Pivoting Focus Back to Builders

When I first started this Substack, my core goal was simple: to provide real value to other builders in the AI space. Somewhere along the line, I lost sight of that. I started focusing too much on pitching to traditional business owners, trying to convert them into clients.

The reality is that there is a massive amount of friction and resistance when it comes to business owners adopting AI. You can’t force it; they need to come to their own realizations about what actually works for their operations. Instead of pushing a hard sell, the most effective approach is simply to show them what I have successfully built and let them convince themselves of its value. Because of that friction, I’ve decided to pivot my focus back to where I started: supporting other builders.

Given my non-technical background (I’m effectively a self-realized Assisted Software Developer), I have a genuinely unique perspective to share, based on the practical, real-world systems I have built for myself and my clients. In the process of learning and developing in this space, I’ve created some systems that work well for me, and I wanted to share them with others also building in this space.

ASD is the process of building real tools and working systems with AI handling the technical execution, while you bring the problem definition, the judgment calls, and the system architecture. It’s not “vibe coding”; it’s more than that. ASD sits in a grey area between no-code templates that fall apart the second you need something custom and traditional software development. The development and coding processes are similar, just without the formal background. It’s AI-first coding, and it’s a game-changer for anyone who loves to create but doesnt know how to read or write code.

This new section of my Substack brings an ASD practitioner’s approach to building things that actually work, even if you’ve never written a line of code in your life.

In upcoming articles, I’ll explore how I work within the Claude ecosystem to create real-world applications like Top AI News Today, MoveSmart, lead-generation automations, a voice memo-to-auto-SEO blog-post AI Agent for a client in Orange County, CA, and more.

Most of the articles in this section will be available only to paid subscribers, as they are based on thousands of hours of research, experimentation, execution, painful debugging, and hard-earned lessons.

I’ve scheduled my first real post in this section—How To Set Up a Claude Project: A Non-Technical Builder’s Guide To Creating Token-Efficient and Safety-First Claude Projects—to publish this coming Friday (June 26).

I’m looking forward to leaning in and sharing what I’ve learned. I hope you’ll find it valuable.

Happy ASDing!

—BottBott