Field notes from real client and product work
Notes from real AI builds.
Practical writing on AI workflows, SaaS operations, SEO systems, and selective Bitcoin work. What shipped, what broke, and what I would scope differently now.
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Blog articles
Recent writing, field notes, and practical breakdowns.
Browse the latest post first, then continue through the archive for deeper guides across AI, SEO, Bitcoin, and operator notes.
Archive
23 posts
How I Optimized This Site for Agent Engine Search Optimization
A code-grounded walkthrough of how daviddacruz.dev was optimized for AI search and agent-style retrieval: content routing, schema by page type, internal links, robots policy, sitemap generation, llms.txt, and answer-first page structure.
How to Improve Brand Visibility in AI Search Engines
A practical guide to improving brand visibility in AI search engines with clearer entity signals, stronger support content, structured data, internal links, and proof that answer systems can retrieve confidently.
What Strategies Improve Brand Visibility in AI Search Engines
The best strategies for improving brand visibility in AI search engines: entity clarity, topic ownership, proof content, structured data, internal linking, and distribution patterns that make brands easier to cite and trust.
What a Local-First Product Taught Me About Trust, Distribution, and Early Demand
A narrow local product started as a discovery asset, then quickly began generating business-intent signal, replies, assessments, and founder conversations.
AI Agents and the Marketing Opportunity of the Decade
Why AI agents create a short-term marketing advantage, where they actually help, and how to roll them out before the arbitrage disappears.
x402 and AI Agent Payments: Why HTTP 402 Matters Again
How the x402 protocol lets AI agents make autonomous stablecoin payments, and why machine-to-machine payments matter for builders.
AI Agents for Business: From Demo to Workflow
What AI agents are, where they work today, where they still break, and how to implement them in a business workflow.
How Much Does AI Automation Cost in 2026? USD
Pricing for AI automation projects in 2026: build costs, monthly API and infrastructure costs, consultant rates, and ROI math in USD.
AI Automation for SaaS Companies: 7 Workflows Worth Building
Specific AI automations for SaaS teams: support triage, churn detection, onboarding personalisation, and expansion signals, with build costs and production examples.
Building Ericeira Review in Public — Log 01
The first build-in-public log on Ericeira Review. 19 days public: 421 visitors, 1,256 pageviews, 46 five-star reviews, 118 Instagram referrals, 20 countries — all from the database. What's working, what isn't, and what Log 02 covers.
Claude Code Skills & Agents: Build Custom Slash Commands for Real Work
A practical guide to Claude Code skills, custom slash commands, and subagents: how to build reusable AI workflows your team can keep using.
The 944-Token Mistake: Why Your Agent.md File Is Making Claude Dumber
A practical take on context engineering: when CLAUDE.md helps, when it bloats the session, and how skills plus progressive disclosure keep agents sharper.
Freelancing in Portugal in 2026: The Practical Version
A first-person account of freelancing as a tech worker in Portugal: the D8 visa, NHR changes, cost of living numbers, client acquisition, and the lonely months.
From Web3 to AI: What Actually Transferred
A personal reflection on four years in Bitcoin and Ordinals development, and what building on-chain taught me about AI-native systems.
How to Choose a Fractional CTO (From Someone Who Is One)
What to look for in a fractional CTO, when you need one, and how to structure the engagement. Written by a fractional CTO who works with startups and web3 projects.
How We Inscribed 1,500 Ordinals on Bitcoin
A technical walkthrough of inscribing the Pizza Ninjas Ordinals collection on Bitcoin in January 2024: tooling, coordination, recursive inscriptions, and what broke.
Agents on Bitcoin: the MCP × x402 Bridge Pattern
How to expose Bitcoin as callable tools for AI agents via MCP, gate access with HTTP 402, and handle signing through PSBTs — the architecture behind Engrave.
Negative SEO in 2026: What Hurts, What to Ignore
A practical breakdown of negative SEO — the seven attack vectors, what Google filters automatically, how to spot a real attack vs normal ranking noise, and the defense stack worth building when you run a site that matters.
How to Never Hit Claude's Session Limit Again: The Harness Discipline
A practical guide for staying under Claude's session and usage limits: model routing, subagents, /clear discipline, and a daily rhythm that keeps Claude Code cheaper and sharper.
Recursive Inscriptions and On-Chain Composability on Bitcoin: A Developer Guide
A technical guide for engineers evaluating Bitcoin Ordinals. Covers recursive inscriptions, on-chain composability, game-state coordination, real-world architecture patterns from Pizza Ninjas and Pizza Pets, and tradeoffs vs. EVM/Solana.
SEO in 2026: Technical Setup, Content, and AI Search
A practical SEO guide for 2026: technical setup, content strategy, structured data, local SEO, and how AI-powered search changes the work.
The Web3 Project Launch Checklist: From Idea to Mainnet
A practical checklist for launching a web3 project: tokenomics, smart contracts, community, go-to-market, security audits, and the order to handle them.
What a Fractional CTO Does, Week by Week
A first-person account of fractional CTO work in practice: decisions, context-switching, code, hiring, stakeholder calls, and the moments when the model stops working.
Compare
All comparisonsn8n vs Make for AI automation
Cost, control, AI support, compliance, and the teams each workflow platform actually fits.
Fractional CTO vs agency vs full hire
Three ways to get senior technical leadership — cost, latency, when each fits.
Ericeira vs Lisbon
Cost, community, logistics, weather — from eighteen months in the first.
Keep reading — the writing runs in two directions: side-by-side comparisons and deeper dives by topic.