Zulqarnain Haidar

Most of what gets written about AI tooling is written by people who don’t have to live with the thing on Monday morning. I do. Everything in this newsletter has run in production, against a deadline, for someone who was paying for the outcome.

What this newsletter is

Each issue takes apart a single workflow: the actual prompts I use, the tools underneath, what the whole thing costs per month, and an honest account of what broke.

I write about failures roughly as often as successes, because the failures are where the transferable lesson usually is. The first issue was about an automation that refunded the same order four times.

What it isn’t

• Not a tool list. “17 AI tools you need in 2026” is content, not help.
• Not sponsored. No affiliate links, no paid placements. If I mention a product it’s because I pay for it.
• Not daily. One email a week. I’d rather write one good thing than five forgettable ones.

Work with me

I take on a small number of development and consulting projects — mostly scoping, building and de-risking AI workflows inside existing businesses. They come through direct contact or LinkedIn, not an agency or a marketplace.

If that sounds useful, email me and tell me what you’re trying to do. I’d rather hear the problem than a brief.

I also build my own products — Scale Media AI is the current one. Those show up on the projects page, and the working notes end up in the newsletter.

How this site is built

It’s a Next.js app on Vercel. Issues are Markdown files in a git repo. The subscriber list lives in my own Supabase database and mail goes out through Resend, which means the list is genuinely mine — no platform sits between me and the people reading.

There’s an RSS feed if you’d rather not use email at all.