{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "NexcurAI - Writing", "description": "Essays on operating with Claude inside a consulting firm. Four pillars: applied AI, security, GEO, and the economics of shipping.", "home_page_url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/", "feed_url": "https://nexcur.ai/feed.json", "language": "en-us", "icon": "https://nexcur.ai/og-image.png", "favicon": "https://nexcur.ai/favicon.svg", "authors": [ { "name": "NexcurAI Editorial", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/about.html" } ], "items": [ { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/self-critique-loop.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/self-critique-loop.html", "title": "The self-critique loop: how we get Claude to find its own mistakes", "summary": "Every handbook runs through a self-critique pass before a human sees it. Prompt patterns and real traces from our production pipeline.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/threat-modeling-3-hours.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/threat-modeling-3-hours.html", "title": "Threat modeling goes from 3 days to 3 hours when Claude drives STRIDE", "summary": "STRIDE with Claude driving the enumeration and a human driving the judgment. A workshop trace that fits into one afternoon.", "tags": ["Security"], "date_published": "2026-04-21T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/tool-use-unlocks.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/tool-use-unlocks.html", "title": "What tool use actually unlocks", "summary": "Tool use is the feature that turns Claude from an essay writer into a collaborator that can touch real systems. What it unlocks, what it does not, and the design discipline that keeps tool-using agents from becoming a liability.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-04-19T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/200k-context-engineering.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/200k-context-engineering.html", "title": "The 200k window is a context engineering problem, not a memory problem", "summary": "The 200k context is a staging area you engineer, not memory. Retrieval patterns for long-running engagements.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-04-19T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/topical-map-dual-optimization.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/topical-map-dual-optimization.html", "title": "How to build a topical map that ranks in Google AND gets cited by ChatGPT", "summary": "The three-layer topical map (hub, spokes, citation surfaces) that serves both Google SERPs and answer-engine citations.", "tags": ["SEO and GEO"], "date_published": "2026-04-18T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/pricing-fixed-scope-10x.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/pricing-fixed-scope-10x.html", "title": "Why fixed-scope pricing is 10x better", "summary": "Fixed scope as an operating discipline. The math and the four change-request clauses that make it survive contact with reality.", "tags": ["Economics of shipping"], "date_published": "2026-04-17T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/incident-response-runbook.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/incident-response-runbook.html", "title": "The incident response runbook nobody wrote because nobody had time", "summary": "Template plus how Claude shortens the write-up without hiding the decisions that matter.", "tags": ["Security"], "date_published": "2026-04-16T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/prompt-caching-unit-economics.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/prompt-caching-unit-economics.html", "title": "Prompt caching changed our unit economics", "summary": "When a 140 page handbook is generated against the same 20k token context forty times, the cache pays for the whole engagement. Break-even math with numbers.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-04-15T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/llms-txt-discipline.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/llms-txt-discipline.html", "title": "The llms.txt discipline", "summary": "Most llms.txt files in the wild are empty, stale, or marketing copy. The six-section structure and quarterly review discipline that makes the file useful.", "tags": ["SEO and GEO"], "date_published": "2026-04-14T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/owasp-llm-top-10-audit-checks.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/owasp-llm-top-10-audit-checks.html", "title": "OWASP LLM Top 10 as audit checks", "summary": "Two concrete audit checks per OWASP LLM Top 10 category. Runnable by a security lead who does not need to become an AI researcher.", "tags": ["Security"], "date_published": "2026-04-12T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/operator-senior-ratio.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/operator-senior-ratio.html", "title": "The operator-to-senior ratio that works", "summary": "The inverted pyramid of AI-native consulting delivery, and the failure mode to avoid.", "tags": ["Economics of shipping"], "date_published": "2026-04-11T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/handbook-thesis-defended.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/handbook-thesis-defended.html", "title": "The handbook thesis, defended", "summary": "Why we ship a long-form document at the end of every engagement, and why the slide deck is about to die as a consulting artifact.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-04-10T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/stopped-writing-one-shot-prompts.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/stopped-writing-one-shot-prompts.html", "title": "Why we stopped writing one-shot prompts", "summary": "Every deliverable runs through four stages now: draft, self-critique, human edit, eval. How we broke the pipeline apart.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-04-08T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/retainer-vs-sprint.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/retainer-vs-sprint.html", "title": "Retainer vs sprint: picking the right shape", "summary": "The decision tree we use to pick between retainer and sprint at the top of every sales conversation.", "tags": ["Economics of shipping"], "date_published": "2026-04-05T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/pentest-report-literary-form.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/pentest-report-literary-form.html", "title": "The pentest report is a literary form, and most of them are bad", "summary": "A taxonomy of why inherited pentest reports fail both executives and engineers, and what Claude specifically changes about the form.", "tags": ["Security"], "date_published": "2026-04-03T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/share-of-answer-400-queries.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/share-of-answer-400-queries.html", "title": "We measured share of answer for 400 queries across 4 LLMs", "summary": "A structural audit of what actually gets cited in Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini answers. Data, not theory. Includes the raw export.", "tags": ["SEO and GEO"], "date_published": "2026-03-28T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/hourly-billing-moral-hazard.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/hourly-billing-moral-hazard.html", "title": "Billing hourly in 2026 is a moral hazard", "summary": "When an operator plus Claude can do a week of classical consulting work in a day, the hourly rate incentivizes slower delivery.", "tags": ["Economics of shipping"], "date_published": "2026-03-22T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/extended-thinking-research-budget.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/extended-thinking-research-budget.html", "title": "Extended thinking is a research budget, not a default", "summary": "Extended thinking is expensive compute. Treat it like any research budget: spend it where the return is visible, leave it off everywhere else.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-03-14T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/iam-attack-path-series-a.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/iam-attack-path-series-a.html", "title": "The IAM attack path every Series A has", "summary": "The root-to-production path that shows up at 70 percent of Series A SaaS we audit, and the three links in the chain that close it.", "tags": ["Security"], "date_published": "2026-03-07T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/citations-new-backlinks.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/citations-new-backlinks.html", "title": "Citations are the new backlinks", "summary": "For fifteen years the link graph was the currency of SEO. In the answer-engine era, the currency is the citation. The economics are not the same.", "tags": ["SEO and GEO"], "date_published": "2026-02-28T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/consulting-firm-pnl.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/consulting-firm-pnl.html", "title": "The consulting firm P&L that Claude rewrites", "summary": "Every line of the P&L shifts when the model is a team member. Revenue, cost, and margin reconsidered.", "tags": ["Economics of shipping"], "date_published": "2026-02-21T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/templates-survive-model-upgrade.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/templates-survive-model-upgrade.html", "title": "The templates that survive a model upgrade", "summary": "The principles that kept 80 percent of our template library intact across six Claude versions, and the two reasons the other 20 percent broke.", "tags": ["Applied AI"], "date_published": "2026-02-14T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/claude-is-not-a-pentester.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/claude-is-not-a-pentester.html", "title": "Claude is not a pentester. A pentester with Claude is.", "summary": "The line between Claude-generated and human-validated findings, and why vendors who hide the line are selling marketing as security.", "tags": ["Security"], "date_published": "2026-02-07T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] }, { "id": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/stopped-chasing-featured-snippets.html", "url": "https://nexcur.ai/blog/stopped-chasing-featured-snippets.html", "title": "Why we stopped chasing featured snippets", "summary": "Position zero was the optimization target for a decade. For most categories we work in, chasing it is now a waste of budget.", "tags": ["SEO and GEO"], "date_published": "2026-01-31T00:00:00Z", "authors": [{ "name": "the operator" }] } ] }