Jabien Letlow

Hi, I'm Jay Letlow

I run small media businesses. AI agents do the daily work.

Before this I spent 20+ years in sales. Now agents watch the fares, draft the newsletters, and check the campsites. I make the calls. Nothing publishes, hits a list, or spends money without my yes.

See what's running Read the build log

The stack · Oct 2026

Five things on the stack. Two of them run every day.

Tap one to pull it open.

01PDXplorePortland flight deals. Weekly since October 2025, never missed.

6,638 subscribers on Oct 2, 2026. A 53.65% average open rate across 210K sends, as of Sep 19.

Agents

  • Collect Portland fares every day and flag deals against 90-day price baselines.
  • Live-check about 15 deals a week against Google Flights before a reader sees one.
  • Draft the newsletter and render the Instagram slides.

Me

Stage and send every issue. Approve every caption, post, and ad over coffee.

Jay at a cafe table with a coffee, checking a deal on his phone.
How PDXplore runs
02Park BanterA national parks newsletter plus paid campsite alerts. Launched August 2026.

The campsite watch runs 24/7. Issue 1 went out Aug 6, 2026, and alerts went on sale Aug 20.

Agents

  • Pull park news every day.
  • Draft the newsletter every Wednesday at 6pm Pacific, with a fact-check, photos, and a review page.
  • Check campsite availability around the clock for every active alert.

Me

Stage and send every issue. Approve every post, ad, price change, and new spend.

Jay at a picnic table under a pine, typing on a laptop, a tent behind him and a sparrow on the table.
How Park Banter runs
03SparkleA dice roguelike where Farkle meets Balatro. Built with AI agents. Not out yet.

The charm roster grew to 46 by July 9. Playable start to finish on a private web build. Zero outside testers so far.

Agents

  • Write the code, in Godot, one reviewed slice at a time.

Me

Make the calls and play every build. I say no a lot.

Jay holding a game controller with one eyebrow up. Not sold on this build.
Open the Sparkle page
05Shut downCouve CultureA local events newsletter. Shut down in July 2026.

Grew to 11,000 subscribers across 34 editions, February to October 2025. It never found a business model.

Agents

  • An n8n workflow pulled local events out of Instagram posts.
  • Drafts followed written formatting instructions for an LLM.

Me

Made the call to close it, then wrote up why.

Jay at a desk reading a printed newsletter, a stack of old issues tied with string beside him.
Read the postmortem

Across all of it, agents put in 8 to 10 hours a week of hands-on work. That number is my estimate. The model that writes the code and the model that checks it come from two different AI labs, so one lab's blind spots get caught by the other.

Build log

Notes from running it, failures included.

  1. growingWhat running AI agents taught meA notification step reported success and sent nothing for months. What actually breaks when agents do the daily work.
  2. sproutWhy I killed an 11,000 subscriber newsletterCouve Culture grew to 11,000 subscribers across 34 editions and never found a business model. Why I shut it down.
  3. evergreenThe approval queue patternAgents draft every newsletter. I stage and send each one. Nothing publishes, hits a list, or spends money without my yes.
All posts

Off the clock

Not everything I build has a business model.

The Roman bookOutlined

A progression fantasy novel where the Roman Empire meets a dungeon crawl. First person, 31 chapters outlined, no prose yet. The system notifications are written as bureaucratic Roman decrees.

Rat RodIdea stage

A tiny car for our pet rat to drive. The rat is real. My daughter and I are building it together, and for now it is mostly an idea.

Say hi

Send me a note.

A role, a project, or a good robot story. I read every one of these myself. The agents don't get this inbox.