The working vocabulary.
Terms, frames, and coinages used across the writing. Start here if a phrase keeps recurring and you want the precise definition — most link back to the essays that introduce them.
- AI-native publishing Simon
-
A publishing operating model where AI agents handle research, drafting, editorial review, SEO/GEO, and programming as default, with human operators overseeing strategy and judgement calls. Different from "AI-assisted publishing," where AI is a tool humans pick up; in AI-native publishing, the pipeline is built around agents from the start.
- Context engineering
-
The discipline of designing the inputs (prompts, retrieved documents, tool schemas, memory state) that a language model sees at inference time. Replaces the narrower "prompt engineering" framing. In AI-native publishing, context engineering is the day-job skill: what the model produces is mostly a function of what you give it to work with.
- Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
-
The practice of structuring a website so AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) can ingest, ground, and cite its content reliably. Distinct from SEO, which optimises for blue-link ranking. GEO priorities include machine-readable content surfaces (llms.txt, JSON-LD), definition-shaped ledes, and a cross-linked entity graph.
- Niche scale Simon
-
The argument that a tightly-scoped publication with 100,000 loyal readers outperforms a broad publication with 10 million drive-by readers on every metric that matters: monetisation per user, editorial quality, and defensibility against AI substitution.
- Profit-first, always Simon
-
Simon’s framing for the bootstrapped operating discipline behind mOOnshot digital: every venture must be profitable from day one, with no external capital and 90%+ margins as the floor. The phrase signals the opposite of growth-at-all-costs startup orthodoxy — compounding without dilution is the whole game.
- The $0 CPM problem Simon
-
The advertising-economics crisis for online publishers as AI chat interfaces replace search-driven traffic. When readers get answers from ChatGPT or Perplexity instead of clicking through to the source, the page never loads and the CPM is effectively zero. Simon uses this framing to argue that the advertiser-first publishing model cannot survive the AI transition.
- The operator / creator divide Simon
-
The distinction Simon draws between people who build systems that produce outputs (operators) and people who produce outputs directly (creators). AI widens the leverage gap between the two: an operator with AI infrastructure can match the output volume of a large creator team.