* a daily-weekday notebook, kept in public

The Slow
Builds.

kept by Ankit Aggarwal - mostly for myself Product manager. Twenty-odd years shipping software. Bangalore.

AI is rushing.
This notebook is the opposite.

I tinker slowly, in the open - one small thing per weekday, written in plain past tense, with the actual artifact attached. No forecasts. Just what I tried, what broke, what I kept.

↳ if you wanted hot takes,
   you are in the wrong notebook.
the week - M claude code · T cleo · W reachy mini · T decoded · F strategy ↑ this monday
01

A week, five slow builds

one per weekday ↗

Each day of the workweek, one ongoing build gets one episode of attention. Then I close the laptop. Below: what lives on which day, and the latest from each.

  1. i. up next
    pillar - claude code for product managers

    Claude Code for Product Managers

    A skill, a hook, or an agent of the week, picked apart from the angle of a non-engineer who actually ships with it.

  2. ii.
    pillar - adventures of cleo

    Adventures of Cleo

    Cleo is an OpenClaw install that lives on my machine and occasionally lives a life of its own.

  3. iii.
    pillar - teaching reachy mini

    Teaching Reachy Mini

    Embodied AI tinkering. One thing per week, taught to a small desktop robot, by one impatient adult.

  4. iv.
    pillar - decoded

    Decoded

    Deep tech launches translated for product managers, often paired with a small build to demonstrate the new thing is, in fact, the new thing.

  5. v.
    pillar - strategy in plain sight

    Strategy in Plain Sight

    One AI company a week. One decision unpacked from public sources, in thirty minutes.

02

Rules I taped above the desk

↙ broken weekly

Six small rules. Mostly for me. They keep the notebook honest when I am tempted to make it look like a brand.

  • anti-hype - if a sentence could appear on a launch tweet, cut it.
  • first-person, literal - I did this thing. Not "we are seeing teams do this thing."
  • real artifacts only - a screenshot, a repo, a config, a transcript. Or it didn't happen.
  • long enough, no longer - the post ends when the build ends.
  • mistakes get top billing - what broke goes above the fold, not in a footnote.
  • past tense, always - I will not predict. I will tell you what already occurred.
p.s. - when I break one, I will say so in the entry.
03

The room

↳ Bangalore, monthly

A small monthly dinner in Bangalore for founders, product managers, and builders who would rather talk about what is messy than what is shippable. Eight to twelve people. Closed invite, not a meetup-dot-com listing. First dinner happens when the reading list crosses a hundred regulars - if that's you, send a line on LinkedIn and I'll add you to the room shortlist.

04

Following along

[[ optional ]]

The notebook posts five evenings a week, after the day is done. No mailing list, no welcome series, no drip funnel. If you want a nudge when something new lands, follow on LinkedIn - I cross-post each one as it goes up.

written in
a single notebook, on a slow desk in a quiet room.
type
Source Serif 4, with Caveat for marginalia.
not for
launch threads, AI doomscrolling, growth hacks.
for
PMs, builders, founders who like to think before they ship.
- Ankit
The Slow Builds  ·  mmxxvi  ·  one notebook, kept in public.