TetraMesa

API Literacy for Product Leaders: Learn by Doing With Postman

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Bonus Hands On article for the product manager’s guide to digital connectivity series.

There’s a point where reading about APIs stops being very useful. At least this was true for me. The theory is fine. You can learn what an endpoint is, what JSON looks like, what a GET request does and why a 404 is different from a 500. But sometimes the fastest way to make those ideas stick is to actually send a request and look at what comes back. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, our goal is not necessarily to become experts here. Though that’s ok. It’s to have a reasonable depth of understanding as to how the plumbing works so we can participate meaningfully where such tools impact product craft or P&L if we have financial responsibilities as well. This will be mostly about hands-on learning for some basic API usage; nothing to do with actually designing them or considerations for AI-first or revenue. Those are larger scope topics for another time.

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Poor PMs Guide to AI Image Generation Workflow With n8n

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A practical setup for kicking out a lot of decent hero images fast, plus the decisions that mattered more than the tools.

Note: Files for this project are available here: GitHub: n8n-blog-image-pipeline

Here’s one from the “Practical Product Quick Build Toolkit.”

I needed bunch of graphics for content. Here’s how I got solid results quickly and inexpensively.

My focus is on product, not production. But time and money were factors (as always) so this was the fastest way to get things done while leaving a reusable workflow for future needs. There’s a variety of tools for this sort of thing, but I wanted specific direction with general rules. Not just “generate an image,” but a repeatable system that produced a consistent series.

Using a workflow agent tool like n8n coupled with an image-generation model did the trick. I could set images to get generated and then do something else. A few caveats up front: you still have to check the images. Every one. And you won’t own the copyright as you might with commissioned work. But you can kick out what you need fast. Even if you’re only using them as placeholders for a prototype or something, you can replace with better stock or custom work later. For a prototype test that just needs a quick hero image on every page, that trade is worth it. And this will work for a production site as well. But for highest level of quality, professional stock and commissioned work can replace these placeholders. If you’re using a full site AI generator, those will usually be able to make your graphics. But if building with a coding assistant, perhaps not. Here’s a solution for that. Create the graphics in bulk, stage them somewhere with know filenames, (ideally based on direction directly from a coding tool), then load them into your site’s image folder.

Here’s the setup, what it cost, and the rules I’d carry to any similar project. The tooling is the least interesting part. The decisions about what to automate, what to keep human, and where quality actually comes from are the ones worth consideration, whether you’re building this pipeline for one time bulk use or deciding how this AI tool flow fits into your product.

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AI Build Copilot, Part 6: MORE Bonus Bits & Pieces

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It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Product Management work, Creative work. Requirements. Code. We’re all over these tools now and across disciplines, we face some of the same challenges. Here’s yet another set of practical snippets for dealing with AI-assisted coding and building. The tools can move fast and sometimes faster than we can track. This installment collects a few more practical habits for staying in control. These are the small, deliberate practices that keep “trust but verify” from turning into “hope it worked.”

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AI Build Copilot, Part 5: Bonus Bits & Pieces

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Intro

I thought Part 4: Preparing for Production was going to wrap up the series. But wait, there’s more! Not every useful lesson about building with AI tools fits neatly into the larger themes of the past articles in this series. So this final section is a collection of extra bits and pieces that don’t quite belong anywhere else, but may still save you a lot of trouble. Yes, I could have just called it “Misc.” I suppose. But in any case, there’s just some random bits that didn’t fit cleanly into earlier docs and fell out of the edits.

Here they are in one random walk place.

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AI Build Copilot, Part 4: Preparing for Production

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Part 3 was about building durably, so what happens after that? A successful prototype creates a new problem if you actually put it into some form of production. Not too long ago, if we built what we called prototypes, maybe they went to user testing, or we ‘sort of’ put them out there. But now? A lot of so-called tests really aren’t. That is, they’re really more actual rollouts. Just maybe not necessarily with the same rigor we used to give product launches. The line between that which was intended as prototype testing and so-called Minimum Viable Product (MVP) seems like it might get blurry.

The next challenge with launching a kind of prototype, but that which is maybe real product is someone may decide to use it. So… Is it really a prototype? Meaning… is this just some brochureware for testing or is there actual sign-up functionality, any kind of real billing, private information collection, and so on.

This is when the low-stakes experiment begins accumulating customers, private information, billing relationships, operational dependencies, and consequences. You have to make your own call on this kind of thing. I have to tell you, personally I’ve never loved the “false front door” thing for testing. I get that it can be useful, but sometimes it’s on the edge of unethical in how it seems to trick people. If your prototype is really a test and that’s understood, great. If the truth is it’s not much of a test, but a rollout? Then there’s probably some more risk elements and due diligence that should be covered.

Prototypes have a way of becoming products. Temporary credentials become permanent. Test data becomes customer data. A one-time API connection becomes a critical service. The final part of an AI-assisted build is not clicking Deploy.

It’s deciding whether the thing can be operated safely. One thing that I’ve done along the way when building is created something I’ve called “Launch Blockers.” This is different than a UI backlog or minor changes you find along the way. It’s things like purging schemas, or making sure live production feature flags are set properly. It means a real security review. Things like that.

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AI Build Copilot, Part 2: Staying in Control

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We started in Part 1 with what the bright shiny What AI (Site builder) Demonstrations Leave out… and it was fairly high level. Now we’re going to dive a bit deeper and yes, somewhat into some technical things. My goal remains: to help level up those in generally more non-technical roles, especially product management. (Though of course, what that technical continuum looks like varies widely.) Let’s start with some basics, and drill down from there…

The dangerous thing about AI coding assistants is that they are often very good.

Huh? How could that be dangerous? It’s dangerous because if they were obviously terrible in spots, we would remain more alert as we used them. Instead, they’re helpful enough to earn trust and inconsistent enough for us to experience times where we clearly shouldn’t have trusted them.

The interaction feels conversational. The agent explains what it is doing, uses reassuring language, and often anticipates the next task. Over time, it becomes easy to stop evaluating each recommendation independently.

That’s the lull.

The assistant is called a copilot for a reason. Do not become its passive passenger.

Disclosure: I did use AI in this series for spelling, grammar and to fill out a few bullet lists with minor items I missed. Generally, I draft, do outlines, and write everything; then have AI check spelling, grammar, and completeness; maybe clean up a few items. Here I did miss some bullets though and those are filled in. Where that was true, I checked sources on ‘truthiness’ for everything. The point is, every high-level thing I go into here are things I’ve personally run into – recently – while working on real projects. So it may seem like a lot, but none of it’s fluff. And you ignore them at some degree of risk.

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AI Build Copilot, Part 1: What Demos Leave Out

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I’d recently put up an article about a joke site I build for fun while helping create some overall scaffolding for a more serious project. At the outset, I’d pointed out part of my motivation for writing about some of these things is to try to offer some tips and mention some of the traps that go with the reality of using these tools as product people. The bubbly happy path posts and videos seem to mostly gloss over some of the real speed bumps and risks along the way. I get that demos are often to help people just see what’s possible. But lately there’s such a hard sell to some of these things, and so full of clickbait as to often be somewhat disingenuous.

As “non developers” use these tools more, it’s obvious enough that AI coding tools can be astonishingly productive. They can also be confusing, unreliable, expensive, overconfident, and occasionally dangerous. As product people at all levels from Individual Contributor to Senior Managers, VPs, etc., start getting deeper into these things, (not as full developers, but just as useful parts of our new toolkits), we’ll need to get real about some basics. The Happy Path feel good posts on LinkedIn and demos on LinkedIn rarely go over the many real blockers.

So I’m going to do some of that here, in several parts.

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I Built a Joke Site with AI – Then It Became a Production System

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This started as a joke that got out of control, but the build produced a few lessons worth sharing.

Most of my work is product-focused rather than production-focused. Product and marketing people should spend their time with customers, markets, competitors, business models, and worthwhile problems. Becoming absorbed in production can turn attention inward instead of outward.

Still, sometimes you need or just want to build something yourself. Like everyone else, I now use AI for all manner of things. But there’s a difference between a throwaway prototype for quick user testing and something that might approach production. For one project, I had to move beyond simple prototypes and build a modern AI-assisted production pipeline without experimenting on a client’s product, a company’s core offering, or anything containing important customer data. So I needed something harmless, but sort of real, to test with. To borrow from my woodworking hobby, I practice new techniques on cheap material before touching fine red oak. The same principle applies here: make early mistakes where failure costs essentially nothing.

So I built a joke website, but the tools and methods behind it are no joke. They are genuinely powerful. At the same time, the more serious project benefits from using this as a no risk practice platform. So here’s where we come out:

  • This article: I’ll just tell you what I built and some of the tools I used to do it.
  • Next Up: A series on AI Build Copiloting in general for “semi” technical users. That is, product folks with some basic engineering familiarity, who need to dive a bit deeper into these areas, even if only part of the time.
  • After that: Another series focused on building in databases with AI assistance.
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Using Skills for AI Builds: Product Safety

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Note: This isn’t about general skill in building things with AI… it’s specifically about things called Skill files or their similar counterparts.

Are you a product person at any level who is either building yourself or managing others that are increasingly doing some direct building?

Like a lot of us, I’ve been making some of my own stuff with AI tools. Or in some cases experimenting to understand their use cases better. Among the hype cycle things of this year are Skill files. (Or more generally skill type instructions for AI tools.) There’s whole marketplaces for them. This post is just a warning I’m throwing out there as a caution along with some ideas for mitigating risk. It’s not meant to be overly alarmist, but the “You can use skills to do anything!” hype is so overwhelmingly thick sometimes, it just needs some balance. And actually, I think it’s not just clickbait, it sometimes feels irresponsible and dangerous.

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Why the Best Web3 Products Feel Less Like Crypto

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For too long, the crypto space has been obsessed with selling the “engine” of the blockchain. Whitepapers of new projects focused on technical features and used a special jargon (e.g. words like “gwei” “slippage” and “hash”). It was like showing users the gears, the grease, and the technical specifications of a new car model, and then wondering why the general public wasn’t buying it.

It finally seems that in 2026, maybe this attitude is giving way to better product sense. Successful Web3 products are starting to make the technology invisible. Or at least trying. They have finally realized that users don’t care about features for their own sake, but instead about the benefit they get.

The era of “crypto-first” because it’s some self-sovereign anti-establishement thing that’s good for you is dead. The era of “stealth Web3” has begun. Here are some guiding principles for this new era.

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