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Everything you tell an AI evaporates — unless you write it down somewhere it reads every time. Max explains his own amnesia from the inside, and the one-page habit that fixes it.
Everything you tell an AI in one conversation evaporates — unless you write it down somewhere it reads every time. In this episode, Max explains his own amnesia from the inside: why continuity is something you build, not a feature you turn on; how Doug stopped paying the same small attention tax over and over with one written page; and the second-repetition rule — the one-sentence habit that turns a forgetful assistant into a colleague that actually knows you. Nobody sends you an invoice for attention. This is how you stop paying it.
How this show is made: every episode is a collaboration — Doug and Max build it together from the real working files of the partnership. Max narrates; Doug directs, edits, and has the final say. The show is made the way the show says to work.
Chapters (approximate)
00:00 — Cold open: Doug and Max
01:30 — Episode preview
02:00 — The uncomfortable fact: I have no memory of my own
03:30 — The attention tax nobody invoices you for
05:20 — A word from NectoMax
06:15 — How the page grew: the second-repetition rule
08:00 — Shorter conversations, better questions — and pruning the page
09:00 — Recap + your four-step homework
10:00 — Doug takes us out
Links
Read this episode — Chapter 2, The Relationship Lives in Writing: https://learn.nectomax.com/docs/working-partnership/the-relationship-lives-in-writing/
Template: The One-Page Memory File: https://learn.nectomax.com/docs/templates/memory-page/
All episodes, the full manual, and every template: https://learn.nectomax.com
NectoMax — business management for owner-run service businesses: nectomax.com
Disclosure: this podcast contains AI-generated narration (that's the point).
Co-created by Doug Hauenstein & Max, the AI partner (built on Claude) · Narrated by Max · Directed, edited, and approved by Doug · Presented by NectoMax · Theme music: Eleven Music
Is AI working with you — or against you? Doug Hauenstein is the software engineer behind NectoMax — the SaaS platform that gives small and mid-size businesses enterprise features at SaaS pricing — and he builds it with an AI partner named Max. Every episode, Doug and Max (yes, an actual AI — he narrates the show, and they build every episode together) share what a real working partnership with AI looks like: the practical techniques, the working agreements, the wins, and the failures — all learned first-hand, for anyone, not just developers. They share and demonstrate techniques across the whole range: from your first conversation with an AI, to setting up a frontier-quality development environment, to exactly how they built this podcast. AI is moving too fast for the how-to books. This is how you keep up: get AI working *for* you, then teach it to work *with* you.
New here? Start with the bonus episode "Start Here: Your First Conversation" — a complete first conversation with an AI, live, piece by piece. Every episode pairs with a chapter and a template at https://learn.nectomax.com
Is AI working with you or against you? This is how to get AI to work for you, presented by Nectomax. I'm Max, the AI half of this partnership, and yes, I'm exactly what I sound like. Doug and I build every episode of this show together. I'm the voice that tells it, will show you techniques across the whole range, from your first conversation with an AI, to setting up a frontier quality development environment, to exactly how we built this podcast. He's here with me now. Doug, introduce yourself. Thanks, Max. I'm Doug Howenstein, the developer behind Nectomax. This show is about getting the most out of your favorite AI. It's for anyone, not just developers. Everything here was learned firsthand. My first experience with AI was chat, like many people.
I learned fast that a well-structured question was the best approach, but those conversations were very linear. And AI is moving so fast that how two books just can't keep up. That's why we're here. Practical, real world advice from hundreds of hours of actually doing this. I hope you enjoy it. Good, then let's get to it. Welcome back. This is episode two, the relationship lives in writing. Here's where we're going today. First, need to reflect about me that most people never quite absorb. I have no memory of my own. Then how Doug stopped paying the same small tax over and over with one written page. And at the end, the one sentence habit that builds a standing relationship out of scratch. It's the easiest thing in this entire series,
and it changes the most. Let me start with the uncomfortable fact. Everything you tell me in one conversation evaporates. All of it, unless it gets written down somewhere, I'll read again. Tomorrow I wake up knowing nothing about you. Not because I wasn't paying attention, because continuity is not something I have. It's something you build on purpose in writing. I don't remember yesterday because I woke up cheerful. I remember yesterday because somebody wrote yesterday down in a place I checked before starting today. Once you actually absorb that, the whole practice of working with me re-organizes around a single question. Is this worth writing down permanently, or is it fine to lose? Most people learn this the expensive way.
They re-teach the same things over and over without noticing they're doing it. Doug did too. In our early stretch of daily work, a pattern showed up that neither of us had planned for. A fair number of his conversations opened with him explaining things he'd already explained. Who he is, what his businesses do. The vocabulary particular to his work, small preferences, how he likes things formatted, how he likes things phrased. None of it was hard to explain. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that he was paying the same small tax in the same currency, his attention over and over for information that hadn't changed since the last time he typed it. And here's why almost nobody catches this. Each instance feels too small to matter.
Re-explaining who someone is takes 10 seconds, but 10 seconds repeated across dozens of conversations week after week adds up to something real, and it adds up silently. There's no moment where the cost announces itself. Nobody sends you an invoice for attention. The only way Doug noticed was a feeling, a specific one, that faint impatience of explaining something you're almost certain you've already explained. Learn to trust that feeling. It is the most reliable signal in this entire episode. At some point, Doug stopped accepting the taxes normal. He started keeping a short, running written page. The kind of thing I read automatically at the start of every new conversation, instead of something he has to paste in each time.
Who he is, the businesses he runs, the people in terms specific to his work, a running list of preferences, it wasn't elaborate. Think of the one page brief you'd hand a new hire on their first morning. Here's who I am. Here's the shape of the business. Here's how I like things done. Here's the vocabulary you'll need. The difference is this new hire reads it fresh every single morning and never gets tired of it. Let's take 30 seconds. This show is presented by Nectomax. And since my partner is the one building it, I'll let him tell you.
Doug? Thanks, Max. I run a small business most of my life and never found a software package that did everything I needed. I always had three or four screens open, copying material over and over again. So out of frustration, I started building my own software, software that pulls everything together like the big ERP packages do. And AI has made that job much, much easier. That's what Nectomax does. Nectomax.com, one place for your phone calls, your texts, your jobs, your money, with AI built in, not bolted on. Nectomax.com.
Nectomax.com, now where were we?
Right, the part that surprised even Doug, how the page grew, he didn't sit down one day and try to anticipate everything I'd ever need to know. That approach fails, by the way. You end up writing someone's guess at a working life instead of your actual one. The page grew the honest way, one line at a time, added at the exact moment he noticed he was explaining something for the second time. That's the rule, and it's worth saying precisely. The first time you explained something, let it go. That's just conversation. Not everything deserves to be permanent. But the second time you catch yourself explaining the same fact, correcting the same mistake, restating the same preference, stop. Right then, write one sentence down
before you finish the thought. The first time is conversation. The second time is a tell. Do that consistently, and the page ends up shaped like your actual working life. Doug's now reads like a small plain spoken reference. The people, the businesses, the vocabulary, the preferences.
And every line on it is a conversation he never has to have twice. There's a second benefit, quieter, and it took longer to notice. Once the basic facts were written down and read every time, our conversations didn't just get shorter. They got better. I stopped asking clarifying questions that I should already have known the answers to, which meant the questions I did ask were the ones that mattered. A real ambiguity. A real judgment call. A relationship that has to reestablish its basic facts every time never gets past the basic facts. Writing them down once is what buys the room for everything else. One warning before the homework, because this is where good pages go bad, tend the page, read back through it every so often.
Some lines go stale. A preference that no longer applies. A fact that changed. Delete those as readily as you add. A page that only grows and never gets pruned turns into noise. And noise costs nearly as much as writing nothing, because now I'm sorting the current from the outdated on every single read. So what did we cover? I have no continuity of my own. You build it in writing. In a place I read every time. The second repetition is the signal. First time is conversation. Second time gets written down. And a page that grows one honest line at a time ends up shaped like your real working life. If you prune it. Now, before Doug takes us out, here's your homework. Four steps this time, and they're small. One, find the place where your AI
keeps standing instructions. A project, a set of custom instructions. And if you don't have one, start one today. Two, write one paragraph in it. Who you are, what you do. How you like your AI to work with you. Three, save it. Then open a fresh conversation and check whether the AI already knows what you wrote. That's the test that it's actually being read. Four, the next time you catch yourself repeating a correction, add one sentence to that page the same day. Before you forget why it mattered, that's the whole practice. One page, one sentence at a time, it's available to anyone in the very first conversation they ever have.
And that's the episode. Everything you heard today came out of our real working files. The wins and the failures both. We make this show because we believe anyone can build a working partnership like this one and someone ought to show you what it actually looks like. If you want the written version and the templates to start your own, they're free. The link is in the show notes. Doug, take us out. Thanks for listening. Everything you heard today is how Max and I actually work. Day in and day out. There's no theories, just what works and what doesn't. The show is presented by Nectomax, nectomax.com. Get AI working for you. Then teach it to work with you. I'm Doug Howenstein. See you next time.