Hey, it's Martin.
Happy new year (can we still say that this late in January?)!
Ended up taking a slightly longer break than planned. Mostly due to the absolute insane speed our AI consulting business has had at the start of the year!
But, I’m back now! And I have a ton of cool stuff to share with you in the next few weeks based on stuff we’re working on at Glassboks.
Everyone's hunting for the AI edge. Most are looking in the wrong place.
It's not the latest model. Not the trending wrapper app. It's something most people won't touch: the terminal.
Specifically, Claude Code with skills.
The unsexy truth about AI leverage right now: the highest-impact tooling looks like a black screen with a blinking cursor. And that's exactly why it's an advantage.
Most people won't do this. The terminal feels intimidating. There's a learning curve. And yeah, Anthropic just released Claude Co-work which gives you a friendlier interface.
But here's the thing—there's something fundamentally different about working in the raw environment.
This is the closest thing we have right now to an AGI-type team member. Not in the sci-fi sense. In the practical sense. An entity that can research, plan, execute, iterate, and chain tasks together without you micromanaging every step.
The unlock is skills.
Skills are modular capabilities you can install or build yourself. Think of them like superpowers you give your AI teammate. There are skills for research workflows, marketing tasks, financial analysis, code generation, content creation—basically anything you do repeatedly.
You can find skills online and plug them in. Or build your own. Or chain multiple skills together into complex workflows.
Here's what that looks like in practice: this week I built a skill that takes rough voice notes, expands them into full newsletter drafts matching my writing style, scores them against a QA rubric, and rewrites anything that doesn't hit the bar. The whole pipeline runs in one command. What used to take me two hours now takes fifteen minutes.
I've got another skill that monitors competitor websites and drops a summary in my inbox every Monday. One that preps client research before discovery calls. One that turns meeting transcripts into structured action items.
It's become my default way of working. Most of my computer time now happens in the terminal with Claude Code running in the background.
The leverage is insane. Not because it's faster (though it is). Because it changes the nature of what you can take on. Projects that felt like "I'd need to hire someone for that" become "I'll spin that up this afternoon."
Yeah, the terminal is daunting if you've never used one. But that's exactly why this works as a moat right now. Most people will wait for prettier interfaces. Most people will stick with chat windows and copy-pasting.
The ones who learn the raw tooling now will operate at a different level by the time everyone else catches up.
That gap is temporary. But it's real.
If you're serious about building leverage with AI, start here. Install Claude Code. Find a few skills that match your work. Build one of your own. Get comfortable in the terminal.
It's not glamorous. But neither is any real competitive advantage.
PS: Anthropic recently released Cowork in their Claude app. It’s basically the above in a more user-friendly interface. If the terminal scares you, start there 🙂
Until next time,
Martin
PS: feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hi! It’s always fun to chat with new readers.
PS2: want to accelerate AI adoption in your business? Book a free 30-min disovery call here.