Daily research brief
Collect approved sources, remove duplicates, and deliver a sourced summary that is ready for human review.
Starter cost$0
Mike’s AI Forge · a practical build every week
Build one useful AI agent every week—without wasting money on the wrong tools.
Watch Mike build a practical agent from start to finish. See the workflow, tools, real costs, failure points, and human checks—then copy the setup with the free Agent Kit.
- No income promises
- No mystery stack
- Human review stays in
Forge Preflight · practical fallback
Choose the smallest useful workflow first.
Before buying an AI tool, keep the task manual if it takes less than an hour per month. For larger repeated work, write down a correct result, make every action reviewable, and test with non-sensitive examples before granting access.
- Choose one repeated, low-consequence task with clear inputs and outputs.
- Start with tools you already have and keep a person at the final decision.
- Run five representative tests, including a missing-input case and a safe rollback.
This week in the Forge
See the agent work before you copy it.
Each build starts with one repetitive job and ends with a workflow you can inspect. Mike shows what worked, what failed, what it cost, and where a human still needs to approve the result.
- 01The problemOne job worth repeating—not a vague “AI business.”
- 02The stack and real costWhat each tool does, what it costs, and what can stay free.
- 03The failure pointsWhat broke in testing and how the workflow was corrected.
- 04The human checkpointWhere a person verifies the output before anything consequential happens.
Three useful starting points
Start with one job worth repeating.
The best first agent is boring, clear, and easy to check. These three practical starter workflows are included in the free Agent Kit.
Content repurposer
Turn one approved video or article into draft posts without publishing anything automatically.
Human checkBefore publish
Lead qualifier
Summarize inbound leads against written criteria and send the result to a person before any reply.
Human checkBefore reply
Free starting system
Stop buying tools. Start with a plan.
The free Forge Agent Kit gives you a way to choose, build, test, and improve one useful workflow without turning your software bill into the project.
01Opportunity scorecard for choosing the right task
02Three practical, copy-ready starter blueprints
03A seven-day build and testing loop
04Tool-budget and privacy guardrails
The Forge standard
Useful beats impressive.
Real demonstrations
A build should show inputs, steps, outputs, and failures—not just a polished final screen.
Honest costs
Free options, optional paid tools, and API costs are separated so you can decide before subscribing.
Human checkpoints
No automatic publishing, purchasing, rejecting, or sending without a clearly visible review step.
Clear research labels
The directory indexes tools for research. “Tested by Mike” is reserved for products he has personally used.
Need help shipping the first one?
Have Mike build one useful workflow with you.
The Founding Agent Sprint is a focused seven-day service for one repetitive job: a working prototype, five real tests, a human approval point, and a recorded handoff you can run yourself.
- Written scope before payment
- One in-scope revision
- No income guarantees
- Optional software requires approval
The research directory
Choose the workflow first. Find the tool second.
The full Arsenal remains available as a separate research library of tool profiles, categories, blueprints, and guides. Inclusion means indexed for research—not automatically tested or endorsed by Mike.