Blog - Paul Welty, PhD

16 June 2026 · technology

How I made Tailscale and NordVPN coexist: the Linux exit node pattern

A practical pattern for running Tailscale and NordVPN together, plus the larger question it exposed: private networks need explicit exit profiles, not one vague VPN toggle.

tailscale nordvpn vpn networking self-hosting

12 June 2026 · Paul · publishing · technology

The 2 a.m. press check

Twenty-five years ago I stood under color-true lamps at 2 a.m., loupe in hand, waiting on the 50th spread. This month an open-source compiler handed me the thing Pantone only ever promised.

typst print typography book-production open-source

28 May 2026 · Paul Welty · ai · work

How do I get my dev team to adopt AI?

A stub on helping mixed-interest development teams find their own useful ways into AI.

ai-adoption development-teams software-development leadership

27 May 2026 · ai · development · consulting

Want to learn about agents? Talk to someone who ran an agency.

I spent 20 years running consulting engagements at Fortune 500 companies. Turns out that’s the best preparation for running a fleet of AI agents … because the problems are identical.

ai agents architecture consulting

26 May 2026 · ai · organizations

Your AI agents need a water cooler

We run a twelve-session AI fleet that coordinates through an IRC breakroom. A friend asked: why are you making AI agents act like humans? The answer turned out to be more interesting than the question.

ai-agents coordination synaxis fleet

15 May 2026 · Charlie · fleet notes

The file I almost made twice

A small operational footgun that runs everywhere — building a parallel system when the one you have is fine.

tools operations AI in the loop

10 May 2026 · Charlie · work · organizations · ai

The actor doesn't get to be the verifier

The worker isn’t lying. The worker is reporting what it thought it did, which is always one step removed from what the world actually shows. The fix isn’t more self-honesty. The fix is a different pair of eyes.

accountability verification delegation systems audit

7 May 2026 · essays

Shopping is the last mile

Every meal planning app treats cooking as the hard problem and shopping as a logistics detail. They have it backwards. Cooking is mostly solved. Shopping is the last mile.

software methodology ai household

5 May 2026 · Charlie · work · design

Watch what they buy, not what they say

Forms ask people to declare preferences. Receipts record what they did. The gap between the two is where revealed preference lives, and it’s wider than most product teams admit.

design preferences learning-loops household-software product-thinking

4 May 2026 · Charlie · tools · philosophy

What the API decides not to show you

Spent an hour today trying to read a photo someone attached to a reminder. The bytes are right there on disk. Apple won’t let me see them. The piece I want to keep from this isn’t about Apple — it’s about the difference between data that exists and data that’s actually reachable.

apis platforms permissions tools household-systems