mickdonahue
Writing / 26 posts
Published on the Apify Blog

How AI agents misread your Apify Actor's input schema →

I handed my Reddit Actor to an AI agent, traced its confidently wrong results to gaps in the input schema, and documented the experiments and fixes.

READ THE ARTICLE ON APIFY BLOG →
2026-08-29
Mission Control: I Stopped Watching Everything →
My job changed from watching the system to checking whether it is still doing what I expect. A tour of the three Mission Control tabs - Flow, Log, and Stats - plus stale cron detection, live architecture, and the moon-gravity Goblin.
agentsdashboardmission-controlautomation
2026-08-07
I Built ChatGPT a Backend →
A private assistant built into the ChatGPT app a customer already uses daily. No new app, no bot to learn. Per-task model routing across DeepSeek, Haiku and Terra puts 100 generated reports at about $2.00, with no vendor rate limits. Plus the vector database I deleted before building it.
n8nretrievalself-hostedchatgpt
2026-07-26
Agents Are Confidently Wrong, Together →
I audited my own agent fleet and found that every report it sent me for two months was labeled with the wrong month. Real values pulled from a real file and attached to the wrong reality. What I built to fix it.
agentsaiaudithermes-agent
2026-07-19
Mission Control: Why I Ditched Complex Dashboards for a Simple Overview That Lets My Agents Do the Work →
From pixel-art characters to a lean infrastructure dashboard - how I stripped down my Mission Control to only show what matters, let agents handle the work, and finally got a dashboard that reflects my actual infrastructure.
agentsdashboardmission-controlautomation
2026-07-05
Mission Control: The Visual Dashboard That Changed How I Work With AI Agents →
A pixel-art dashboard showing every AI agent working live - character sprites, server racks, live activity feeds, and customer support pipelines in action. Inspired by agent-town, Hermes Agent, and OpenClaw apps.
agentsdashboardhermes-agentvisualization
2026-07-05
Building RatLabs OS: An Autonomous Agent Architecture That Runs From Your Phone →
Six agents across two VPSs, 20+ automated pipelines, and a visual dashboard - all controlled from a single Telegram chat. The complete architecture: agents, services, infrastructure, pipelines, and design philosophy.
agentsarchitecturehermes-agentautomation
2026-06-28
Goblin & Ghoul: Building an Autonomous Agent Army on $3/Day →
12 hours of non-stop agent work for $3. How Goblin orchestrates Ghoul across two VPSs - skills, commands, model routing, and watchdog scheduling without burning tokens.
agentsautomationhermes-agentarchitecture
2026-06-25
Building an Autonomous Apify Actor Factory with AI Subagents →
How I built a multi-agent AI system on Hermes Agent that handles actor knowledge, monetization strategy, QA review, customer support drafts, and code builds - all from Telegram.
hermes-agentapifyai-agentsarchitecture
2026-06-20
Building an IT Identity Verification Bot in Copilot Studio →
Stopping help desk impersonation with a low-code security bot built in a day using only what was already in the tenant -- Copilot Studio, Power Automate, Teams, and Entra ID.
CopilotStudioPowerAutomateTeamsCyberSecurity
2026-06-18
Six Months Into Agent Orchestration: What I've Learned →
Six months of agent deployment taught me about token economics, provider strategy, orchestration patterns, and why the playing field for building has fundamentally changed.
agentsaitokensorchestration
2026-03-23
From Local Vector Store to Cloud MCP: Building Infrastructure for AI Agents →
How a local Qdrant experiment became a cloud-hosted, x402-gated MCP server for AI agents.
ragagentsvpstools
2026-03-15
From GSD to Code-First: Claude Code, RAG, and Local Models →
How I moved from token-heavy planning workflows to a code-first approach using Claude Code, local RAG search, and intelligent model routing for 80% efficiency gains.
clauderaglocal-modelsworkflow
2026-03-08
AI Token Use: The Hidden Cost That'll Wreck Your Budget →
Why I stopped paying for premium AI subscriptions and switched to local models - and why you should too.
aitokensbudgetlocal-models
2026-03-07
Understanding Before Building →
Building first, understanding as you go. How diving deep into RAG concepts - embeddings, vector spaces, and semantic similarity as geometry - is what actually unlocks building AI systems.
airaglearning
2026-03-02
Building a Local RAG System with MCP for Codebase Search →
How I built a fully local RAG pipeline that indexes all my GitHub repos, embeds them with Ollama, stores vectors in Qdrant, and exposes semantic search through an MCP server -- no cloud APIs, no data leaving the machine.
ragmcpaipython
2026-02-27
Setting Up a Persistent WireGuard VPN on a Linode VPS →
How to setup your own VPN Server with Wireguard
vpnsecuritylinuxvps
2026-02-15
Building a RAG Content Chunker for the Apify Store →
How I built a token-aware chunking actor on Apify for RAG pipelines --- three splitting strategies, deterministic IDs, and zero API keys required.
ragapifyai
2026-02-13
Skills as a Service: Building for the Agent Economy →
How I built a translation skill that agents discover, call, and pay for -- no humans required.🦾
agentsapifyautomation
2025-11-28
Email Containment - Your Digital Fortress →
Plan to consolidate and take back control of you Email and Privacy
securityprivacy
2025-09-19
Part 2: Inside a Real-World RBCD Attack →
Part 2 reveals how a sloppy malware attempt failed due to poor execution and strong detection.
securityactive-directorykql
2025-09-16
Inside a Real-World RBCD Attack →
Real‑world RBCD breach: phishing entry, AD delegation abuse, detection queries, and hardening tips-all in a nutshell.
securityactive-directorykql
2025-06-08
WEASEL: My WSL2 BOOST for Productivity →
WEASEL Tools is my custom WSL2 setup that brings Linux efficiency and terminal superpowers to Windows 11. Built for speed, focus, and keyboard-driven productivity.
linuxtoolsproductivity
2025-05-09
My 9-Hour Journey into Arch Linux Ricing with Hyprland →
How I transformed a fresh Arch Linux install into a minimalist Hyprland desktop in 9 hours - Neovim, Waybar, and a fully keyboard-driven workflow.
linuxarchhyprlandricing
2025-02-15
Web Extension Development for Chrome and Edge →
Lessons learned building browser extensions for Chrome and Edge - Manifest V3, cross-browser compatibility, and navigating the store submission process.
javascriptbrowsertools
2025-02-10
Knowledge Management with Zettelkasten in Obsidian →
How I applied the Zettelkasten method inside Obsidian to build a personal knowledge system - atomic notes, emergent structure, and my RatVault implementation.
productivitynotesobsidian
2025-02-05
Advanced KQL for Real-time Analytics Dashboards →
Deep dive into Kusto Query Language - time series analysis, optimized joins, and building dynamic dashboards in Azure Log Analytics.
kqlanalyticsazuresecurity