scottcurtner.com · Articles

Writing

From 228 executive mobility briefings at Bank of America to hands-on explorations of AI tools and modern audit practice — writing clearly about complex technology has always been part of how I think.

How Do You Know If Your AI Deployment Is Actually Working?
A bank's frontline knew its AI wasn't working long before the tribunal did. Ten years earlier I ignored the same kind of warning about a day in the park.
Why I Left Network Solutions for Cloudflare
Four domains, two stale accounts, and about $246 a year I had never once audited. Plus the DNS record inventory I now build before touching anything.
Is Your AI Agent Checking Its Work, or Just Describing It?
My publish control ran its protocol correctly every time, and four articles still fell off my site. Nothing in the loop had ever opened a file.
I Bought a PC for Claude. Then I Almost Returned It.
I spent $699 on a mini PC for an idea that did not survive the first night. What I learned had less to do with hardware than with who was in the room.
Auditing My Own Code: What I Found When I Turned My Career on My Bookkeeping System
I audit other people's technology for a living. Here is what turned up when I pointed that same instinct at the bookkeeping system I built myself.
My AI Quietly Rewired My Memory System — and I Had to Catch Up
I asked my AI for my task list and got a single entry. Here's how my 2nd brain quietly rerouted tasks from database to wiki — and why I ratified it.
I Learned to Build AI Agents the Way I Audit Them
I spent 30 years in tech, the last 10 auditing it. Then I built a free, hands-on course on building AI agents you can actually own in production.
Google Released a Standard for AI Knowledge Bases. I Adopted It — Then Extended It.
OKF gives AI agents a clean way to read your knowledge. It says nothing about whether that knowledge is still true. Here's the layer I built on top.
I Don't Publish Articles. I Release Them Through an AI Control.
A missing canonical tag on a Sunday morning pulled a thread. By end of day I'd built a two-agent AI publish control for my blog. Here's the system.
When Does AI Cross from Personal Productivity Tool to Shadow AI?
You're using AI every day. But at what point does that personal tool become something your business depends on — and needs to govern? The line isn't where most people think it is.
Integrative Pain vs. Disintegrative Pain in Technical Learning
Mark Divine draws a sharp line between pain that makes you stronger and pain that tears you down. What that distinction means when you're sitting in front of a codebase you barely understand — and why a light-hearted attitude might be load-bearing.
I Walked Through a Vacant Rental With My Phone. My AI Drafted the Contractor Texts Before I Got Home.
How an MCP memory server turns sloppy voice notes and phone photos into organized action — and what that means for anyone with a project, a property, or just too much to remember.
I Gave My 2nd Brain a Wiki — and Now It Writes Itself
A memory system that captures everything is only as useful as your ability to retrieve the right thing at the right moment. So I added a wiki layer — compiled views that load automatically based on keywords, written directly to GitHub by Claude. No copy/paste. No browser. It just works.
From My Grandfather's Ledger to the Plaid API
For nearly 30 years, I kept my real estate books the way my grandfather taught me — pen, paper, and a ledger. This Memorial Day, I'm finally letting go. Here's what I built instead.
I Built My Daughter an AI Brain Before She Leaves for College
She's 19, heading to Cal Poly SLO, moving into her first apartment. I'm a technology auditor. So I did what any reasonable tech-obsessed dad would do — I built her a persistent AI memory system that remembers everything, forever. Every dad has a love language. Mine is apparently building AI infrastructure for my kids.
Letting My AI Edit Its Own Memory
A Technology Auditor's guide to extending an Open Brain MCP server with update and delete tools — and what happens when AI can rewrite its own past.
Honored by San Bruno
Scott Curtner receives the 2026 City of San Bruno Community Recognition Award for a decade of leadership with the San Bruno Education Foundation.
How I Built a Professional Website for Free
A step-by-step guide for non-developers to build a professional website free with Claude and GitHub Pages — including the Network Solutions DNS fix.