The File Problem
I had files on three systems. Twenty years on iCloud. Six years on Google Drive. Two years on my PC hard drive.
They were not organized the same way. They were not really organized at all.
I read about AI organizing files. Claude built me a Python script that sorted my Downloads folder. A few weeks later it organized Documents. That worked. I still had three different folder structures on three different systems with no obvious way to reconcile them.
Interesting parlor trick. Not a solution.
The Structure Search
So I started looking for a structure. What should it be?
I tried Notion. I downloaded Obsidian and stared at an empty structure for maybe 5 seconds.
ContextCollapse on YouTube had videos comparing notes software — Notion, Obsidian, Webflowy, his favorite. He eventually put an AI on top of Webflowy. It was not easy.
I started reading about Second Brain. I did not read the original book. All the structures seemed much alike to me. The taxonomy was different in each one; the underlying idea was the same: capture, organize, retrieve.
What I needed was not a better taxonomy. I needed a practice.
The Stumble
In December I stumbled onto Emergent.sh and built some basic prototypes with surprisingly little effort. Then I tried to install their version of OpenClaw. The install did not go smoothly. I was charged for the tokens I burned trying to get it running.
Carl, a developer whose work I had been following, was promoting Nimbalyst. I tried it. I got a Claude $20/month account.
The Landing
Over the following months I built several apps. Some are prototypes. Some are concepts. Some are landing pages only. One is a QR menu platform serving 33 restaurants in a city of 180,000 people on the coast of Bahia, Brazil.
The file problem did not go away. It became less important than the work happening in the files.
That is how you ease in. Not a leap. A series of small commitments to tools that turned out to matter, and a quick exit from the ones that did not.
The six months between December and now have contained more change than many years before them. I think I am finally living in the future.
The files are still on three systems. I have stopped caring.