There's a version of the AI story that goes like this: learn the tools, ship a side project, maybe start a consultancy. All good. That's what I've been writing about for five editions — building in public, tier-one vs. tier-two, coordination systems, operational intelligence.
But something shifted this month. The lab work moved into the living room. Literally.
My wife and I launched Tiny Village, a parent support platform for Calgary families with kids under five. And the thing that makes it different from everything I've built before is that it's not a technology project that happens to involve my family. It's a family project that happens to use AI.
That distinction matters more than I expected.
📡 THE SIGNAL: WHY “FAMILY AI” IS A CATEGORY
The AI conversation is obsessed with productivity, enterprise adoption, and replacing work. All valid. But there's a quieter wave happening that nobody's naming properly:
Parents are using AI to build things for other parents.
Not chatbots that answer baby questions. Not another tracking app. Real platforms — built by people who understand the gap because they're living in it.
The parenting market has a peculiar problem. The people who most need better tools are the ones with the least time to build them. New parents are exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply motivated. That's a design constraint, not a feature gap.
What happens when a parent who also happens to have spent months learning agentic AI decides to solve their own problem?
You get something like Tiny Village.
🔧 WHAT I'M BUILDING: TINY VILLAGE
The Problem We Actually Have
When our daughter was born, we did what most parents do — searched for local programs, signed up for groups, tried to find our village. One program in particular left us frustrated: paid a decent amount, showed up expecting structured support and community, and got something that felt more like going through the motions.
My wife put it simply: "I could do this better." And she wasn't wrong. She has the hospitality operator background, the lived mom experience, and the natural instinct for making people feel welcomed. I have the AI architecture habit and a very patient agent named Barnaby.
Together, we're building the thing we wish existed.
What Tiny Village Actually Is
Tiny Village is a warm, local support layer for Calgary families with little ones. Three core ideas:
Feel Less Alone
Village Check-In — a parent shares what's going on and gets a warm response, a practical next step, and a reminder that hard doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Five messages, free, no signup wall.Find Your Footing
Calgary-specific resources that know your weather, your city, your actual week. Not generic "try a schedule!" advice from someone who's never been through a Calgary February with a toddler.Build Real Connection
Host-led groups and events. Not another noisy forum — more like finding your people with some structure around it.
What's Live Now
In a few days of focused building:
• Landing page at tinyvillage.ca (http://tinyvillage.ca/) — warm, honest, Calgary-first
• Resource library with local guides: mom groups, new mom support, dad support groups, indoor activities, postpartum resources, prenatal classes, drop-in programs — all Calgary-specific
• Village Check-In — the AI-assisted first step when a parent needs a calmer moment
• 10 themed activity packs — printable coloring pages, crafts, and learning sheets for toddlers and preschoolers (Dinosaur Discovery, Ocean Explorers, Space Adventure, Farm Friends, Bug Hunt, and more). Five are free, five unlock with an email. Designed for the "we need something to do right now" moment.
•Founding family waitlist — early access to pilot groups, direct input on what gets built next
All built with my wife shaping the voice, the brand, and the emotional centre. She's the host. I'm the infrastructure.
The Role of AI in Tiny Village
Here's where it gets interesting for people who've been following the Agency journey.
AI in Tiny Village is invisible by design. It's not the product. It's the operating leverage that makes a two-person family project feel like a small team:
• Content drafting and resource curation
• Newsletter writing (yes, including parts of this one)
• Local resource research and organization
• Check-In response scaffolding (human-reviewed, warm-toned)
• Feedback synthesis from early families
• Event outline generation
• The hundred small things that would otherwise eat the 45 minutes we have between bedtime and collapse
💡 THE INSIGHT: TWO FOUNDERS, DIFFERENT SUPERPOWERS
Most projects talk about co-founder fit. We have a variant I haven't seen discussed much: domain-founder fit married to technical-founder fit, quite literally.
My wife brings:
• Lived mom experience and genuine empathy for new parents
• Child development and parenting research interest
• Hospitality background (she's managed multiple restaurants — she knows how to make people feel welcomed at scale)
• Cooking, baking, and the kind of practical warmth that can't be faked
• Credibility with the parent audience because she is the audience
I bring:
• Strategy and product architecture
• The AI platform experience from months of building
• Execution leverage through Barnaby
• The willingness to build infrastructure at 11pm
Together, it's not two people who know tech. It's one person who knows parents and one person who knows platforms. The AI bridges the gap between what we'd want to build and what we have time to build.
The broader pattern: AI is most powerful not when it replaces expertise, but when it amplifies a domain expert who wouldn't otherwise be able to ship. My wife has always had the vision for what parents need. She just never had an engineering team. Now she effectively does — and it fits on a desk.
🔮 WHY THIS MATTERS FOR THE "BUILD IN PUBLIC" COMMUNITY
If you've been following along, you've watched this journey go from:
Edition 1-2: Learning agentic AI, deploying personal infrastructure
Edition 3: Building Mission Control, proving Tier 2 works for operations
Edition 4: Knowledge Exchange Networks, coordination architecture
Edition 5: Balance of the Orchestrator and starting to build solutions for daily life
Edition 6 (now): Taking everything learned and pointing it at a real human problem
The progression isn't accidental. Each edition added a capability layer. The family AI application is what it looks like when those layers stack into something that serves people outside the tech bubble.
I'm not writing about Tiny Village because it's a tech demo. I'm writing about it because it's the most honest application of everything I've learned. Built for the people I care about most, shaped by the person who understands the problem best, enabled by the tools I've spent five months learning to trust.
ONE QUESTION
Most AI side projects stay side projects. The ones that become real usually have something personal pulling them forward.
What's the problem in your life that you understand deeply enough to solve, if only you had the time and tools?
That's the one worth pointing AI at.
Agency is a newsletter about navigating the agentic economy with resilience, curiosity, and — well — agency. Written by a Canadian insurance senior leader who's learning by building, not just reading.
Edition #006