023

Website basics.

What a website is actually for in 2026, and the ten questions to ask before you brief anyone to build you one.