# Sam Couch

> Sam Couch writes about software, AI, and business, drawing on firsthand experience building products and running a business.

## Pages

- [Sam Couch — Software, AI, and Business](https://samcouch.com/index.md): Sam Couch writes about software, AI, and business, drawing on firsthand experience building products and running a business.
- [About — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/about/index.md): Software engineering, developer advocacy, production AI, and running a business. Sam Couch's background and direction toward investing and business decisions.
- [Archive — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/index.md): A drafted index of every article on samcouch.com.
- [AI Slop Has a Place — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/ai-slop-is-good-actually/index.md): AI slop is what you get when you let the model run without much wrangling. In R&D, that trade is often worth it: speed and cheap learning now, cleanup once the shape stops moving.
- [The Math of Weird Ideas: Understanding Asymmetric Bets — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/asymmetric-bets/index.md): Most people confuse job risk with career risk. The safest-looking paths cap your upside. The weird paths? That's where the math gets interesting.
- [LLM-Powered Idea Exploration: Prompting Techniques for Divergence, Analogies, and Tiny Experiments — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/beginners-guide-to-idea-exploration/index.md): At the starting line, you have almost nothing. Only a spark and a hunch. Here's how to use AI tools to explore ideas before you know if they'll work.
- [No, Everyone Won't Build Their Own Software — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/everyone-wont-build-their-own-software/index.md): VCs are betting everyone will build their own software. History suggests otherwise: better tools expand what builders can do, not who becomes a builder.
- [I Built a UI Kit - Just for Me — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/i-built-a-ui-kit-just-for-me/index.md): I built a private UI kit called Couch Kit so coding agents stop improvising my interfaces and I can ship consistent product UI without re-deciding every detail.
- [Ralph Wiggum Coding: Ship Features While You Sleep — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/ralph-wiggum-coding/index.md): Stop babysitting your AI coding agent. The Ralph Wiggum technique runs your agent in a loop until the work is done.
- [RL (Reinforcement Learning) Explained in Plain English — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/rl-reinforcement-learning-explained/index.md): You've heard 'reinforcement learning' dropped in every AI conversation. You've nodded along. Let's actually explain it.
- [The Shokunin in the Age of AI — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/shokunin-in-the-age-of-ai/index.md): AI made it almost free to look like a craftsperson. The Japanese idea of shokunin, lifelong devotion to a craft, is more useful now than it has ever been.
- [The Job I Want Next — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/the-job-i-want-next/index.md): The job I want next combines software engineering, business judgment, and responsibility for the outcome, alongside a founder, investor, or business leader.
- [TurnKit: AI Orchestration for Ruby — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/turnkit-ai-orchestration-for-ruby/index.md): TurnKit is a RubyGem for durable AI agents in Ruby, with agents, turns, system prompts, tools, skills, sub-agents, and Rails persistence.
- [Voice, Not Brand — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/voice-not-brand/index.md): After two decades online, I've stopped conflating 'having a voice' with 'building a brand.' They're not the same thing, and the difference matters.
- [Weird Knowledge Compounds — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/weird-knowledge-compounds/index.md): True original thinking is rare. Not because it's hard, but because most people won't go where it lives.
- [What Building an AI Orchestration Layer Taught Me About Prompting — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/what-building-an-ai-orchestration-layer-taught-me/index.md): I built an AI orchestration API and accidentally 10x'd my understanding of prompting.
- [When Anyone Can Build, Judgment Wins — Sam Couch](https://samcouch.com/articles/when-anyone-can-build-judgment-wins/index.md): Engineering is no longer the hardest part of building software. The compounding hire now is a product thinker who chooses what to build, in what order, and why.