The Residue: From zero to live

Weekend 1 of building a personal knowledge corpus: what worked, what didn’t, and what I learned about AI-proofing a website. In the previous article, I outlined the problem: context trapped in chat sessions, knowledge scattered across tools, published work invisible to AI agents because it lives in walled gardens. The thesis was files plus semantic search plus MCP integration equals thinking that persists. The plan was three weekends of building. Weekend 1 was about foundations: get a site live, get domains sorted, get email working, create the corpus structure. The unsexy infrastructure that everything else depends on. Here’s what actually happened. ...

January 18, 2026 · 11 min · Michele (Mik) Ruberl
AI Dreams vs Infrastructure Executes

Why your AI travel agent can dream up the perfect trip but can't book it

And how the infrastructure we’ve been building for 2.5 years might finally make it possible It’s December 2025, and AI agents are everywhere. ChatGPT plans your honeymoon to the Maldives. Claude designs a three-week backpacking itinerary through Japan. Perplexity finds you that off-the-beaten-path trattoria in Bologna. Then comes the moment of truth: “Book it.” And the magic collapses. Your agent stutters. It can’t actually check if that boutique ryokan has availability. It hallucinates a confirmation number. It sends you to Booking.com, which means starting the search all over again. Or worse: a Spanish influencer couple recently missed a flight because ChatGPT incorrectly advised them they didn’t need a visa for Puerto Rico, without mentioning the ESTA. The AI was confidently, dangerously wrong. ...

December 29, 2025 · 11 min · Michele (Mik) Ruberl