The Dream Steps Journal

Working notes on design, technology, and AI.

No fluff. No listicles. Writing from inside the work — for founders, product teams, and marketers who care about getting the details right. We publish what we wish someone had told us before we shipped.

From the journal

Moving from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress — when it is worth it

Site builders are how most businesses get their first website — and a builder that was perfect at launch can quietly become the constraint two years later. When the move to WordPress is worth it, and how to do it without losing traffic.

AI agents vs traditional automation — which does your workflow need?

AI agents and traditional automation both take work off your team, and the words get used interchangeably. They are not the same thing. Automation follows fixed rules; an agent decides what to do, step by step. Choosing the wrong one is expensive in both directions.

AI feature vs AI-first product — which are you building?

An AI feature is a capability added to a product that works without it. An AI-first product is one where, take the AI away, there is no product at all. Knowing which you are building changes the scope, the funding, the risk, and the moat.

How to scope an AI product MVP that actually proves something

An AI product MVP has a different job from a normal MVP. A normal MVP tests whether people want the thing. An AI MVP also has to test whether the AI can actually do the thing reliably — and those are two separate risks.

Migrating from BigCommerce or Magento to Shopify — a practical guide

Re-platforming a store is nerve-wracking because the store is the revenue. Why stores move to Shopify, what a migration really involves, and how a staged approach keeps SEO, data, and uptime safe.

Django vs FastAPI — which Python framework should you build on?

Django and FastAPI are both Python web frameworks, and teams treat the choice as a fight. It is not one. Django is a batteries-included framework for building a whole product; FastAPI is a lean, async, typed framework for APIs and services. The honest question is which one fits the thing you are actually building.

Do you actually need Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is one of the most powerful pieces of infrastructure software ever built — and one of the most over-adopted. The honest question is not whether it is good. It is whether you have the problem it solves.

Evals for AI products — why you build the test before the feature

For an AI product, the evaluation suite is not QA you add at the end. It is the product specification, the regression safety net, and the only honest measure of whether the thing works. For an AI-first product, the evals come first.

Express vs NestJS — which Node.js framework should you choose?

Express and NestJS sit at opposite ends of one axis: how much structure the framework gives you. Express gives almost none, on purpose. NestJS gives a great deal, on purpose. The right choice is about your team and your timeline.

How AI agents actually work — tools, loops, and where they break

An AI agent sounds like magic and is, underneath, a fairly simple loop: the model decides on an action, the action runs, the model sees the result, and it decides again. Understanding that loop tells you what agents are good at, what they cost, and where they break.