2024 Year in Review: AI Ate My To-Do List
Published: December 25, 2024
90% cost savings. 4x project velocity. Zero runaway cloud bills. 2024 was the year AI stopped being an experiment and became my operating system. Control Tower orchestrated it; SentinelForge governed it; my 25+ years of cybersecurity instincts kept it honest.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
| Metric | 2023 | 2024 | Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code hours/week | 35h | 7h | 80% ↓ |
| Token cost/month | £480 | £48 | 90% ↓ |
| GitHub commits | 120 | 780 | 6.5x ↑ |
| Client projects delivered | 8 | 24 | 3x ↑ |
| Security incidents (clients) | 3 | 0 | 100% ↓ |
What Worked
- Local-first LLM routing via Proxmox + Ollama eliminated token waste
- CrewAI agent crews replaced manual scripting for repetitive security tasks
- GitHub gates kept AI honest—every output reviewed before deployment
What I’d Do Differently
- Start SentinelForge 6 months earlier—governance should precede agents, not follow them.
- Document the style guide earlier for consistent AI output quality.
- Automate client reporting from day one, not as an afterthought.
With the EU AI Act on the horizon and CrewAI maturing fast, 2025 looked even bigger.
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Next: whoamiAI—what 500 AI sessions taught me about myself (Mar 2025).