A Sunday Check-In: AI, Small-Business Momentum, and Showing Up

Some weeks are easy to summarize with one big milestone. This one feels more like a collection of useful things moving forward: trying new ways to work with AI, making progress on two small software businesses, and staying connected to the people and community that keep life grounded.

It is Sunday, and I am ending the week grateful for all three.

AI as a Practical Part of the Workday

I have been using Muse in a couple of everyday ways: helping me think through Kalshi bets and helping me manage my email. I like having a tool that can help organize information and work through a question when I am juggling several things. For anything involving a market or a wager, though, that support is just one input—not a guarantee, a prediction I can rely on, or a substitute for my own judgment. The decisions and the risk are still mine.

I have also been using Opus 5.5 to explore fresh UI and UX directions and to help create content for Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok. Those are different kinds of work, but both benefit from getting a new angle quickly. A design can feel familiar because I have been looking at it too long; a draft can be technically fine but still need a stronger opening. AI gives me another starting point to react to.

The useful part is not handing over the whole job. It is making the blank page less blank. I still need to decide whether a screen makes sense, whether a piece of content sounds like me, and whether an idea is worth pursuing. The tools help me explore options; taste, context, and follow-through still matter.

A Fresh Update for GetMandalo

GetMandalo had a fresh update this week, and the site also received a new signup. A signup is an early signal—not proof of a lasting customer or a finished growth story—but it is encouraging to see someone take the first step.

That kind of small response is useful when you are building independently. It gives you a reason to keep paying attention: Is the product clear? Does the updated experience make the next step easier? What questions might a new person have? One signup does not answer all of that, but it turns the work from something purely hypothetical into something a real person has encountered.

The next job is to keep improving the experience and learn from what people actually do, rather than assume that an update automatically solved everything. That is a slower, steadier kind of progress, but it is the kind I can build on.

UseManifest Is Finding Its Footing

UseManifest is getting traction and has also been improved. I have been building it around a problem I know from making iOS apps: App Store information can be spread across reports and screens, and it takes effort to turn the numbers into a useful picture of what changed.

Manifest is meant to help independent developers review their App Store portfolio more clearly, while keeping Apple’s reporting as the source of truth. Its public overview describes a daily record, a portfolio view, and calculations that are explained rather than hidden. The goal is not to replace App Store Connect or promise that a dashboard will make product decisions for you. It is to make the evidence easier to review so you can spend less time assembling context and more time deciding what deserves attention.

Improving a product while it is beginning to find an audience is a balancing act. I want to respond to what is useful, make the experience clearer, and avoid adding complexity just to make a changelog longer. The traction is encouraging; the responsibility now is to keep earning it.

Remembering What the Numbers Do Not Measure

The product work is satisfying, but it is only one part of a good week. Church today was great. I am still chugging along as a greeter, and I got to see fellow brothers from church—the same people I also see for our Tuesday group sessions.

There is something grounding about seeing people in more than one setting. Sunday service and Tuesday group are different rhythms, but both create room to know one another beyond a quick hello. Being a greeter is a simple way to help people feel welcomed, and it gives me a chance to serve while staying connected myself.

That community does not show up in a product dashboard. It is not a signup count or a line in a weekly status report. But it matters just as much as the visible milestones, maybe more. Work and side projects can always produce another task. Relationships take a different kind of attention: showing up, listening, and making time consistently.

A Week Made of Small Forward Steps

This week did not hinge on one dramatic launch. It was a mix of experimentation, product improvements, an encouraging new signup, and time with people who matter.

I am learning where AI fits into my actual routines—not as a replacement for judgment, but as help with research, ideation, and getting started. GetMandalo is moving forward. UseManifest is improving and beginning to find its audience. And Sunday brought me back to the value of community and service.

That is enough to make this feel like a good week. The next steps are straightforward: keep listening, keep making the products better, and keep showing up for the work and people in front of me.

Image: A recent mobile screenshot of the UseManifest website. The dashboard preview shown on the site uses illustrative sample data, not a real account.