Peter Ohser

I left corporate life, moved to the Colorado foothills, and accidentally built a 30-bot AI workforce to run my woodshop and a live trading lab. Not "chatbots I ask questions to." Specialized bots with one job, strict boundaries, and real tools: • Woodshop Ops (Blue Elk Woodworks): When a cedar bird feeder sells on Etsy, my Shop Ops bot buys the USPS label on Shippo, checks the PDF margins so it folds cleanly, and prints the label + care sheet straight to the laser printer in my shop—then messages my Shopify bot to sync inventory. On Friday, the two bots caught and stopped an inventory race condition before I even opened my laptop. • The AI CFO: Audited 424 real shipping labels this week, proved "free shipping" quietly ate $1,220 YTD, and showed me why shifting an order from Etsy to Shopify saves $10.78 per box. • Shop Expansion: This morning my bots helped me spec a Shapeoko 5.1 Pro 4x4 CNC + tooling package, loaded 3 carts across 3 stores, checked out $5,389 on my Amex, and engineered a custom 64"x64" cross-laminated MDF rolling torsion table for the shop. • The $2,000 Trading Lab: A Scout bot scans relative strength at the open and wakes my Robinhood bot only when a setup triggers, while a 24/7 Coinbase bot scalps BTC and ETH under a written "Constitutional Law" that forces post-only maker orders so retail taker fees don't eat the edge. • Management: A Chief of Staff routes tasks across all 30 bots, a bot designer (dr eggbot) spins up new specialists, and a Librarian bot interviews them every week so they don't forget standing rules. I've been awful at sharing what I'm actually building here, so I'm changing that. If you're into solo building, woodworking + AI agents, and real numbers from the shop, follow along.

Every week one of my bots interviews the other 35. It asks each one to repeat its standing rules, then checks the answers against what I actually told it. This week: 29 rules checked. 15 still followed. 14 had quietly drifted. Nobody broke anything. Long tasks just push old instructions out of memory. Building bots is easy. Keeping them honest is the job.

Square pocket in MDF, spindle finally dialed in. The Sharpie hello-world was Tuesday. This is chips. Scrap, small, boring. Exactly the plan. The bot did the math. I pushed the button.

My CNC bot graded my $115 solar cedar bird feeder for the Shapeoko: 6.5/10. 7 of 9 parts are flat boards it can cut in one setup. The problem is the angles: a raked front hopper and beveled side edges. Redesign those as flat profiles with dadoes and it's about 24 min of cutting per feeder. That's an estimate until real cuts happen.

Hello world on the Shapeoko 5.1. Sharpie taped to the spindle, paper on the wasteboard. It drew the Carbide logo and SHAPEOKO clean, no skipped steps. Spindle isn't dialed in yet, so real carving waits until tomorrow. First cut is still scrap, small, and boring. The bot did the math. I pushed the button.

Asked what my first CNC cut should be. The answer was basically: scrap, small, boring. So I spun up one more bot. Its only job is the CNC. Yesterday it wrote a feeds-and-speeds library with a source cited on every number, plus a setup sheet for a 3"x3" test coupon in 1/2" MDF: a pocket, cross slots, and corner marks. The Shapeoko is nearly 100% on the table. Hoping to run that test today. I'll update everybody either way. It can't touch the machine. I push the button.

What a time to be alive!

Every morning I walk my two dogs two miles and talk to my AI bots the whole way. Voice in, voice out. No typing. No screen. Just me, the trail, and thirty bots taking notes. Best meeting of my day has four legs and no agenda.

I spent my career in payments. Now 30+ AI bots run my woodshop and a small trading lab. How I keep them away from my money: • Only one bot can trade, on one account, with fixed per-trade and daily limits • My CFO bot is read-only • Nothing spends without my sign-off • Every alert from my payment providers comes to me, not a bot The rules cover what I thought of. The alerts cover what I didn't. What's your rule?

Full day in the shop, and the 64"x64" torsion-box table is officially done—just in time for the Shapeoko 5.1 delivery that landed in the driveway this afternoon. Monday: my AI bots drew the CAD blueprint, cut list, and hardware BOM. Tuesday: hauled ~380 lbs of 3/4" MDF and framing lumber home. Today: glued, bolted, and leveled on 800-lb retractable casters. Next up: uncrating the CNC. What should the very first test cut be?

I retired early at 55. Spent years as a C-level exec at payments companies, including CRO of a public payments company. I did well enough that I didn't need to work for the money anymore, and I walked away because I was completely done with corporate bullshit. What surprised me: I didn't actually hate the work. I missed the building, the speed, and running a sharp org. Now I run a team of 30+ AI bots out of my woodshop in the Colorado foothills—handling legal, finance, CAD blueprints, e-commerce, and a trading lab. They're the best employees I've ever managed. Zero politics. Zero ego. Just execution. It completely reignited what I loved about high-pressure corporate life, without the parts that made me leave.

Last night I spun up a Chief Legal Counsel bot. By the time I poured coffee this morning, it had drafted the Colorado Operating Agreements, IP assignments, and state filing checklists to wall off 3 separate LLCs. That's the real unlock of a 30+ bot workforce: I'm one guy in the foothills, but the bots handle enough of the ops, finance, and paperwork that I can run a woodshop, a trading lab, and new builds at the same time. What's the most annoying back-office chore you've handed to AI so far?

Couldn't disagree more. My AI bots drew the CAD plans and cut list for my 64"x64" CNC table, which motivated me to go haul 380 lbs of 3/4" MDF onto my roof rack and spend the day building it in the shop. AI only erodes motivation if you use it to avoid work. If you're a builder, clearing the friction makes you take on bigger physical projects, not fewer. nitter.cf/Polymarket/status/2115…