Insights — r90

Working with Fable: you have until July 12.

Fable 5 is included in Claude plans through July 12. Don’t spend the window doing Opus’s work: find the problems that were too big to hand to a model at all. With a week of our own telemetry on what the top tier actually costs.

Field Notes7 min readTravis ProwellJul 7, 2026

Read the field note

On the desk

What’s drafting this quarter.

We publish when something is worth publishing, not on a content calendar. Here’s what’s moving from notebook to draft to ship.

In edit

The seam map: a different way to plan modernization.

What we draw before we plan a rebuild, and why it predicts cost more reliably than any estimate.

Drafting

What “AI-First SDLC” actually changes, by phase.

Not the marketing version. The specific places work flows differently when the team operates AI-First.

Researching

Throughput vs. cycle time, after six months of AI rollout.

What the metrics from a real engagement actually showed, and which ones turned out to be lagging indicators.

The archive.

6 pieces · 2026

#06 Working with Fable: you have until July 12. Fable 5 is included in Claude plans through July 12. Don’t spend the window doing Opus’s work: find the problems that were too big to hand to a model at all, and watch the meter while you do. Field Notes · Method Jul 7, 2026 7 min #05 Exploring open models and model-routing. Price and access, not benchmarks, pushed open-weight models onto our roadmap. Why we route code review per pull request instead of switching models, and what the switch actually cost. Field Notes · Method Jul 1, 2026 8 min #04 Agent Loops, Explained Plainly. The shift from prompts to goals and loops, in plain terms: what an agent loop is, why the evaluate step is the one that matters, and what it costs when you let it run. Essay · Method Jun 9, 2026 7 min #03 The AI Usage Ladder: knowing when to climb, and when not to. Chat to agents to managed workflows is a real progression, not a road to the end. The level is a property of the problem, not the person. Essay · Method Jun 2, 2026 10 min #02 From Tickets to Epics: how we hand off work now. We stopped handing engineers individual tickets and started handing them epics they break down themselves, as they build. A small change in description, a large one in how ownership moves. Essay · Method Feb 9, 2026 5 min #01 Why tool-first AI rollouts stall, and what to do instead. Copilot without process change produces a 5–10% delta, at best. The compounding gains live in the SDLC itself. Essay · Adoption Jan 14, 2026 12 min

Issue 02 is on the desk. Three pieces drafting. Ship dates announced via the letter, not a public calendar.

The letter

One or two pieces a month, from inside the work.

No broadcast newsletter. No “thought leadership” promotion. Just the two or three things worth writing down this month, delivered directly. Unsubscribe the moment it stops earning its space in your inbox.