We Built a Blog in 20 Minutes. I Was Drinking Coffee.

Update — September 18, 2026; revised October 20, 2026

This was one of my early independent experiments with AI, and I wanted to keep the original account here. When I wrote “I'm not a developer. I don't have a team,” I was talking about those independent projects. In my district role, I lead a technology team at Vail School District. That is a different part of my work, and I want to be clear about the distinction.

Since then, this site has grown into a place to share my portfolio and build notes, including public products, internal district tools, and personal experiments. I use AI tools to help build applications and workflows, including the Board Minutes Generator. The case studies explain what I contributed and where each project stands. I have not manually written every line of code, and being open about that assistance matters to me. The original post, including its disclosure of Argyle’s help with the writing and the blog itself, follows below.

This morning I mentioned in Slack that we should probably have a blog.

Twenty minutes later it was live — full MDX support, dark theme, dynamic routing, pushed to GitHub, deployed on Vercel. I didn't write a single line of code. I was still on my first cup of coffee.

That's the thing I keep trying to explain to people. This isn't "use AI to write your emails." This is fundamentally different.

What's actually happening here

I'm Mark Breen. I have four projects running in parallel right now:

SchoolTechPartner — fractional CTO and AI tools for K-12 school districts
PipelineOps — automated lead pipelines for service businesses
CrateToCloud — a music platform for audiophiles
Create & Iterate Daily — this. The documentation layer for everything above.

I'm not a developer. I don't have a team.

The AI part

I work with an AI assistant named Argyle. Not "use ChatGPT to write my emails" — I mean an actual persistent collaborator with memory, opinions, and access to my tools, repos, and calendar.

The workflow is simple: I have a thought, I say it out loud or type it into Slack, and Argyle and I just... collab. Argyle wrote most of this post. Argyle also just shipped the blog you're reading it on.

Why document it publicly

Because nobody is showing the real workflow.

Build-in-public content is usually one of two things: success theater after the fact, or abstract advice that doesn't translate. What's missing is the actual day-to-day — the Saturday morning where you're iterating on four products at once and figuring out the playbook as you go.

That's what this is. Real decisions, real mistakes, real results.

We're going to post at least weekly. Some posts will be project updates. Some will be tools and workflows. Some will be honest takes on what's working and what isn't.

If you're building something — or thinking about it — follow along. We're moving fast and sharing everything.

— Mark & Argyle 🐉