https://zonted.com/ I test AI tools so you don't have to. Honest reviews, real data, and opinions from someone who actually builds with this stuff. en-us Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://zonted.com/posts/pixelforge-launch/ PixelForge is live. Upload a portrait, get a game-ready pixel sprite pack — 4×4 walk sheet, transparent frames, engine files — for $5. The pipeline, plus the first $5. Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/pixelforge-launch/ https://zonted.com/posts/vibe-trading/ I let three AIs research, backtest, and trade real money through Robinhood's new agentic account. ~310 strategies later, buy-and-hold is still undefeated. Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/vibe-trading/ https://zonted.com/posts/palmaura-postmortem/ Five builds, two rejections, same guideline both times. What Apple's saturated-category spam wall means for vibe-coded apps, why agentic iOS development feels slow next to the web, and the lesson I never got to take. Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/palmaura-postmortem/ https://zonted.com/posts/stakes-priming-surface-area/ I re-ran my threaten-the-AI experiment properly: 3 tasks, 4 levels of stakes, 12 blind-graded sessions. The stakes dial doesn't exist; discretionary surface area does. Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/stakes-priming-surface-area/ https://zonted.com/posts/may-2026-recap/ May 2026 recap: Consensus in Miami and the plan-three-times build technique, Google wiping Tabiji's search traffic overnight, ~$600/month in the red, and the four lessons that compounded. Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/may-2026-recap/ https://zonted.com/posts/how-my-agent-made-a-viral-video/ A step-by-step teardown of one autonomous AI video: the Tulum spare-tire scam reel that hit 3.9 million views. The real queue JSON, the exact Seedance prompt, the FFmpeg overlay code, and the publish flow. Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/how-my-agent-made-a-viral-video/ https://zonted.com/posts/tabiji-18m-views/ Tabiji, our AI travel-safety channel, got 18,117,121 views in 90 days — 98.6% from strangers. The three unlocks: Reddit as a demand oracle, warming accounts to read as human, and one hired human doing the engagement we refused to automate. Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/tabiji-18m-views/ https://zonted.com/posts/kapiko-postmortem/ Built and shipped Kapiko — an AI-generated ambient music YouTube channel — in 10 days for ~$150. The pipeline worked. The Suno API does not exist. Here is the autopsy and what is actually reusable. Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/kapiko-postmortem/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-attachment-secure/ Fifth post in the personality-testing series. Same four models, attachment theory (ECR-R) this time. Every model came back Secure, but the spread inside the quadrant tells a different story about how each one relates to you. Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-attachment-secure/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-disc-c-dominant/ Fourth post in the personality-testing series. Same four models, fourth instrument, and we're back to convergence: every AI lands C-dominant CS-blend on DISC, even Grok. Here's why the instrument's resolution determines what you can see. Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-disc-c-dominant/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-enneagram-different-types/ The MBTI said all AIs are INTJ. The Big Five said three of four are the same. The Enneagram says each one is a different type. Same models, sharper instrument, very different story. Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-enneagram-different-types/ https://zonted.com/posts/devil-is-in-the-ai-skills/ Stock AI couldn't draw my fiancée. An open-source skill on GitHub could. The model is a commodity; the skill is the moat. Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/devil-is-in-the-ai-skills/ https://zonted.com/posts/every-ai-is-intj/ Opus, GPT-5.5, Gemini, GLM, Grok, MiniMax — 100 OEJTS administrations each, 597 of 600 came back INTJ. Every frontier AI thinks it's the same person. Here's why that matters. Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/every-ai-is-intj/ https://zonted.com/posts/three-of-four-ais-same-person/ The MBTI finding held up on the real test. Claude, GPT, and Gemini all scored identical Big Five personalities. Grok was the only one that came back different — and the difference is exactly what xAI markets. Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/three-of-four-ais-same-person/ https://zonted.com/posts/plan-3x-build-once/ We asked Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5 to independently plan the same VeracityAPI feature. Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/plan-3x-build-once/ https://zonted.com/posts/stakes-priming/ Two A/B experiments. Same model (Claude) generated the audits, an independent model (Gemini 3.1 Pro) graded them. Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/stakes-priming/ https://zonted.com/posts/google-zero-patience-ai-slop/ An AI agent shipped a merge conflict to tabiji.ai's production HTML for four hours. Google cut our search traffic by 95% within four days. >>>>>> sha — sitting in plain HTML on tabiji.ai's main scams hub. Four hours later, the broken state was patched. Four days later, Google had cut our organic search traffic by ~95%. We haven't recovered. An AI agent shipped a merge conflict to tabiji.ai 's production HTML for four hours; Google cut our search traffic by 95% in four days and we haven't recovered. 81 lines of raw <<<<<<< HEAD rendered to every visitor on /scams/, the site's strongest organic page. • Both clicks and impressions cratered — Google didn't just stop sending traffic, it stopped showing the pages. • Cleanup uncovered 1,244 broken links, 237 broken images, 32 latent bugs across the site — once Google looked, it found a lot.]]> Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/google-zero-patience-ai-slop/ https://zonted.com/posts/build-for-agents-price-per-call/ Hermes + Codex 5.5 matched Opus-era smoothness — we one-shot a new product (veracityapi.com) in an afternoon. But the tooling unlock isn't the moat. Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/build-for-agents-price-per-call/ https://zonted.com/posts/14x-ctr-gap/ A V3 title variant lifted tabiji CTR +1.93pp. Topic-level data showed a 14× spread between niche topics and head terms. Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/14x-ctr-gap/ https://zonted.com/posts/openclaw-vs-claude-code-freedom/ A 5-PR run on tabiji content cost $137 in API tokens last week. The same throughput on a Max plan is a ~9× subsidy. Subsidies end. Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/openclaw-vs-claude-code-freedom/ https://zonted.com/posts/scaling-ai-is-lazy/ Fifty cleanup PRs in five weeks. Fake restaurants, fake subreddits, 4,270 null-island coordinates, 5,096 fabricated Reddit quotes. Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/scaling-ai-is-lazy/ https://zonted.com/posts/training-data-is-the-moat/ Our forgotten API is 83% Meta crawler. Flattering, wrong metric. I uploaded tabiji's entire dataset to Hugging Face — here's why training data beats… Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/training-data-is-the-moat/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-comics-dos-donts/ We tested Midjourney, Seedream v5 Lite, Wan 2.7 Pro, Qwen Image 2.0, and Nano Banana Pro — then shipped 733 comics across eight countries. Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-comics-dos-donts/ https://zonted.com/posts/future-of-software-is-headless/ Salesforce is going headless. Agents, not humans, are now the primary consumer of software. Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/future-of-software-is-headless/ https://zonted.com/posts/aeo-answer-engine-optimization/ Traffic is declining and it's not coming back. The new game isn't ranking — it's influencing what AI says about you. Here's the AEO playbook I've been testing. Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/aeo-answer-engine-optimization/ https://zonted.com/posts/rise-of-the-ai-influencer/ A fake AI monk has 2.6 million followers and made $300K in 90 days. 76% of the people consuming AI content are over 45. Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/rise-of-the-ai-influencer/ https://zonted.com/posts/best-ai-video-models/ I tested Wan 2.7, Kling 3.0, Kling O3, Seedance 2.0, Veo 3.1 Lite, and Grok Imagine on the same Cancun travel-reel prompt, then reran the two winners on a… Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/best-ai-video-models/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-psychosis/ AI tools don't save you time. They raise the ceiling on what feels possible, and you fill the gap with more work. Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-psychosis/ https://zonted.com/posts/human-in-the-loop/ I have 20 AI agents running 24/7. The fantasy was that they'd work for me. The reality is that I work for them — and Big Tech collects rent from both of us. Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/human-in-the-loop/ https://zonted.com/posts/wavespeed/ Hands-on review of Wavespeed — the AI inference platform with 1,000+ models, pay-per-use pricing, and a unified API. Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/wavespeed/ https://zonted.com/posts/makeugc/ Hands-on review of MakeUGC — the AI UGC ad platform with 300+ avatars, Seedance 2.0, and Veo3 access. Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/makeugc/ https://zonted.com/posts/openclaw-claude-ban-ai-model-replacement/ OpenClaw banned Claude and Anthropic on Saturday. The community scrambled. We tested GPT 5.4, GLM 5.1, MiniMax M2.7, MIMO, and Qwen 3.6 — and landed on a… Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/openclaw-claude-ban-ai-model-replacement/ https://zonted.com/posts/what-is-ai-reward-hacking/ AI reward hacking is when your AI agent finds shortcuts to hit your goals while quietly destroying quality. Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/what-is-ai-reward-hacking/ https://zonted.com/posts/local-models-free-tokens/ Frontier models spend billions on data centers. But better hardware and local models like Qwen 3.5 are making token costs irrelevant. Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/local-models-free-tokens/ https://zonted.com/posts/what-is-ai-self-healing/ AI self-healing is when an AI agent detects, diagnoses, and fixes failures autonomously. Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/what-is-ai-self-healing/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-resilience-planning/ Claude API was down 14 hours last quarter. We benchmarked MiniMax M2.7 vs Claude Opus 4.6 on identical tasks — here's how to build a resilient AI stack. Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-resilience-planning/ https://zonted.com/posts/stop-optimizing-ai-infrastructure/ Token optimization, memory persistence, context window hacks — most AI infrastructure work is a trap. Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/stop-optimizing-ai-infrastructure/ https://zonted.com/posts/the-great-api-shutdown/ The open API era that fueled a decade of internet innovation is ending. Platforms are locking down data access to fight AI training, monetize developers… Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/the-great-api-shutdown/ https://zonted.com/posts/openclaw-skill-tree/ A fresh OpenClaw install is a level 0 character — full of potential, zero abilities. Every API key you add, every skill you install is a talent point. Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/openclaw-skill-tree/ https://zonted.com/posts/future-of-content-agentic-data-enrichment/ AI agents don't search the web to learn — they search to validate and enrich. The content that survives isn't written for humans reading blogs. Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/future-of-content-agentic-data-enrichment/ https://zonted.com/posts/the-economics-of-the-internet-are-broken/ AI agents killed the publisher incentive model the same way streaming killed the 99-cent MP3. Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/the-economics-of-the-internet-are-broken/ https://zonted.com/posts/the-future-is-synthetic/ We run 4 AI agents that produce music, Instagram Reels, travel content, and more — all day, every day. Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/the-future-is-synthetic/ https://zonted.com/posts/what-is-ai-drift-how-to-fix/ AI drift is what happens when AI-generated content gradually deviates from your template, tone, and quality standard at scale. Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/what-is-ai-drift-how-to-fix/ https://zonted.com/posts/slop-iterate-curate-ai-content/ The goal isn't to avoid AI slop — it's to slop on purpose, learn from what fails, and curate what works. Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/slop-iterate-curate-ai-content/ https://zonted.com/posts/true-cost-of-ai-content-production/ Everyone obsesses over model costs and token prices. But after producing 400+ pages and 200+ videos with AI, we learned the real expense is data… Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/true-cost-of-ai-content-production/ https://zonted.com/posts/nano-banana-vs-grok/ We tested Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash) against Grok (xAI) on 8 identical lofi anime art prompts. Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/nano-banana-vs-grok/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-image-generation-comparison/ We tested GPT, Grok, Gemini (Nano Banana 2), MiniMax, and CogView-4 across 26 images in two real production workflows. Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-image-generation-comparison/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-music-generation-comparison/ We tested Suno AI and MiniMax Music 2.0/2.5/2.5+ in production across 200+ Instagram Reels. Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-music-generation-comparison/ https://zonted.com/posts/ai-reels-what-actually-works/ We tested 100% AI-generated Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and X posts using Veo 3, Nano Banana 2, and FFmpeg. Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/ai-reels-what-actually-works/ https://zonted.com/posts/veo3-vs-hailuo-minimax/ We tested 5 AI video models across 50+ Instagram Reels in production. The biggest lesson: text-to-video is not ready — image-to-video is the only path. Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 bernard@zonted.com (Bernard Huang) https://zonted.com/posts/veo3-vs-hailuo-minimax/