Building in public. One person, AI-native, every industry. Writing about what actually works when you stop hiring and start building.
building-in-public
This is the first building-in-public update for The Solo Stack. I plan to do these regularly — honest snapshots of what's happening, what's working, and what isn't. The premise is simple: if I'm going to write about solo building with AI, I should
economics
Everyone talks about AI making things cheaper. Almost nobody shares actual numbers. So let's fix that. I'm going to break down what AI actually costs to run productively as a solo builder in 2026. Not the free tier. Not the "just use ChatGPT" version.
workflows
There's a progression that every solo builder goes through with AI, and most people get stuck at stage two. Stage 1: The question-asker. You type questions into a chat interface. You get answers. It's helpful. Stage 2: The power user. You write better prompts. You chain
strategy
Every few months, someone publishes an article claiming that AI is about to replace lawyers. Or accountants. Or consultants. Or designers. The specifics vary, but the story is always the same: AI can now do X, so people who do X are obsolete. This is wrong in an important and
strategy
I need to talk about a failure mode I know intimately. It goes like this: You decide to build AI systems for your solo practice. You start designing workflows, setting up databases, creating automation pipelines. It's genuinely interesting work. You can feel the leverage building. You architect a
strategy
There's a segment of the market that's quietly getting disrupted, and most of the incumbents haven't noticed yet. It's not the enterprise market — those companies have budgets, procurement processes, and compliance requirements that favor large vendors. And it's not the
how-to
People always ask about the tools. "What do you use? What's your stack?" As if the right combination of subscriptions is the secret. It's not. But the question isn't entirely wrong, either. Your stack matters — just not in the way most people
strategy
Most people use AI like a search engine with personality. They open a chat, ask a question, get an answer, close the tab. This is like buying a CNC machine and using it as a paperweight. Technically you own the tool. Functionally you're getting almost nothing from it.
economics
Let's talk about math. In 2023, a solo consultant billing $150/hour could realistically handle about 25 clients. The bottleneck wasn't expertise. It was time. Research, drafting, communication, follow-up, admin. Each client consumed roughly 6-8 hours per month of work, and maybe 3 of those hours
meta
Something is happening that most people haven't noticed yet. A solo accountant in Ohio is processing more returns than a team of four did three years ago. A one-person design studio in Berlin is winning contracts against agencies with fifteen employees. An independent consultant in Toronto just delivered