Hi, I'm Ben Robertson.

my new automated support agent surprised me today

for context - I shipped a new "frame" feature for ColorBliss a few weeks ago. A power user replied to my changelog email with a few use cases where it could be made more useful. I put it in my backlog. I had a PR open for it for a while, and finally got around to merging it behind a feature flag this morning. I knew later I would have to go back and email the customer that it was good to go. When I logged into my help desk later - I found that my agent had already notified him! Here's what it did: - The help desk software I use has an automation that will re-open a closed ticket if an attached issue in Linear is marked done (this is super helpful for telling users their feature has shipped) - When I merged the PR, the issue itself was marked as done, and then the support ticket was re-opened. - When the support ticket was re-opened, my automated support agent checked the context of the ticket, reviewed updates in linear, and was able to see that the feature had shipped. - The agent automatically sent a note to the customer letting him know his feature request had shipped What I love about this is that it followed the full process I normally follow. The only difference is that I added the automated support agent that was able to close the loop on my behalf, in exactly the way I would normally do it. Anyway, I guess this is a long way of saying that I'm working on a new product - an AI support agent that is actually capable of resolving issues on your behalf.

it’s that big bug time of year

Nobody can prepare you for the experience of holding your baby while you try to clean up poop from all over a wet pool bathroom while a four year olds screams are echoing off the walls repeating “I didn’t poop my pants, someone else’s poop was already on here”

who else got a sneak peek of origin?

i was able to enable it for a few codebases and click around a bit. it synced all the code / files very quickly

The first proof came in from the new ColorBliss print product.

It turned out really good I think, a few updates and I should be ready to handle printed and shipped custom coloring books later this month

pretty excited to introduce this new product into the ColorBliss fold - this is the prototype of the new "mosaic mystery" coloring page recommended by a ColorBliss user this week!

my home team product tester really likes it

one thing i've been working on over the past month is automating some of the more rote parts of my product / business stack, and putting myself into the reviewer / decider position instead of the investigator position as much as possible

this has been going very well in support, to the point where i have almost all the context i need on every support ticket to make a decision / resolve it when I open it it's also helped me on some things that i've historically neglected, like database health. once a week i get 5 or so issues in linear for improvements to my database that I can review and ship as I have time

It's been a while since I've had something exciting for my home team product testers to try out for ColorBliss - but made some progress on two long-awaited feature requests

kept the team busy yesterday afternoon with the first batch of color by number coloring pages! got really good feedback from them and it should be ready for larger testing next week :)

time to add "email automation expert" to my resume

playing in the band

this is what customer support looks like in 2026

something has gone horribly wrong

celebrated my 37th birthday over the weekend, surrounded by some little ones who love me unconditionally

life is good

should i add this to the colorbliss landing page?

I asked my ai assistant to analyze signup domains for interesting ones after I saw the savannah bananas come through, and here are legit companies we found in the database I'm not sure that my regular customers would care, but it's still cool to me!

I had the great privilege to take this past week off, spend all day in quiet and prayer, and answer support tickets from this nice little bench for 30 minutes or so each evening

huge thanks to my wife for holding down the fort while I was gone. coming back super recharged and ready to work clean