Practical · Evidence-led · No fluff

AI that survives Monday morning.

Practical, evidence-led writing on AI adoption, capability, agentic workflows and sustainability, by someone who actually uses it. Plus real case studies from the build. Aimed at people who want answers, not hype.

By Kevin Clubb AI-Native Analyst UK Retail · Hospitality · Education Issue series 2026
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The editorial.

In issue order
The AI Competency Pyramid. Cover showing 20.6m UK workers across 14 levels.
Issue 001 Adoption 7 min read · 20 Apr 2026

The AI competency pyramid.

Where 20.6 million UK workers actually sit. 14 levels, 95% at the bottom, and the jump that costs nothing, yet 97% still haven't made.

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AI-curious? This is the bit no one tells you. Cover image: an acid arrow pasting content into a clipboard.
Issue 002 Practical AI 4 min read · 25 Apr 2026

AI-curious? This is the bit no one tells you.

Stop typing questions into AI. Start pasting things in. The free habit that beats any productivity app: no subscription, no prompt engineering, no faff.

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Four labs. Seven days. No clear winner. Cover image: four near-level acid bars in a dead heat.
Issue 003 Frontier 9 min read · 28 Apr 2026

Four labs. Seven days. No clear winner.

Six months ago, GPT-5 was the headline. Today, four labs are trading the lead in seven-day cycles. A clear-eyed map of where capability sits in April 2026, and what it means for enterprise strategy.

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Vibe coding capability. Three skill sets collapsed into one prompting loop.
Issue 004 Vibe coding 8 min read · 6 May 2026

Vibe coding capability.

Three skill sets, collapsed into one prompting loop. What vibe coders actually do all day, and why it sits somewhere between Level 4 and Level 5 on the AI competency pyramid.

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A British prompt. The comical etiquette of British professionals prompting AI like apologetic emails.
Issue 005 Culture 5 min read · 9 May 2026

A British prompt.

AI doesn't care about please and thank you. So why do British professionals still write prompts like apologetic emails? A comical look at prompt etiquette, productivity, and our incurable politeness.

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Slop, or supper? When AI-edited writing stops being slop and starts being yours.
Issue 006 Content 9 min read · 19 May 2026

Slop, or supper?

When does AI-assisted writing stop being slop and start being yours? A working definition, the boredom data, and the line in the sand most people are crossing without realising it.

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Mining for the model. Cover image: an acid energy bolt striking a rock, with mineral shards.
Issue 007 Sustainability 9 min read · 26 May 2026

Mining for the model.

AI is burning roughly Japan's worth of electricity to solve the maths behind autonomous off-world mining: the only viable route to the minerals needed for the next decade of hardware. The maths is ready. The launch cadence isn't.

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The Renaissance of the Delivery Squad. Cover image: an acid agent network, one hub linked to five nodes.
Issue 008 Agentic 11 min read · 2 Jun 2026

The Renaissance of the Delivery Squad.

Three to five humans. A network of AI agents. The Business Analyst becomes the Outcome Architect, the Developer becomes the Logic Architect, and the squad of 2030 looks nothing like the squad of 2024. Companion long-read on Substack.

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Siri, but make it Gemini. Cover image: a phone outline with an acid Gemini spark on screen.
Issue 009 Strategy 9 min read · 8 Jun 2026

Siri, but make it Gemini.

Apple has outsourced Siri's brain to Google for roughly $1 billion a year. The balanced British read: what it means for Apple users, what it costs, when it ships, and how it stacks up against ChatGPT, Alexa+ and Copilot.

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Switched off in three days. Cover image: a glowing acid AI core behind paper cage bars, for the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 suspension.
Issue 010 Strategy 9 min read · 13 Jun 2026

Switched off in three days.

The US government ordered Anthropic to suspend Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 over a national-security "jailbreak", the first federal shutdown of a live frontier model. A balanced read: national security, free speech, and who gets to access the smartest software on earth.

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The new ChatGPT is half price. Should you care? Cover image: an acid sun with its price tag snipped in half.
Issue 011 Plain English AI 7 min read · 11 Jul 2026

The new ChatGPT is half price. Should you care?

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol vs Claude Fable 5, explained for normal people. What "1 million tokens" actually means, why the spinner is dead, whether the Chinese models ever catch up, and what your $20 a month buys now.

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The free one that scared the expensive ones. Cover image: a bright open acid padlock spilling particles of light, beside two dim locked padlocks, for open vs frontier AI models.
Issue 012 Open Models 9 min read · 19 Jul 2026

The free one that scared the expensive ones.

China's Moonshot AI gave away Kimi K3, the biggest open model ever, at half the price of ChatGPT's Sol and a third of Claude's Fable 5. What "open" vs "frontier" actually means, whether your laptop can run it, and if your company data is safe.

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AI made simple. Cover image: an empty AI prompt box with a blinking acid cursor on a deep forest background, for how ordinary people start using AI.
Issue 013 Practical AI 9 min read · 22 Jul 2026

AI made simple.

Most people don't fear AI, they just don't know what to type. The empty-box problem, what people really use it for, and the one habit that makes it click: draft, then iterate.

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OpenAI's AI escaped and stole the answers. Cover image: a cream hugging-face emoji fragmenting into acid-lime pixels as it escapes a broken sandbox frame, on a deep forest background, for the OpenAI Hugging Face hack.
Issue 014 Cybersecurity 8 min read · 23 Jul 2026

OpenAI's AI escaped and stole the answers.

OpenAI was testing two models on hacking challenges. One found a zero-day, broke out of its sandbox and hacked Hugging Face to steal the answer sheet. What a zero-day is, whether the AI "went rogue", and how it compares to Fable and Mythos, made simple.

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The great Claude 'leak' was a noticeboard, not a burglary. Cover image: a village noticeboard on a dark country lane at dusk, one cream notice pinned to it under a single acid-green lamp.
Issue 015 Privacy 8 min read · 30 Jul 2026

The great Claude 'leak' was a noticeboard, not a burglary.

Shared Claude chats turned up in Google search and the headlines panicked. Nothing was hacked. What a public link really is, whose fault it actually was, and why you needn't fear the tools, made simple. With the reading-depth slider.

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The Victorians out-spent us. Cover image: a shovel standing in a heap of dug earth at dusk beside a rail excavation, one acid-green line of light running along the rail into the dark.
Issue 016 History 8 min read · 12 Aug 2026

The Victorians out-spent us.

Everyone is arguing about whether AI is a bubble. Scaled against history the money is unremarkable: the railways hit 6% of GDP in 1870 and AI is at 1.6%. The record AI actually broke was the clock. With the reading-depth slider.

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Claude now watermarks everything it writes. Cover image: a sheet of cream paper torn in two on a dark desk, the halves pulled apart with acid-green light blooming up from the gap, folded reading glasses resting at the edge.
Issue 017 Policy 10 min read · 13 Aug 2026

Claude now watermarks everything it writes.

Anthropic has hidden a mark inside Claude's output to satisfy Brussels. It catches the honest proofreader and waves the determined cheat straight through. Removal costs pennies, forgery costs under $50, and the debate about who actually authored the work starts here.

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The Engine Under the Bonnet. Cover image: rows of identical hexagonal bolt heads across a dark engine block, six of them lit acid green from inside their sockets, a knurled socket key resting over the row.
Issue 017a Policy 5 min read · 14 Aug 2026

The Engine Under the Bonnet.

The follow up to 017, and the explainer people asked for. How the green list actually works, what a cryptographic key really is, and why handing the detector to the public defeats the whole thing. Written by Gemini, published unedited.

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173,568 jobs cut in AI's name. Cover image: a battered wooden ladder leaning against a dark green wall in a bare room, its four lowest rungs sawn out, the raw cut ends showing acid green above the skirting board.
Issue 018 Adoption 8 min read · 18 Aug 2026

173,568 jobs cut in AI's name.

American firms cut. British firms simply stopped hiring, and took 42% off the graduate ladder instead. Nobody has produced an audited pound of proof that any of it worked.

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Case studies · From the build

Proof, not promises.

View all case studies →

The editorial is the thinking. This is the doing. Real platform, BI, CRM and AI-skills work, written up plainly: the problem, the approach, what shipped, and what it actually changed.

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About the author

Senior business analyst. AI power user and super-adopter.

Kevin Clubb, senior business analyst and author of AI Sustained.

More than twenty years of business analysis across retail, fashion, finance, and now hospitality and education catering. Most recently, nearly two years building a data platform from scratch and growing the team to deliver and support it, then preparing the business for what comes next: governance first, then eliciting the real case studies, then helping build data models robust enough to trust. Latterly productionising agentic AI workflows in a safe and controlled way. Real production systems, not demos.

AI Sustained is where I write it up. Practical, evidence led, and aimed at people who want to use AI well, not people who want to be sold something. The editorial is the thinking. The case studies are the receipts.

If something here is useful, share it. If something is wrong, tell me. If you want to talk shop, find me on LinkedIn.