Notes from the workbench

Things I'm building, breaking, and learning.

Project write-ups, SEO experiments, automation notes, and honest lessons from my own builds — MeowTested, client sites, and whatever's currently on the bench.

FeaturedProject Notes

Meta Wants 20 Ad Creatives Where One Used to Do. I Built a Coworker.

How I turned a Teamwork user named Creative Bot into an autonomous Meta ad production system — brand-locked HTML rendering, comment-driven revisions, two clients live in two days, and the six failures that taught it judgment.

Conor Gotzens
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Project Notes

I Audited My AI Team: Every Failure Was Memory, Not Reasoning

A week after the month-one report I stopped the agents and read everything they'd written. The analysis was good. What they didn't know had already happened was the problem — including five straight weeks of recommending something I'd already been rejected for.

Conor Gotzens
Project Notes

My AI Team's First Report Card: One Real Win, Two Nulls, and $7.26

Four weeks after putting five AI agents in charge of my affiliate portfolio: the first graded SEO experiments, a dead link caught before it shipped, a race condition between two agents, and the honest revenue number.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

Claude for Small Business: The Complete Setup Guide (2026)

A step-by-step Claude for Small Business setup guide: picking the right plan, connecting QuickBooks and HubSpot, running your first workflows, and avoiding the common traps.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

What Claude for Small Business Can't Do (and How to Fill the Gaps)

Claude for Small Business limitations, honestly assessed: no website or SEO help, no scheduled runs, generic out of the box — and what actually fills each gap.

Conor Gotzens
Project Notes

How I Actually Run My Business on Claude

What it looks like to run a solo web and SEO business on Claude daily — scheduled agents, approval gates, written playbooks — and what small businesses can copy from it.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

Claude for Small Business Cost: What You'll Actually Pay (2026)

Claude for Small Business cost breakdown: the plugin is free, but the real price is your Claude plan, your connected tools, and setup time. Full math inside.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

The 15 Claude for Small Business Workflows, Ranked by Which to Turn On First

All the Claude for Small Business workflows ranked into tiers — which to enable week one, which to wait on, and which are situational, from an automation practitioner.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

Claude + QuickBooks: What the Month-End Close and Invoice Chaser Workflows Actually Do

How the Claude QuickBooks connector works in practice — invoice chaser, month-end close, and margin analyzer under the approval model, plus the real limits.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

Claude + HubSpot: Lead Triage Without a Prompt Engineer

How Claude's HubSpot connector and lead triager workflow actually work — what it reads, what it drafts, the approval gate, and the scheduling gap to plan for.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

Is Claude Safe for Your Business Data? Permissions and Approvals, Explained

Is Claude safe for business data? How connector permissions, approval gates, and Anthropic's commercial data policy work — plus hygiene rules I'd set.

Conor Gotzens
Guides

Custom Claude Skills: Making the Small Business Pack Actually Fit Your Business

What custom Claude skills are, why the 15 stock small business skills feel generic, and a worked example of building a skill library that fits your company.

Conor Gotzens
Project Notes

I Hired an AI Team to Run My Affiliate Sites. Here's the Org Chart.

How I built a five-agent AI ops team — listener, analyst, maintenance, writer, SEO optimizer — that runs a five-site affiliate portfolio on a weekly schedule, and what the first live test run exposed.

Conor Gotzens
Build Log

Rebuilding This Site: Two SVG Cats, a Physics Toy Mouse, and a One-File Design System Swap

A technical build log of this site's redesign — swapping an entire dark theme for a warm editorial one without touching most components, and building interactive cats that respect accessibility, brand rules, and your click targets.

Conor Gotzens
Build Log

DriftHaven: Building an AI Video Pipeline on One 16 GB GPU (Every Wall I Hit)

The unfiltered iteration log of DriftHaven — an automated pipeline that turns a prompt into a branded, 3-hour 4K ambience video overnight: the VRAM ceiling hunt, the emoji that crashed production, and why AV1 saved the project.

Conor Gotzens
Project Notes

Building MeowTested: Running My Own Site Like a Client Engagement

The full build story of MeowTested — an Astro affiliate content site with a real tester network, a Search Console-driven content loop, and one big business-model pivot.

Conor Gotzens
Use Cases

Top 5 AI Automation Workflows for Local Service Businesses

Discover practical, easy-to-implement AI workflows that HVAC companies, plumbers, electricians, and local contractors can use to save time, close more leads, and improve customer service.

Conor Gotzens