Good Dirt No. 1October 17, 2026
My AI has a rulebook. Rule one is about dashes.
The one habit that turned my AI from a clever intern into a crew I trust, three prompts to steal, and the week I filled my laptop to zero.
01 · The porch
Hi, friend.
It is Saturday, the coffee is hot, and the dogs have already decided the lake is too cold for swimming, which has never once stopped them from going in.
This is Good Dirt, my letter. Every other Saturday I will send you the real dirt on building with AI, running a business from a small town in Montana, and growing things that last. One cup of coffee long. No fluff, nothing I would not tell you across my kitchen table.
If we have not met: I am Sarah. I spent fifteen years in high-ticket sales and design, the last three building with AI and code, and now I run Modern Mustard Seed, a studio where a crew of AI agents does a lot of the work and I do the deciding. My husband Anthony runs it with me. Our son Easton is the funniest person in our house, and he would want that in writing.
02 · The dirt
Write the law the day you get burned.
Here is the single habit that turned my AI from a clever intern into a crew I trust.
Every time an agent makes a mistake, I write a law. The same day. Not a sticky note, not a mental reminder. One plain sentence with the reason under it, in a file the agents read before they start any work.
Some of my laws are serious. Production ships one way only. One client’s keys never go into another client’s project. Some are about taste. There is a law, an actual written law, that no agent of mine may use an em dash. They adored them. I did not. One line ended it forever.
Why it works: an AI does not remember last Tuesday. It starts every morning fresh, like a golden retriever. Brilliant, eager, and no memory at all of the shoe incident. Your laws are its memory. My studio runs on twenty standing orders now, and every one of them was paid for by a real mistake.
- Open a plain document and call it Rules.
- Write the last three things an AI got wrong for you, as rules. “Never invent a price.” “Write in first person.” “Keep emails under 120 words.”
- Put it where the AI reads it every time: the instructions box in a Claude Project or a ChatGPT Project, or pasted at the top of the chat.
- Every time it misses, add a line. Every time a line turns out wrong, cut it. The file is alive.
03 · Three seeds
Three things to try this week.
- Type it like you would say it.
Stop writing prompts like search terms. Talk to it like a sharp new hire on day one: who it is for, what good looks like, what to avoid.
Write a follow-up to the bakery owner I met Tuesday. She was worried about cost. Under 100 words, warm, no pressure, and one easy next step. - Make it interview you first.
Before any big piece of work, add one line. You get better work, and you find out what you had not decided yet.
Before you start, ask me the five questions you need answered to do this well. Wait for my answers. - Make it grade its own homework.
After the first draft, hand it your Rules file and let it be the editor. It catches its own em dashes. Mostly.
Grade this draft against my rules from 1 to 10. List every rule it broke, then rewrite it with all of them fixed.
04 · Things I broke
The honest part.
- I filled my laptop to zero.
I let several agent sessions work on the website at the same time. Each one politely downloaded the entire video library, six times over, and the drive hit zero bytes free. Not low. Zero.
New lawMedia work happens in its own copy of the project, one session at a time.
- A website kept talking about its owner like he had left the room.
A demo site we built for a landscaper said “Tell him what he is walking into” on a site that was supposed to be him talking. I found it in one heading. It was in twenty-five lines across twelve files.
New lawEvery site we build speaks in first person, we and us, and a checker reads every page before it ships.
- The unsubscribe button did nothing for eleven days.
Gmail showed people a lovely confirmation. Our server quietly ignored them. They thought they were gone and they were not.
New lawTest every button the way a stranger would, by pressing it. The unsubscribe link at the bottom of this letter works. I pressed it myself.
05 · One good thing
Small is a starting size.
On Sundays I run a camera for the production team at Fresh Life Church. Nobody in the room sees the person behind the lens, and that is exactly the point.
The studio is named for the mustard seed in Matthew 13, the least of all seeds that grows into a tree the birds come and rest in. I think about that every time I start something tiny and feel silly about it. Small is not a verdict. It is a starting size.