AI Minimalism (automating effectively)

Minimalism is creativity

Most people think minimalism is about subtraction. Just strip everything away and you're done.

I used to think like that at some point, until I saw the beauty in it and thought about the process. to achieve it.

Real minimalism? It takes iterations. It takes imagination. You need to see ALL the options first (every possible path, every solution, every node in the system) before you can strip away what doesn't matter.

Being a minimalist requires more creativity, not less.

That's the hard part.

Stone and mortar

Think about building with stone and mortar.

Simple materials, but with those bricks, you can create something that lasts forever. Something beautiful.

It just needs to be done right (durable, stacked brick by brick, built once). If you add more materials and more “features” it can actually get uglier and less durable.

This is to say, you don’t need complex material combinations, no fancy bullshit.

Just stone, mortar, and the creativity to know exactly where each piece goes.

The creativity isn't in adding more. It's in knowing what doesn’t need to be added.

Why this matters for AI automation

I'm watching people build these massive, bloated automations of hundreds of nodes. Endless complexity. They think more steps = better solution.

They're wrong.

The simplest, most minimalistic path from point A to point B? That's always the winner. Input to output quick and efficiently.

why?

Three reasons:

Speed. Fewer nodes means faster execution, you're not running some convoluted maze. You're drawing a straight(ish) line.

Reliability. Less complexity = less that can break. Every node you add is another potential failure point.

Cost. You're running fewer operations. That's real money saved, every single time the automation runs.

But getting there is always a challenge. And the first build likely never will be the final form. But building with simplicity in mind is the first step.

The reduction process

I was first introduced to this by Rick Rubin in his book and interviews. His whole production philosophy is about reduction.

Listen to the song again. What can you remove?

Look at the automation again. What's not essential?

Sometimes you see it immediately. Sometimes it takes using the system over and over before you realize: "Oh, I don't need that node. Gone."

That's the iterative part, the creative part.

In complex systems, we default to complex solutions because it feels smart. It might feel thorough, but complexity is often just fear (fear that we're missing something, fear that simple won't work).

The real intelligence is finding the essence of the system. The bare minimum. The one elegant solution hiding underneath all the noise.

That takes imagination. That takes the ability to think differently, to form new thought patterns, to sometimes do things that have never been done before.

The creative act of subtraction

Minimalism isn't lazy. It's not taking shortcuts.

It's having the vision to see what matters and the discipline to cut everything else.

It's choosing stone and mortar when everyone else is building with a hundred different materials.

It's reducing your 26-node automation down to 8 nodes that do the job better.

Sometimes it’s even realizing that a system shouldn’t be automated as it requires too much deep thinking.

That's creativity.

That's minimalism.

Thanks for reading,

James