San Francisco & Medellínsteveux.com — exploration 02/05Monday, July 6, 2026

The Tangled Times

All the complexity fit to untangleEleven years · one designerPrice: one conversation
The Wedge · Front Page

Marketplace opens its doors to customers who might not be human

T-MOBILE — In a reversal of decades of bespoke integration, the carrier's API Marketplace was designed from the first sketch for two species of customer: enterprise developers, and the AI agents ordering on their behalf. Interfaces verify; humans confirm.

Humans and robots approach the same open door.
Latest dispatches
Compas: the plan that confesses its costAI-first planning on a map and a clock. Discovery underway; five conversations in.
Five voices enter, one theme leavesKoé rebuilt for the AI era. Working prototype inside.
Stolen bike? The agent files the paperworkFindMyBike 2026 routes the live dot to police — never to the owner's fist.
Portrait of the designer as a systems untanglerWho he is, how he works with AI, three rules he designs by.
Four systems, one trade-in flow; completion up a tenth

Bulk uploads met legacy formats where they lived — in spreadsheets. A modal argument was lost well, then won in the numbers. Business clients saw roughly ten percent more orders finish.

The pin map that tells the truth early

Across 200 countries and 40 languages, the locator stopped answering "where" and started answering "will it work when I get there" — payout limits, services, and hours on the card itself.

Under full NDA, content that still reads like care

Sixteen weeks of pharma discipline: every pattern defensible in writing, every claim reviewed, and a two-year extension earned on the result.

This newspaper was assembled by an AI pair

Twenty-plus build passes, a written taste file that wins every argument, and a public log of decisions — including the failures. The deliverable is the proof.

Quiet luxury arrives for dogs

Tail & Trot, an LLC in customer validation: craftsmanship, provenance, and no discounts, ever. Correspondents report the collars are numbered.

Letters to the editor

The editor answers his own mail: hello@steveux.com — or the professional wire at linkedin.com/in/stevenlongtran.

The Tangled Times is set in Playfair Display & Georgia · no modals were harmed · return to the standing edition →