← Prodigal Paradigm

The Tool Shelf
free, live, and honest

Five working tools, each built inside Claude and given away. They share three rules: no signup, no data collected — nothing you type or tap leaves the page — and each one is a lesson wearing an app's clothes. They're built on a standing bet: that ordinary hands, given the right tool, can do expert work. So far the bet keeps paying.

Live Tool · Management Simulator

A Week with Fred

Fred is your best employee. Fred is brilliant. Fred wakes up every morning with total amnesia. Spend five short days as his manager: correct him, watch the correction vanish overnight, then make the real move — stop managing the agent, start managing the scaffolding. You've already worked with a human Fred. Companion to the essay Human Fred vs. LLM Fred.

Meet Fred →

Live Tool · Self-Check

The Supersuit Check

Eight questions about how you actually work with your AI — two minutes, two taps each. You get a verdict (on the hanger, one sleeve on, or in the seat), a readout across six dimensions, and one prescription: the single enhancement to put on this week, starter prompt included. Companion to the essay The First Framework That Thinks.

Take the check →

Live Tool · AI Literacy

Coffee with Claude in a Box

Lesson one of my Millbrook Library class, packaged to travel: say hello properly. A guided first conversation for someone who has never used an AI — patient by design, works on a phone, no account needed. Made to be handed across a table to a neighbor.

Open lesson one →

Live Tool · AEO Audit

Answerable

Answer engines are already reading your website and deciding what to say about you. Answerable scores any public page across ten dimensions — the same rubric I use in practice — and reports what a machine can and can't answer about your business. Paste a page, get the audit.

Audit a page →

Live Tool · Fieldwork

The Recruiter's Field Kit

Most AI-era reqs are more than one job. Decode the req, get the searches, score the person — in whatever AI assistant you already use. Free account is fine. Nothing to install.

Open the kit →

These tools are how the practice thinks in public. If you'd like the version built for your team — your rubric, your workflow, your governance — that's the day job.