I was doing some digital navel-gazing recently, scrolling through my own AI prompt history over the years that I have been using it. It’s a weirdly intimate look at how your brain works (do try this … theres a prompt for that!) and looking at it, I realized something fundamental has shifted in how I interact with the machine.

A couple of years ago, my relationship with AI was purely transactional. I was the master, it was the intern. “Write a regex for this” “Debug this Laravel queue” or “Explain this Solana concept like I’m 5.”. It was essentially Google on steroids.

But looking at my logs in the past few months, the dynamic has completely flipped.

The “Then” vs. The “Now”

The shift isn’t just in complexity; it’s in the abstraction level.

In the last month alone, I haven’t asked the AI to write a single line of raw code. Instead, the prompts look like the agenda of a C-suite strategy meeting at a fintech startup.

December 27: “I am one of the founders of … how do i reposition this as the … ?”

This was when I was doing a think through of repositioning one of our platforms to an ecosystem play.

December 28: “I am building the technology strategy for …, where i have to divide our solutions into three parts (… layer, … layer and … layer).”

This was when I was putting together a list of priority items that we needed to do for 2026.

January 12: “List all the initiatives that … Bank and … Bank have taken on asset tokenization.”

This was when I was preparing for a round table on asset tokenization and needed to get some research done.

The AI as the Shadow Director

I’m no longer using AI to build the thing. I’m using AI to figure out what thing to build and how to position it.

When I asked about fiduciary management under the DPDP Act in December, I wasn’t looking for a Wikipedia definition. I was looking for a sounding board for compliance strategy. When I was researching tokenization efforts in India, I was doing deep competitive intelligence.

The tool has morphed from a glorified calculator into a shadow board of directors for me.

The Meta-Learning

If there is a takeaway for anyone building in the Indian fintech space right now, it’s this: the arbitrage in AI isn’t in generating code faster anymore. The real moat is using LLMs to untangle complex systems.

I’m effectively using AI to bridge the massive gap between raw Indian banking regulation (DPDP, FLDG, co-lending compliance) and actual execution.

We used to say software is eating the world. Right now, AI is eating my operational bottlenecks. And honestly? It’s making the ride a lot less lonely.

If you’ve been following my recent posts, you know I finally bid adieu to WordPress. After years of running this site and speaking at various WordCamps, the stance Automattic took on the whole WP vs WP Engine brouhaha was turning so toxic, that I finally decided to move on. So, naturally, the itch to build something of my own started to creep in. But with how things are at work, my free time is pretty much non-existent between back-to-back meetings and the usual Mumbai commute hustle.

I wanted a clean, fast, custom blog without the bloat, and Laravel was the obvious choice of framework. But starting from scratch? That usually means weeks of weekend-stealing boilerplate work.

Enter Antigravity.

I’d been hearing chatter about this AI-powered coding tool, and I decided to put it to the test. My goal was simple: get the barebones of a Laravel-based blog up and running over a single cup of filter coffee.

The Setup

Honestly, my expectations were pretty tempered. We’ve all seen AI tools spit out generic, broken snippets. But within the first 15 minutes of prompting, I realized this was different.

I started with Herd, and created a Laravel project.

Prompting Through the Boilerplate

What absolutely blew my mind was the ease of generating the actual logic. Instead of context-switching between the terminal, documentation, and the IDE, I was just having a conversation with the tool.

• “Create a controller to handle the blog index and single post views.” Done.
• “Add a middleware to restrict the admin dashboard to specific user emails.” Handled perfectly.
• “Generate the Blade templates using Tailwind CSS for a clean, readable UI and copy the theme on kidakaka.com.” Boom. Responsive, accessible, and it even generate curl requests to read the existing markup.

From Zero to Blog in 60 Minutes

Within an hour—literally less than 60 minutes—the basic structure was alive. I had a working admin panel, a frontend that displayed posts, a functional tagging system, and a robust backend.

In the old days, getting to this point would have easily taken a full weekend of grinding out routes, controllers, and views, not to mention the CSS headaches. Antigravity removed the friction of starting. It felt less like coding and more like curating and architecting.

Is AI coming for our developer jobs? I don’t think so. A strong engineering culture still needs human empathy, system design, and security foresight. But as a tool to accelerate the mundane? It’s an absolute game-changer. If you are into tech, then its time to focus on these things instead of just dishing out DS problems!

Now, if only I could prompt it to brave the Mumbai traffic for me.

Health for me has always been a bit of a sensitive issue :). However, for the past couple of years I have been trying to make the right decisions. Last year I started going to marathons. Specifically the Juhu Marathon which has a dream run leg of 4kms. Now that might not be so much, and my times are also not something that one can be proud of.

However, what matters is that its a step in the right direction.

It’s been my second year going to this marathon, and as always I woke up early and reached the venue with Harshaja. Such events are where she is all happy and bubbly, and I am a grumbling old man. Perhaps its the trepidation of whats to come. There is also an irrational fear of getting too much stressed and having a heart attack.

The venue

The event is held on the Jamnalal School grounds. This is the seventh year and more than a thousand runners had signed up for the dream run. The venue we took is listed below.

An interesting thing to note is that even though the event was organized by the Rotaract Club, there were other sponsors and communities participating as well.

The run

This should not be called a run. Its more of a scramble very much like the one you do to catch a train on a crowded station. Hustling and bustling, dodging other folks just so that you have enough space to keep your foot on the path ahead. Heart racing, and completely focused on reaching that destination.

I was taken back to my days when I used to catch trains for Bandra, Dadar and Andheri. The good part was that there was no TC to stop and check your pass!!

Recently, I went to the post office to pick up a parcel. What was supposed to be a quick, routine task ended up taking a big chunk of my morning. I’m not going to get into the issues with the country’s logistics— I believe that can be solved with better engagement.

As I was waiting in line, I noticed that most of the people there weren’t dealing with parcels like me. Instead, they were handling transactions related to their savings accounts! Yes, the majority of the people at this local post office were there for business with the Post Office Savings Bank. There were cash depositors, people updating their passbooks (seriously!), and an elderly person wanting to convert his savings into a fixed deposit.

This wasn’t just a post office—it felt like a bank branch in action!

Post Office Savings Bank: A History

In India, government-run savings banks have been around for nearly 130 years. Some historians trace the origins of the savings movement to 1834, when the first savings bank was set up in Calcutta. The Government Savings Bank Act was passed in 1873, and the Post Office Savings Bank of India came into being in 1882. In 1886, the Government District Savings Banks merged with the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB).

During British rule, the Indian government created the “National Savings Central Bureau” to promote saving, control inflation caused by World War II, and raise funds for the war. However, this effort didn’t gain much traction because people were not interested in supporting a war that didn’t involve them.

After India’s independence in 1947, the government aimed to further promote the savings movement and established the National Savings Organisation (now NSI) in 1948. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru emphasized the importance of national savings, not just to fund development projects, but also to involve people across the country in the process. He believed that anyone who participated would contribute to the nation’s growth.

Small savings became a priority. The Indian Constitution, adopted in 1949, included the Post Office Savings Bank in its list of key government institutions. Laws like the Government Savings Certificates Act of 1959 and the Public Provident Fund Act of 1968 were used by the Ministry of Finance to create various small savings programs. The aim of these programs was to encourage people to save, especially small savers, who could play an important role.

The Post Office Savings Bank has been the main platform for these savings initiatives across India for over 120 years.

POSB vs Private Banks

When you compare the reach of the post office network to the branch-based model of most private banks, it becomes clear that the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) has a much wider presence. Because of this, the products offered by the POSB are specifically designed for its customer base.

POSB mainly focuses on savings and deposits, generating interest by investing in government securities (G-Secs). This is different from most private banks, which offer a range of products and generate income through liability products to fund their asset offerings. POSB’s model is simpler, but it’s also more conservative. Many POSB users express a strong sense of trust, which sets it apart from most private banks.

Financial Services 101

As we talk about evolving our financial services and becoming a global superpower, it’s important to remember that many private financial service providers don’t have enough reach to serve the unbanked population in this vast country.

This is where the Post Office Savings Bank really stands out. As someone involved in building a financial services business, this was a key lesson for me. Success lies in being close to the customer—understanding their needs and meeting them where they are. An app alone won’t solve all their problems. Human engagement will. People will walk several kilometers (like I did) to visit a branch, and they’ll patiently wait, as long as their issues are addressed. Even today, all major financial service players need to do this in order to succeed. Everything else is just extra.

With the recent licensing issues and how Automattic has been reacting to this leaving a bad taste in my mouth, I have decided to move on from WordPress and try out a new blogging content management system (CMS).

Tried a few, and finally giving Textpattern a whirl. Have to figure out a markdown-esque script called Textile, but other than that, this should work.