Field Notes
Notes for Wisconsin manufacturing owners on what AI costs, where it works and how to keep control of it. Each one is tested or sourced, and short enough to read between meetings.
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AI spending · October 2026
Pay for seats, not tokens
A flat-rate AI subscription buys far more than the same money spent per use. What to pay for so your people can build with AI, who gets a seat, and why the deal won't last.
Read with: Keep your decisions in-house
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Running AI · October 2026
Keep your decisions in-house
Open-weight AI models are good enough for most business judgment calls, especially when ordinary code does the heavy lifting. How to run them where you decide, from the cloud to your own building.
Read with: Pay for seats, not tokens
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Local AI · Tested October 2026
Can a box in your building run your AI?
Seven open-weight AI models on one desk-side Mac, tested against Claude on 25 business tasks. Routine work is solved locally. Harder judgement isn't, and the local failures are confident.
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Want this applied to your plant?
Every note ends in the same place: the right answer depends on your people, your data and your processes. In 30 minutes we can work out which of these applies to you first.
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