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We share knowledge about AI, smart home and QA. Claude Code, MCP, local LLMs, Home Assistant, prompt engineering and test automation - no paywalls, no marketing fluff.

01 Jun 12, 2026 9 min read

AI in Everyday Life: LLMs as Board Game Assistants

An LLM can be a very practical helper during board games: explaining rules, resolving ambiguities, searching rulebooks, creating turn summaries, and keeping house rules consistent. The condition is simple: treat it as an assistant, not an infallible judge.

ai llm
Julia Sielska & Grzegorz Holak
02 Jun 11, 2026 17 min read

Why skipping QA on a project almost always costs more than it seems

QA isn't an add-on. Skipping quality assurance leads to delays, bugs, chaos and lost user trust. Here's why it almost never pays off.

qa quality
Grzegorz Holak
03 Jun 10, 2026 8 min read

The /goal command in Claude Code - a session contract that won't let the agent give up

How /goal in Claude Code enforces completion through a session-scoped Stop hook. Pros, cons, when to use it, how to phrase the condition, and why it matters for QA.

claude-code ai
Grzegorz Holak
04 Jun 9, 2026 14 min read

Issues per Release - a code-maturity gauge

How to roll out Issues per Release from scratch, why it's a metric of the development process and not just QA, and how it reshapes the conversation with the Engineering Manager. Article 4 of 9.

qa metrics
Filip Barszcz
05 Jun 8, 2026 13 min read

AI in Smart Home, Part 1: A Home That Can See - LLM Vision in Practice

The first part of a mini-series about connecting AI with smart home systems. We move from simple motion detection to visual interpretation: who is at the gate, what happened on the driveway, and when a notification is actually worth sending.

ai smart home
Julia Sielska & Grzegorz Holak
06 Jun 5, 2026 6 min read

Where the Holak Scale Fails - Self-Criticism

Every model is a tool, not a truth. Six places where the Holak Scale actually fails when working with teams, plus reader feedback to address in version 3.

ai adoption
Grzegorz Holak & Konrad Gomulski
07 Jun 3, 2026 8 min read

Multi-Agent Orchestration - When One Agent Is Enough

Level 10 on the Holak Scale is attractive for a CV, expensive to maintain. A skeptical take on agent teams: when you actually need many, when one well-configured agent wins, and how to spot orchestrating mediocrity.

ai agents
Grzegorz Holak
08 Jun 2, 2026 14 min read

Escaped Bugs and Problems - the full spectrum of what reaches production

Bugs in the code are only part of the story. The full taxonomy of escaped problems - code, infrastructure, configuration, integrations, regressions - the cost of each type and how to measure it. Article 3 of 9.

qa metrics
Filip Barszcz
09 Jun 1, 2026 13 min read

MCP, CLI or hook - which tool when, and when MCP is overengineering

MCP is a tool, not a status. Each connector is maintenance, risk and attack surface. Criteria for when MCP pays off, when CLI / slash command / hook is better, a decision tree, and the CLI → MCP migration path.

ai mcp
Grzegorz Holak
10 May 29, 2026 8 min read

AGENTS.md vs CLAUDE.md vs .cursorrules - Which Context File for What

Three context-file formats for AI agents aren't chaos - each has a niche. What each agent reads, what to put in each, how to keep them in sync, and what not to copy 1:1.

ai agents-md
Grzegorz Holak
11 May 28, 2026 7 min read

A Prompt Library Is an Anti-Pattern. Yes, the 200-Line One

If you copy prompts from a document, you have a phase-4 problem, not a phase-3 one. Why prompt fetishism is a symptom of stalled evolution, and how to break a 200-line prompt down into custom instructions and project context.

ai prompt-engineering
Grzegorz Holak
12 May 27, 2026 9 min read

Individual 9, Company 2 - What to Do About AI Maturity Gaps

Most companies measure the maximum instead of the median. How to detect a gap between individual and organisational maturity, how to compute the median, and what to actually do if you're a level-9 engineer in a level-2 company.

ai adoption
Grzegorz Holak
13 May 26, 2026 15 min read

Defect Detection Ratio - how to measure effectiveness before anything reaches production

A deep guide to Defect Detection Ratio - basic and weighted formula, interpretation thresholds, historical data, seasonality, three traps and ready-to-use lines for the boardroom.

qa metrics
Filip Barszcz
14 May 25, 2026 8 min read

AI Adoption Anti-Patterns - 7 Ways to Get Stuck

Most teams don't get stuck because of missing tools - they get stuck on specific patterns of thinking. The seven most common anti-patterns from the Holak Scale, a recognition test, who gets caught, and how to get out.

ai adoption
Konrad Gomulski & Grzegorz Holak
15 May 22, 2026 9 min read

The Trust Boundary - How to Actually Cross from 8 to 9 on the Holak Scale

The hardest jump on the Holak Scale isn't technical. Verifiability and reversibility as a framework, a readiness checklist, and two case studies - one team that made it, one that dropped back to 2.

ai agents
Grzegorz Holak
16 May 21, 2026 10 min read

How to Diagnose a Team's AI Maturity in 30 Minutes

A concrete protocol for scoring a team on the Holak Scale - 8 calibration questions, 5 minutes of live observation and a one-page report. No surveys, no workshops, no slides.

ai adoption
Grzegorz Holak
17 May 20, 2026 12 min read

Claude and Codex: CLI vs Desktop vs Web - Where You Actually Ship Work

Three access channels to the same models differ in what they can touch. A practical comparison of Claude Code and Codex CLI against desktop apps and web interfaces.

ai claude-code
Grzegorz Holak
18 May 19, 2026 12 min read

QA metrics the business actually wants to hear

A complete guide to transforming QA reporting - from counting bugs to speaking the language of outcomes and business decisions. Five metrics, three pillars, one model.

qa metrics
Filip Barszcz
19 May 18, 2026 14 min read

Holak Scale v2.1e - enterprise. An AI adoption maturity model for organizations

12 maturity levels of AI in the workplace - from resistance, through agent workflows, to a purpose-built agentic OS for concrete business outcomes. Version v2.1e splits the enterprise path from the private one.

ai adoption
Grzegorz Holak & Konrad Gomulski
20 May 17, 2026 12 min read

Holak Scale v2.1p - private. Maturity of everyday AI use

12 maturity levels of everyday AI use - home, learning, finance, smart home, life organization. The private version of the Holak Scale, parallel to the enterprise track.

ai adoption
Grzegorz Holak & Konrad Gomulski
21 May 15, 2026 9 min read

Writing your own Claude Code subagent: frontmatter, prompt, deployment

Part two of the subagent series. We build a blog-post-writer agent from scratch - what to put in the frontmatter, how to write a description that actually triggers, and how to dodge two classic traps.

ai claude-code
Grzegorz Holak
22 May 14, 2026 7 min read

Advisor in Claude Code: a second opinion from a stronger model before you commit to a path

The advisor() tool forwards the full transcript to a stronger model and returns an opinion. When to call it before work, when NOT for every step, how not to turn it into endless consultation.

ai claude-code
Grzegorz Holak
23 May 13, 2026 7 min read

The prompt-master skill in Claude Code: a prompt generator for other AI tools

Instead of writing prompts to Midjourney, Sora, Suno or Cursor by hand, you have a Claude Code skill that does it. How it works, where it won't replace knowing the target tool.

ai claude-code
Grzegorz Holak
24 May 12, 2026 7 min read

Subagents in Claude Code: why orchestrate instead of writing in one window

One Claude vs many specialists invoked through Agent. Why subagents, how Claude picks which one to use, when NOT to use them, and why this isn't 'one window with more context'.

ai claude-code
Grzegorz Holak
25 May 11, 2026 10 min read

Zigbee in Home Assistant 2026: ZHA, Z2M Add-on, or Z2M on a Separate Server?

Three real-world Zigbee deployments in HA: built-in ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT as an add-on, and Z2M+MQTT on a separate host. Failure isolation, MQTT attack surface, multi-coordinator, PoE coordinators.

smart-home home-assistant
Grzegorz Holak
26 May 8, 2026 10 min read

Open WebUI - a ChatGPT-like frontend for your local LLM

Local Ollama only gives you a CLI. LM Studio is single-user. Open WebUI is the missing piece: a ChatGPT-like UI with RAG, web search and tools - running in one Docker command.

ai llm
Grzegorz Holak
27 May 7, 2026 11 min read

Local LLM models in 2026 - what actually runs on a Mac mini M4 16 GB

A review of the current models worth pulling onto 16 GB unified memory: gpt-oss-20b, Gemma 4 e4b, Qwen3-Coder, Phi-4. What works, what doesn't, and why.

ai llm
Grzegorz Holak
28 May 6, 2026 10 min read

Mac mini M4 16 GB as a local LLM workstation - LM Studio vs Ollama

Does the cheapest M4 Mac make sense as a machine for local language models? Hardware reality check, LM Studio vs Ollama comparison, and where the sanity line is.

ai llm
Grzegorz Holak
29 May 5, 2026 11 min read

Context7 - the MCP that gives your model up-to-date docs instead of six-month-old knowledge

How one small MCP solves the biggest pain of working with LLMs on code: stale library knowledge. Setup, real-world cases, limitations.

ai mcp
Grzegorz Holak
30 May 4, 2026 10 min read

Caveman - the plugin that cuts output tokens by 75% (and where it breaks)

How a Claude Code plugin that makes the model talk like a caveman changed my token bill - and which tasks it actually fits, which ones it quietly ruins.

ai claude-code
Grzegorz Holak
31 Apr 30, 2026 11 min read

A skill for filing bugs in Jira through Atlassian MCP

How to build a skill that turns your „hey, something's broken on checkout” into a complete Jira ticket - with evidence, dedupe, and without polluting the project. No autopilot agent, a deliberate human confirm in the middle.

ai qa
Grzegorz Holak
32 Apr 29, 2026 9 min read

From article to video: HyperFrames for quality-blog.eu

When a post deserves a thirty-second video explainer, how to build the script, and how to reuse the same material across five channels at once.

ai content
Grzegorz Holak
33 Apr 28, 2026 9 min read

How testers should evaluate agent output

Five dimensions for evaluating agent output, a checklist you can walk in fifteen minutes, and situations where you just send the result back without a lengthy debate.

ai qa
Grzegorz Holak
34 Apr 27, 2026 15 min read

HACS in Home Assistant OS - why, when it's worth it, and how to install it step by step

Why HACS belongs in Home Assistant OS, what to watch out for, how to install it step by step, and what to enable first - an honest walkthrough.

smart-home home-assistant
Grzegorz Holak
35 Apr 24, 2026 9 min read

10 AI workflows that actually help a Test Architect

Ten concrete workflows - from test strategy review to the decision not to automate - each deployable in a week and usable every day.

ai qa
Grzegorz Holak
36 Apr 23, 2026 11 min read

First MCP for QA: search and fetch over evidence

How to start with MCP in QA from the simplest possible pair of tools - search and fetch over evidence. No autonomy, no loops, just a structure you can maintain.

ai qa
Grzegorz Holak
37 Apr 22, 2026 9 min read

How to write AGENTS.md for a test automation repo

What to put in AGENTS.md for a test automation repo, common pitfalls, templates for Playwright, Cypress, and API tests, and how to tell if the file actually helps.

ai qa
Grzegorz Holak
38 Apr 21, 2026 10 min read

Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave or Thread with Matter? A practical 2026 pick

Four protocols, one decision. When Wi-Fi is enough, when Zigbee still wins, who actually needs Z-Wave, and what Matter-over-Thread really changes.

smart-home zigbee
Grzegorz Holak
39 Apr 19, 2026 8 min read

Skills, tools, agents, MCP, AGENTS.md - a concept map for testers

Five concepts that get confused most often in QA conversations about AI - plus a simple decision model for what to use when.

ai qa
Grzegorz Holak
40 Apr 15, 2026 7 min read

AI Adoption Maturity Model

From resistance to orchestration - 11 levels of AI utilisation in an organisation. Find out where you and your team stand.

ai adoption
Grzegorz Holak
41 Apr 12, 2026 5 min read

Getting Started with Home Assistant in 2026

A complete beginner's guide - from choosing hardware to your first automation.

smart-home home-assistant
Grzegorz Holak
42 Apr 8, 2026 3 min read

5 Prompts That Will Change How You Work with AI

Proven prompt engineering techniques you can apply right away.

ai prompt-engineering
Grzegorz Holak