How I design with AI
Notes on why design can't be rushed, why references have to come from you, and why UX beats UI every time.
AbdulKhaliq Akinwunmi
Essays on marketing, technology, and building things that matter. Currently shaping brand & growth at Famasi Africa.
Latest posts
On building CLI for Really Good Email
How a recurring habit of digging through Really Good Emails for inspiration became a reverse-engineered CLI, and the two lies its undocumented API told along the way.
On flight price APIs
A dump of findings on accessible flight search and booking APIs — open-source tools, MCP servers, freemium tiers, and what's actually usable for individual developers building agents.
How I taught my terminal to find any folder
Trying out Herdr exposed how little I knew about opening folders in the terminal. This is how I made it simpler.
On 53 failed builds and a stale workflow
How a silent wall of GitHub Actions failures and a surprise email about paused crons taught me how to harden my Astro build pipeline.
How I sped up internet on my Mac
How I measured a slow Mac hotspot connection, fixed packet loss with MTU and DNS changes, and verified the result with speed and latency tests.
My phone had internet. But my Mac didn't. Here's how I fixed it.
Why a shared hotspot can show full bars while your laptop refuses to load a single page, and how I finally diagnosed it.
On LLMs and choosing the right harness
How the same model can feel completely different depending on the harness you run it in.
Writing push notifications that earn the tap
How to craft high-conversion pushes that users actually welcome, without burning your system permissions.
My blog let me read its own system files. Here's the audit that found it, and two more.
A practical walkthrough of fixing clickjacking headers, a self-hosted Ghost blog path traversal, and DMARC/SPF misconfigurations.
The duplicate DNS mistake that can kill your outbound emails
How duplicate SPF records trigger a permanent error (permerror), quietly breaking email authentication and tanking your deliverability.
Locking down your server: a practical guide to VPS security
A builder's checklist for hardening a Linux VPS: custom SSH, UFW firewalls, Tailscale-only routing, and automatic patches.
Don't be a genius on the bench
Why brilliant but disruptive talent can lift teams early and fracture them later.
On personalising healthcare with AI
A campaign recap on healthcare bias in women and how we used AI to personalise care.
The % of sandwiched women, through the U.S lens
Data summary on the sandwich generation among women 25-40 and the caregiving burden.
From Vite to Next.js
Lessons and bugs from migrating a codebase from Vite to Next.js in under 24 hours.
On company culture & employee influence
How early employees shape company culture and why founders aren't the only influence.
Every decision is a trade-off
A short note on choosing what to say yes to by understanding the trade-offs.
On running an SMS campaign in Nigeria
Notes from my first SMS campaign in Nigeria and why the local tooling feels behind.
On being a panellist + hackathon judge for the first time
What I learned judging a hackathon and how it reshaped my view of growth and nerves.
Writing an API documentation that's easy to read
In progress: notes on writing API docs that are clear, scannable, and developer-friendly.
Purposeful ignorance
A Twitter-thread style note on choosing curiosity over hot takes about everything.
Building a personal pharmacy
A reflection on Peter Thiel's One Person One Problem framework and why focus beats busywork.
On avoiding the learning loop
Breaking the cycle of learning without shipping, and the small post that proved it.
On being boring
Why being 'boring' is usually a mismatch of interests, not a character flaw.
Online video consumption and how brands can survive
What changed in online video consumption and how brands can still win.
How to add jump links to your Ghost blog for better UX
Short guide to adding jump links in Ghost so readers can scan long posts faster.
When the river meets the wall
Why purpose sustains early-stage work, with lessons from building Famasi Africa.
On Famasi Africa and becoming more than a writer
Lessons from joining Famasi Africa and the shift from freelancing to in-house marketing.
Is TikTok the new Vine?
A look at TikTok's growth, creator momentum, and whether it risks repeating Vine's fate.
Tomorrow, I want more meat
What a first copywriting role, a move into product quality, and an unpredictable 2020 taught me about work.