~ AI in Crayon · 2026

I write the recipes for AI in operating companies.

Every week I'm running these recipes with clients in HVAC, insurance, pharmacies, manufacturing, and consulting. Privately held $5M to $50M operating companies. US and international. The frameworks here are what I run in the field. How to think about AI. How to decide what to build. How to make people happier at the water cooler. I publish Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

Start with the Diagnostic Read the latest

Reuben "Reu" Smith, founder, Local Nerds. Host, AI in Crayon.

Reu ~ founder · Local Nerds
host · AI in Crayon

~ tuesday · thursday · friday

Recent episodes.

Browse the archive →

Stop Writing It Down

The Shift

Stop Writing It Down

June 16, 2026 · just served

AI in Crayon · ep

Today vs. Ten Years

Twelve AI tools. Six workflows. Three pilots. Wins doc full. The VP couldn't tell me which way the building was supposed to lean. She had a left column. She'd never written down the right one.

AI in Crayon · ep

You Scored the Model. You Never Scored the Work.

A VP rolled her team over to the highest-scoring model on the leaderboard. Six weeks later the bill was 4x and the team was no faster. The benchmark scored the model. Nobody scored the work.

AI in Crayon · ep

Pick the Decision. Latency Answers Itself.

A VP burned six weeks of engineering on a real-time pipeline dashboard. She looks at it during a Monday ops call. The fight was never about latency. Nobody named the decision the dashboard was supposed to support.

AI in Crayon · ep

Five Questions for the Blind-Spot Prompt Ritual

Three weeks of AI sessions. Drafts read clean. Friday afternoon, she couldn't name one thing the AI had told her she didn't already know. That's the autocomplete trap, and the seventh ingredient fixes it.

~ what's underneath the episodes Read the framework family →

~ how I think

Five frameworks. One archetype.

Your business is a kitchen. The Chef holds taste at the hub. The Pass routes the orders. Six stations cook the recipes. Pull any role and the service fails. The frameworks below the fold are how an AI-native business actually runs.

Read the framework family →

~ a recent build

Three stations stood up. The numbers got real.

4.8×

the leads
on the SEO and GEO plan

Fort Collins Insurance has been on the Build for over a year. Marketing, Sales, and Operations stations stood up, all measured. The 4.8x is what the system produces every month. Sixty percent less paid traffic. Twelve hours a week recovered on email triage.

The frameworks on this site aren't theory. They're what I'm running on live operating companies, every week.

Read the case study →

~ ready to draw it for yours?

Want yours next?

Three to six weeks. One Station Plan. One Prep List of the systems worth handing off first. No deck, no pitch.

Start the Diagnostic

~ three doors

Three doors in. Each stands on its own.

Run the audit for free and never come back. Run the Diagnostic and take the roadmap home. Or engage on the Build. Each one is the right answer for a different kind of week.

~ free

The AI Audit

10 minutes. 7 questions. 21 points.

Where you stand right now. An honest read on whether you've deployed AI in your business, or just announced it.

Run the audit → 02

~ engagement

The Diagnostic

3 to 6 weeks. One working roadmap. No deck.

A custom Station Plan, a Four D's read on every function, and a ranked Prep List of the systems worth handing off first. Yours to run with.

See the spec → 03

~ retainer

The Build

Twelve months typical. Implementation, with my team.

We build the systems on the roadmap. Your team owns the recipes after. The point is the systems run after I'm gone, not that you need me forever.

Read who I work with →