The Full Catalog
Each guide is a standalone field manual — focused, actionable, and built to run, not read once and shelve. New guides added regularly.
The complete system for writing prompts that actually work — across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Midjourney, Runway, Perplexity, and GitHub Copilot.
Side-by-side workflows for the two most powerful AI coding tools — so you ship faster without constantly switching tabs.
Build real, shippable apps with AI across Lovable, Bubble, Glide, Zapier, and Softr — no engineering degree required.
SOPs, workflows, and AI tools to run your store like a system — not a full-time job. 6 ready-to-run SOPs, 15 prompt templates, and a 90-day roadmap.
GDPR, CCPA, EU AI Act, and FTC guidelines — translated into practical frameworks for founders using AI tools. Written by a retired federal Information Security Officer, not a consultant who read the regulations last month.
Cut your OpenAI bill without cutting features. Caching, token optimization, model routing, and architectural decisions that reduce API spend by 50–70%.
Build AI products competitors can't copy. Data moats, workflow integration, UX lock-in, network effects, and a 12-month moat-building roadmap.
Weekly market recon for solo founders. Research competitor feature releases, pricing changes, and hiring signals — with a 30-minute weekly routine and 5 reusable AI prompt templates.
A real 6-hour SMTP debugging incident — five failure layers documented with the exact fix, a pre-flight checklist, and an error message decoder for Mautic 5, Brevo, and Docker Compose.
73% of small businesses fail their first cyber insurance application. This guide walks you through every control carriers require — MFA, EDR, Backup, Email Security, IR Plan, Vendor Risk — with evidence checklists and a 30-Day Readiness Plan. Built from the same control frameworks used in federal cybersecurity programs, translated for a one-person operation.
You've got AI tools. Now build an AI team. Assign roles, run QA loops, set persistent memory, and build workflows that actually scale — with the 5-Role Minimum, drop-in Role Charter templates, and an end-to-end SOP from idea to shipped product.
GDPR, CCPA, EU AI Act, and FTC guidelines — 205+ checklist items in plain language. Know what you need to have in place before you flip the switch.
If you build on an AI API, you're an operator, and that carries legal weight. How guardrails work, why they fail, where liability is landing, and what safe deployment looks like, mapped to the EU AI Act, NIST AI 600-1, and the OWASP LLM Top 10. Ends with a 15-point Operator Checklist you can hand to a regulator, customer, or insurer.
Written by a former federal buyer who sat on source selection panels. How government AI procurement actually works, what kills a small vendor before the proposal is read, OTA and SBIR entry paths, what evaluators score, and the OMB and FedRAMP layer, plus a 90-day government sales readiness plan.
A field assessment framework for election officials, civic technologists, and policy researchers evaluating mobile voting system security. Written from a federal InfoSec program lead perspective.
What every citizen, journalist, and local official should know about Automated License Plate Reader deployments — policy gaps, privacy exposure, and what to ask your local government.
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About
After 30 years in federal and military service — Marine Corps, Army Corps of Engineers, and a decade as Information Security Officer at the EPA — I stepped away from federal service. Semi-retired is more accurate. I left the job, not the work, and went to build products.
When I started, I kept looking for the same thing I'd relied on throughout my career: a clear, direct playbook. Most of what existed was too vague to act on or buried inside a course I didn't have time to finish. The guides I needed — written for operators who move fast and need to stay defensible — didn't exist. So I wrote them.
FounderFieldManuals is a growing catalog of field-tested AI guides built around the actual tools, prompts, and workflows I use to run a one-person operation. No filler. No theory for its own sake. Just the system, documented clearly, so you can execute.