No highlight reel. This is the real log — including the parts I got wrong the first time.
Redesigned the site again. This time modeled the layout on SMEtools' own site (dark/light bands, a real "meet the founder" section) — then immediately realized leading with my resume on the page my followers land on was the wrong call. Pulled it into its own /my-story page and made the homepage all free stuff instead. Sometimes you build the wrong thing first to see why it's wrong.
Renamed my handle three separate times this week — @arslanonai, then @hasansarslan, then finally @hasansamarslan — before landing on matching the domain exactly. Bought hasansamarslan.com, wired the DNS myself, watched the SSL cert take an hour to issue. Small stuff, but it's the stuff nobody shows you.
Built an 80-template hook bank from every reel opener I could analyze. Also realized my reels were reading as generic AI advice — pivoted the whole format to teardowns: every reel now has to show one real routine or loop from my own build, on screen, not just talk about AI in the abstract.
Locked 11 reel scripts and the AI Graduation Ladder framework — the whole "you don't deploy an agent, you raise it" thesis, named and structured. Built the checklist + carousel, deployed the first live version of this site.
Trained my Soul avatar before my Higgsfield credits expired. Wrote a real voice-profile.md so scripts actually sound like me instead of generic AI copy — playful, short sentences, my actual pet peeves. Built the kinetic-caption video producer. Validated the whole "graduation" angle wasn't already saturated before committing to it as the core thesis.
Unified what used to be three separate content trend-scraping scripts into one engine. Boring infrastructure work, but it's what everything above actually runs on.