Making complex systems more human.
Field notes on IT leadership, AI automation, systems, travel, and the road.
I'm Rico Tan, an IT and operations leader based in San Francisco. This is my public notebook for what I'm learning, building, breaking, fixing, cooking, riding, photographing, and thinking through.
Some notes are technical. Some are personal. Some are experiments in progress.
The common thread: making complex systems more understandable, useful, and human.
Current position
- Mode
- Building
- Location
- San Francisco
- Focus
- Practical AI automation, IT operations, and systems thinking
- Question
- How do we reduce context switching without creating another dashboard?
- Exploring
- AI agents, human approval gates, audit trails, motorcycle routes, and better coffee.
Route legend
- Field Notes Practical lessons from IT leadership, automation, security, governance, and operations. 33 notes
- Builder Log Experiments, workflows, broken things, rebuilds, AI agents, home lab systems, and lessons learned. 25 notes
- Road Notes Motorcycle trips, travel reflections, food, photography, and places worth remembering. 46 notes
- Photo Notes Visual field notes from travel, food, motorcycles, and photography. 4 notes
- Decision Notes Choices, trade-offs, and the reasoning behind them — written down so future-me remembers why. 1 note
Latest notes
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What Is an AI Hallucination? A Plain-English Guide
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I Was at OpenAI DevDay 2026. Dots Changed the Question From “Can AI Help?” to “What Should It Own?”
A firsthand OpenAI DevDay 2026 field report on Dots, ChatGPT Space, GPT-6.1 Sol, and the governance questions persistent…
What Background Jobs Taught Me About Reliable AI Agents
Moving 18 scheduled AI jobs from cloud to local looks like a cost exercise. It is really a…
Visual log
All photo notes →
