Systems for Humans — Issue 2
May 1, 2026 · By Mxo Masuku
Happy Workers' Day to all of us who will eventually lose our jobs to AI.
This issue is about how we interact with external systems. The notifications that bully us into picking up our phones, the tools we use to claw back time, and whether we even need the phone in the first place.
Can Claude Skills Save Us From The Smartphone?
I built a set of Claude Skills that pull my calendar, email, Slack, and iMessage into one prioritized rundown. For the first time, I didn't feel pressured to touch my phone.
You're not addicted to your phone. You check it because it's the only reliable way to not miss something important. Remove that uncertainty and the compulsion goes away. One command doing the work of six apps.
I also published my first public Claude Skills repository. Fork it, steal from it, make it yours.
masuku-claude-skills on GitHub
The Cost of Notifications
If you build apps, this one matters.
I documented the thinking behind the notification system for LongGame, my upcoming life auditing app. The problem: LongGame nudges people toward things they don't naturally want to do (discipline, long-term projects), but my ideal users already hate low-value notifications.
The piece covers the behavioral engineering behind notification design and a Duolingo case study, the real cost of each notification on your infrastructure, and how to respect your users' attention.
For developers: there's a technical companion piece. A step-by-step Flutter walk-through for building local notifications that fire on time, survive restarts, and work when the phone is locked.
Build Reliable Local Notifications in Flutter
Firestore Architecture for Multi-Tenant SaaS
Most Firestore tutorials stop at "put a tenantId on every document." The harder question is how your collections hold up at 10, 100, 1,000 users with different data volumes.
Written from direct experience building Trogern (fleet management SaaS for Zimbabwe's taxi industry). Includes a simulator for modelling your own Firestore costs before you commit to an architecture.
The Good Stuff I Came Across
Getting started with Claude Skills · If you're wondering what I keep going on about, this 50-minute video by Zara Khan walks you through building skills from scratch. Best single starting point I've found. Watch it
What's Worth Knowing in AI Right Now · Developer Voices podcast. Henry Garner (CTO of JUXT, ~150 engineers) talks about what actually matters in AI tooling right now. His thesis on velocity through clarity of intent is worth your time. Listen on Spotify
Mapping Artificial Intelligence Terrain ·For those curious about the foundations of AI. Mthokozisi Mabhena wrote a breakdown of AI through four pillars: data, algorithms, infrastructure, and application. He lays out how AI training data and infrastructure concentrate power in a small number of countries and corporations. More importantly, how the global inequality gap widens through the very way these systems are built. This is a must read for us in countries that are on the consuming end of AI. My take from this: AI is not your friend, it's a tool reflecting what the trainer knows about the world. Your world. Read it on Substack
Google's Free 5-Day Vibe Coding Course · Google and Kaggle are running a free AI Agents Intensive focused on building production-ready agents with natural language. The first edition pulled 1.5 million learners. Updated content, hands-on capstone, zero cost. June 15-19, 2026 · Register on Kaggle
If you found this useful, forward it to someone who builds things.
Until next time.
Mxo
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