The Tri-Brain Architecture: Outsourcing My Memory
When building a modern digital product—juggling the stateful complexities of Next.js, schema definitions in Payload CMS, and database migrations in Supabase—the cognitive load is crushing. The natural instinct is to dump all this context into one massive LLM chat window and expect the machine to sort it out. But treating an LLM like an omniscient oracle is a rookie mistake.
But treating an LLM like an omniscient oracle is a rookie mistake.
If you dump your entire operational context into a single model, you don't get a super-intelligence; you get context collapse. LLMs are, at their core, probability engines. When you flood a single context window with Next.js routing rules, UI design constraints, and random API syntax queries, the model mathematically regresses to the mean. Your strict constraints blur into generic slop, your architecture gets overwritten by standard boilerplate, and your unique voice turns into a polite, sanitized paste.
I believe in the Vector of Life—the philosophy that our work requires both magnitude (velocity) and direction (taste, philosophy, and strict constraints). AI is an incredible engine for magnitude, but if you let one overloaded model manage your entire cognitive load, it will inevitably flatten your direction.
To protect the vector, I stopped treating AI as a monolithic brain. I split my digital cognition across three distinct, highly isolated interfaces, adopting a framework much older than computing itself.
Socrates famously used the metaphor of the wax tablet to understand the human mind. I use it to manage my tech stack.
1. Cursor: The Engine Room
This is the tactile layer. Cursor is not where I go to brainstorm abstract strategies; it is where I touch the structural reality of the codebase.
Traditional product management often makes the mistake of ideating in sterile documents or whiteboards. But ideating without architectural context is just writing science fiction. By using Cursor to execute the code, I remain in line with the project's actual structure. When I have an idea for a new feature, I check it against the rigid, mechanical reality of my Supabase database and React Server Components. Cursor acts as my Staff Engineer. It follows strict path-based rules. It plans, it writes atomic diffs, and it executes. But it is strictly forbidden from retaining anything outside the immediate scope of the repository.
2. Gemini: The Carved Stone
Socrates believed that true knowledge is recollected through deep, sustained dialogue over time—the carved stone of reasoning.
A digital product is an ecosystem: Linear for tracking, GitHub for version control, Vercel for edge deployments. Cursor cannot see that entire board. Gemini is my dialectic partner and my systemic context. It holds the historical truth of whywe separated our dev environment three weeks ago, or why we enforce strict Impeccable UI constraints. When I need to untangle a complex deployment collision between Vercel and Payload, I ask Gemini to recall the exact structural rules we etched into the stone, keeping the overarching infrastructure in check.
3. ChatGPT: The Soft Wax
Short-term memory, to Socrates, was a block of heated, highly malleable wax. When you press a seal into it, the impression is immediate and sharp, but it is meant to melt away.
ChatGPT is my soft wax. Sometimes, you just need to understand a highly specific syntax error, learn a new algorithmic concept, or translate a poorly written piece of documentation. If you ask your core tools these questions, you pollute your foundation with noise. I use ChatGPT for quick, transactional learnings. We solve the immediate problem, and then I mercilessly close the window, dropping the context forever. By wiping the wax clean, I prevent ephemeral, hallucinated slop from polluting my core architecture.
Owning the Vector
We are operating in an era where the boilerplate is written instantly. The challenge is no longer generating code; it is orchestrating the chaos without losing your mind—or your taste.
A builder who relies only on the soft wax has no underlying architecture; they can patch a script, but they have no direction. Conversely, a builder who tries to carve every passing thought into stone ends up with a chaotic, unreadable mess.
Wisdom is not the act of remembering everything. Wisdom is knowing exactly what belongs in the soft wax to be melted away, and what must be carved into the stone to protect your Vector of Life.