---
title: "Scratch Notes | Rick Blalock"
description: "Scratch Notes from Rick Blalock on agents, products, freedom, and the systems that give small teams more leverage."
canonical: "https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/"
---

# Scratch Notes

> Working ideas on agents, products, freedom, and the systems that give small teams more leverage.

## Pinned links

- [Coding Agents Ate the World: AI Engineer Miami](https://youtu.be/DeM_u2Ik0sk?t=7473): A talk on how coding agents became the foundation on top of which other agents are built.
- [Agentuity, an AI-native cloud](https://agentuity.com/blog/announcing-our-seed-round): The seed-round announcement and the thesis behind cloud infrastructure designed for autonomous agents.
- [ICES Journal of Marine Science](https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/advance-article/doi/10.1093/icesjms/fsad154/7293717): A marine-science publication Rick contributed to on estimating global recreational fishing activity.
- [NASA Space Apps Challenge](https://vimeo.com/64515087): One of four winners from 170 virtual projects, with an international honorable mention.

## All notes

- [Dogfooding is a friend and a liar](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/dogfooding-is-not-customer-discovery/): Using your own product can reveal where it breaks, but it cannot prove that customers understand it, need it, or will pay for it.
- [The computer should learn you](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/the-computer-should-learn-you/): A truly personal computer should remember how its owner works and reshape itself around them.
- [The owner is the reasoning layer, for better or worse](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/the-owner-is-the-reasoning-layer/): Most small businesses already have a system of reasoning. It is the owner.
- [An agentic company is not a company with only agents](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/an-agentic-company-is-not-a-company-with-agents/): An agentic company starts with the work, then brings together human judgment, agent capability, and shared context around it.
- [The company that remembers](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/the-company-that-remembers/): A small business should not have to become a bureaucracy to retain and reuse what its people learn.
- [Every job should make the company better](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/every-job-should-make-the-company-better/): An agentic company should not only finish the work. It should become more capable because the work happened.
- [Freedom is built](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/freedom-is-built/): Technical, business, and national freedom all depend on having the tools and systems to shape your own future.
- [AI can help small businesses stay independent](https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/ai-can-help-small-businesses-stay-independent/): AI could give independent small-business owners more of the operating leverage traditionally reserved for larger companies.