Previously at the Volcano Base I’d been thinking about the new rules of the agentic web. Since then, I’ve been trying to fill a surprise gap in my pipeline for Spring. A big thank-you to all the people that have been in touch to help. As they say in America: I appreciate you.

Somewhere in the Hermetic tradition, the one concerned with ancient wisdom, universal principles, and the sort of philosophy that makes people deeply annoying on Reddit, there exists a year-long practice called the Rite of the Magician.

It is, by occult standards, remarkably straightforward. For one year, you say yes to every opportunity presented to you. Even the ones you'd ordinarily decline. Especially those.

No crystals required.

"Yes, and" is the foundational principle of improvisational theatre. When your scene partner says you're both astronauts on a burning space station, you don't say "actually, I think we're in an office." You say yes, and you add something. You build. You accept the reality offered to you and contribute to it.

I first encountered the principle at drama school, where it felt like a game. Years later, moving in rather different circles, I came across the Rite of the Magician and felt an immediate sense of recognition. Same spell, different costume.

The Rite is "yes" without the "and." It's the acceptance without the contribution. Which, if you think about it, is only half the spell.

The full version, yes and, is considerably more potent.

There's a concept floating around independent business circles called luck surface area. The idea is simple enough to be annoying: the more you engage, accept, contribute, and participate, the more opportunities have a chance to find you.

It's not mystical. It's geometry. A larger surface catches more light.

The problem is that running your own business tends to make you smaller, not larger. You get cautious. You get busy. You get very good at saying no to things that don't fit neatly into the plan, and slightly less good at noticing that the plan itself might be the problem.

This newsletter is, if I'm being honest with myself, an example of the Rite in action, though I didn't frame it that way at the time.

It started as a defensive measure. Social networks can change how many people see your work at the flick of an algorithmic switch. I wanted to build a direct relationship with people that didn't depend on a platform's commercial agenda, so I started writing useful tips about tech and systems for small businesses.

Sensible. Businessy. Thoroughly adequate.

Then, gradually, I started straying. I wrote about failures. About uncertainty. About the gaps between what running your own business looks like from the outside and what it actually feels like at 11pm on a Tuesday. I said yes to being more honest than was strictly comfortable.

And something unexpected happened. People replied. Not just "great newsletter" replies (which still make me go “squeee!”), actual conversations. Ongoing ones. With real humans who had similar anxieties and similar experiences and similar suspicious feelings about LinkedIn.

There's no clean spreadsheet entry for this. I can’t point to a specific invoice and say "that came from being candid about a professional disappointment in Issue 23." The luck surface area expanded in ways that don't fit neatly into a pipeline.

Here's what I think the Rite of the Magician gets right, and where it needs a small amendment.

Saying yes is necessary but insufficient. It opens the door. The "and" is what you do once you're through it. It's the contribution, the engagement, the thing you add to the situation rather than just tolerating it.

The people I've seen get genuinely, consistently lucky in business, and I mean lucky in the sense of "good things keep finding them in ways that seem improbable," are almost always the ones who not only accept opportunities but actively make them more interesting once they're inside them.

They say yes. And then they add something.

Some interesting stuff I discovered on my adventures.

Flood Fill vs The Magic Circle

AI automation thrives inside contained digital environments where everything is symbols and data. The moment it has to deal with the physical world, things get considerably more complicated. A useful framework for thinking about which parts of your work are genuinely at risk and which are safer than the headlines suggest. Hat tip to Phil Adams for the link.

Perplexity Computer

Perplexity Computer is a new AI system that breaks complex, multi-step tasks into smaller jobs and hands them off to specialised agents automatically. No extra setup, no babysitting. Worth watching if you're interested in where the "AI does the whole thing" trend is actually heading.

Claude Remote Control

Anthropic's Claude Code now lets you connect to your local coding session from your phone or browser, without pushing anything to the cloud. Your machine does the work, you just hold the remote. Requires a Pro or Max plan, and only runs while your computer is on, which feels like a very reasonable trade-off.