Monday evening this newsletter hit 5,000 subscribers.
I'll be honest, I've been looking at this number for most of the afternoon, trying to work out what it actually represents and what it might mean for where this newsletter goes next.
5,000+ professionals across 124 countries who seem to want to understand AI agents at a level that goes beyond the usual surface-level content.
That's either quite something. So here’s my proposal for what’s next.
What I think your engagement patterns might be telling me
Looking at the most-read content over the past six months, there seem to be some clear patterns emerging.
Top-Performing Content
“The Hidden AI Job Boom No One's Talking About” (2.7k views)
"The Anatomy of an AI Agent - Part 1" (2.5K views)
"The £150K+ AI Agent Skills Everyone's Ignoring" (2.17K views)
"Why Your AI Agent ROI Looks Fake to Executives" (2.15K views)
"How to Write Your First AI Agent Solution Design Document" (2.16K views)
My interpretation (and I could be wrong)
You appear to be looking for foundational knowledge that builds genuine expertise, practical skills that might give you a career advantage, and help communicating value to perhaps skeptical executives.
From what I can see, many of you seem to be dealing with:
Executives who don't grasp the nuances (and dangers) of AI
Business cases that struggle to get approval
What an AI project looks like and what staff you need to succeed
AI implementation challenges that prove harder than expected
Perhaps some concern about staying relevant as AI transforms your industry
and, in some cases…
Just what on earth is an AI agent and why should I care!?
A bit of detective work about where you've come from
This might be completely off the mark, but looking at the subscriber growth patterns and engagement data, I suspect many of you have migrated to Substack from LinkedIn.
The timing and the type of content that resonates suggests you might have been looking for something with a bit more depth than the typical LinkedIn post, which has become a “like” contest of theoretical concepts and little in terms of applied expertise.
I could be completely wrong about this, but it's influenced my thinking about what might be most useful to you going forward.
What I think might be helpful next
The confidential nature of my work with Templonix clients has made it challenging to share much of what I actually do day-to-day. I'll be honest - I rather underestimated this constraint when I started the newsletter.
But there's been a shift. The business is evolving to focus much more on education and training, which means I can finally start sharing the systematic approach I've developed.
As of next week, I'm planning to re-frame this entire newsletter around what I call The Agentic Tapestry. It’s the mechanism I use with Templonix, the full-spectrum AI Engineering/MBA hybrid way of working in this new field.
The name comes from my Scottish DNA - there's something fitting about weaving together all the different threads of AI agent implementation into a coherent pattern that actually makes sense. After all, this is what everyone involved in GenAI and Agentics is really trying to do - it’s such a new field, with so many new moving parts, if you can’t pull everything together, you drown in the complexity.
More importantly though, this framework seems to address the broad range of interests I'm seeing from subscribers. Rather than continuing with written articles and Monday Morning Briefing, a more video-based approach where I can actually show you how these concepts work in practice with real business domain problems as the driver seems best.
The framework covers nine key areas. Based on my detective work through your engagement patterns, I think these capture what you're most interested in considering subscriber diversity.
✅ AI Pattern Selection Mastery - Choosing the right agent architecture
✅ Solution Architecture Reality - What you're actually building
✅ Agentic Flow Design - Step-by-step implementation/build blueprints
✅ Technical Architecture Truth - Infrastructure readiness assessment
✅ Implementation Strategy - Why agent development is different
✅ Change Management for AI Agents - The human transformation factor
✅ Business Impact Measurement - Proving value and ROI
✅ Executive Brief Mastery - Selling agents to leadership
✅ Business Case Development - Securing funding and approval
Here’s the full framework 👇
And before I forget, this won’t impact the AI Agent Business Toolkit available to paid subscribers - this will continue in terms of its continued development, and in many cases, benefit from this format upgrade.
What I'd like from you
If there are specific topics you'd like me to cover as this newsletter evolves, or particular business scenarios you're wrestling with, please drop me a line at agent@templonix.com. I'd be happy to incorporate your suggestions into content and show you how I’d go about solving such problems - all redacted of course!
A final thought
I don’t believe in the concept of AI taking your job. At least not for a quite a while, looking at it from the most pessimistic perspective that includes the mass production of robots. A subject for a future discussion perhaps.
The truth is, building AI solutions is hard. It requires a lot more than ChatGPT or some co-pilot tech. It also requires a lot more than software engineering competency. It’s a whole new ball game. Few understand this just yet. As a result, all I see is opportunity.
I’ve also been spoiled with a couple of my clients who are exception leaders, and more importantly, exceptional humans beings. They see opportunity to use AI as the force multiplier it is, genuinely seek to free their staff from boring, screen-intense, vitamin D sapping work, giving that to “the machine” and getting their people to do what they do best - spend more time with clients and scaling their businesses.
Whether you're a recent graduate trying to break into this field, or an experienced professional concerned about staying relevant, or somewhere in between - I want to help you. I don’t want you to think your days are numbered. They’re not. I can't promise to have all the answers, but I can show you what I know that works, give you a few shortcuts and hopefully save you some of the mistakes I've made along the way.
Thank you
Reaching 5,000 subscribers feels like a genuine milestone, and I'm grateful to everyone who reads, shares, and engages with this content. Your questions, messages and feedback have shaped how I think about these topics, and I hope this next phase proves useful to you.
Until next week,
Chris
Hi Chris, you are doing a very good job. Thank you for the articles so far, I look forward to the next ones and most of all, I wish you a lot of strength and good ideas.
I think my question of the day is "why?" I think most AGI comments are valid. AI can be nirvana. But also toxic. We call it non-deterministic software. And if a chatbot communicating with someone with cognitive challenges - tragic. Now we have to ask why. Why? Why now? https://cyberinnovate.me/%f0%9f%9a%a8-cyberinnovate-statement-the-memory-feature-that-broke-the-mirror/