*Note: This was from Fable for a linked In post. I gave it the puzzle solver the 2 examples and it build the rest Including the tag line. I thought it was interesting from both Fable direction, me, and AI. So sharing. At my core, I'm a puzzle solver. Give me a problem with a clear "this shouldn't be happening" and I'll hunt it down. Two favorites from my analyst work: → A device in the field was dropping 0.3% of its API calls. Every dashboard said "fine." I isolated the device traffic onto a clean network, ruled out layers one at a time, and traced it to the IP's firewall silently scanning credentials. Days of work for a fraction of a percent — a fraction of a percent of thousands of calls is real failures for real customers. → Historical revenue reports kept shifting after the books were closed. The data model checked out. The queries checked out. The cause: manually backdated payments, invisible unless you knew exactly where in the data to look. Both cases were solved the same way: refuse to accept "probably fine," follow the evidence one layer down, repeat. That attitude now shapes how I build AI agents. Every automation I ship is auditable end to end. My GitHub triage agent logs every decision and escalates to a human the moment it can't parse a situation. My negotiation engine validates every LLM output against a deterministic rules engine — 638 tests pin the behavior. When something misbehaves, I can tell you where, why, and exactly what the model saw. Agents will go wrong. I build them so you can find out why. If you can't trace it, you can't trust it.

My Fable use was down to 6% before it gets paywalled. I'd been throwing everything I had at it and been impressed the entire time. So for the last of it, I pointed it at Polis. Polis is my political-negotiation game: you play the mayor of an ancient Greek city-state, and the twist is that the faction leaders are LLMs you negotiate with in live conversation — the terms you settle on get parsed into structured deals that a deterministic simulation engine actually enforces. I'd gotten it to a working state, but I had stepped back from it: the concept is interesting, but it's still missing the gameplay to make it cool. (Also graphically uninteresting.) Nate B Jones made a point that stuck with me: most LLMs are good in the middle of the bell curve. Fable can try things out on the tails. So that's exactly what I asked for: "Projects\Polis Please look at this spec and design (Not code) I want your ideas on it. What do you think would be interesting to add/change. High concept. As out there as you can. this is brainstorm no bad ideas" It gave me pure gold. Some were half-ideas already in my head; some were things I never would have thought of. All of it got the creative juices flowing. Then I prompted it about the visuals, gave it a couple of concepts of mine, and it blew my mind again. I'm not a graphic artist — it riffed on my ideas, then explained which tools were actually right for building it and why. I had it write the whole art direction up as a document for the project. Then one more stretch: "Any ideas overall for the project. Time to stretch the mind. What crazy things should I do with this concept?" Again, great ideas. Most will never happen — but that's not what brainstorming is for. Where my head is at on this project now versus a week ago is the point. The whole thing took 4 of my remaining 6%. Fable is a great idea model. ** Highlights below; full conversation attached. 4. The Oracle — shadow simulation as prophecy. (My favorite idea in this list.)