"I feel like I'm falling behind, but I don't even know what I'm behind on."
Maybe you've said it, or heard it from a friend. It's everywhere.
That's the thing about AI. The tools really aren't that hard to use. But the way people talk about them. The words are just for people who already get it. Like there's an inner circle, and until you're in it, you're just on the outside looking in.
I'm part of a group working at the sharp end of AI. People who are building, implementing, and helping others figure it out. We're working at the edge of what's actually possible. It's baffling.
Not because the concepts are over my head, but because the language assumes you already know.
I still feel like I'm on the outside and I want in.
I could keep using AI the way most people use it. ChatGPT for drafts, Claude for thinking, automation stitched together where it makes sense. But I keep seeing something I can't unsee. The idea of a system that runs on its own while I sleep. One that gets smarter about what I need over time. That's the real edge of what AI is. And it's also the edge of what I understand.
I really want to get it. So I'm trying full-tilt.
My agent runs on a system called Hermes. The agent inside it, the one who shows up on Telegram, is Joe. He's not a chatbot. He's my AI chief of staff. He runs on Railway, talks to me through Telegram, uses Claude as his brain. The sheer number of systems makes my head want to explode. Why can't this be easier??
Every morning he is supposed to pull my calendar, check the news, grab the Halifax weather, and get me up to speed before I'm caffeinated. He knows what matters to me because of a tool called Honcho, which gives him semantic memory. Over time he learns what I actually want to know, and things are supposed to get better and easier.
On a good morning, I wake up and the hard work of figuring out my day is already done. That's the whole point.
My first working version was giving me the time in UTC, so my 9am looked like 1pm. Nothing made sense. Fixed it and felt pretty good about myself for all of 20 minutes. Then I found out Joe had been making up the weather for two days straight because he had no internet access. I only figured that one out when the weather had nothing to do with what was happening outside. Two days. This has got to be easier.
It's frustrating and I'm still wrestling with this. If you see me around town with a few less hairs, you'll know why.
Come along for the ride. I'll keep writing about this as it hopefully comes together.