AI Development·13 MIN
We Ran the Major AI Tools for a Month: The 2026 Scorecard
A month running Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Grok and Perplexity across our whole stack. The honest 2026 scorecard — and why agility now beats loyalty.
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01 / THE SHELLHARBOUR MARKET
What if you could read Shellharbour's digital marketing demand like software? 1,200+ searches a month. Versioned, verified, acted on weekly.
THE OLD WAY
A $5k audit PDF in three weeks that tells you what you already knew. A retainer split across thirty strangers. Shellharbour rankings checked quarterly, if at all.
THE AGENT WAY
The numbers on the right refresh with every deploy. One operator plus agents, shipping weekly — your Shellharbour position compounds without anyone sending a Slack.
Shellharbour is one of the fastest-growing parts of the Illawarra, anchored by established suburbs like Warilla and Barrack Heights and the expanding Shell Cove development. The local economy leans on retail, trades, hospitality and healthcare serving a growing residential population. Demand is strongly local and "near me" driven, so Shellharbour campaigns need precise service-area targeting and fast, locally-relevant websites rather than broad metropolitan strategies.
jjm@studio — shellharbour.brief — live LIVE
$ jjm.brief('shellharbour')
✓ demand scan · 1,200+ searches/mo
✓ difficulty 54/100 · winnable with structure
✓ cpc $5.16 · every wasted click costs this
✓ sectors · retail · professional services · healthcare
▸ brief ready — open for one more shellharbour client
[ Live market data · refreshed with each deploy ]
02 / THE WORKALL CASE STUDIES
The SEO, Google Ads and web builds we'd run for Shellharbour — already running for businesses like yours.
PLATFORM · PINK SLIPS NSW
Cost per lead, down 80%.
Custom booking platform — calendar, payments, ops. Five times more leads per dollar and zero hours of weekly admin.
−80% cost per lead
PLUMBING · 47 SUBURBS
From local listings to dominant.
Suburb-page architecture + perf overhaul + Google Ads engineering.
+247% local pack →
PEST · SYDNEY SOUTH
Conversion tracking, rebuilt.
Runtime-verified tracking + landing-page kit. Caught the silent drop a source-only audit missed.
0 → 100% tracked →
03 / WHAT WE RUNALL SERVICES
SEO, Google Ads & web development in Shellharbour
Three things, run properly, forever improving.
SEO in Shellharbour
Rank for the searches Shellharbour actually makes — technical, content and authority, run by agents.
EXPLORE →
Google Ads in Shellharbour
Every dollar traced to a lead. Bids tuned daily, wasted spend cut weekly.
EXPLORE →
Custom builds in Shellharbour
Sites and platforms that load instantly and convert. No WordPress, no page builders.
EXPLORE →
04 / ON THE GROUND
Serving Shellharbour & surrounds
Illawarra — New South Wales. Local search, local intent, local results — campaigns tuned to how Shellharbour actually searches.
SERVICE AREA · ACTIVE-34.586, 150.769
SUBURB SHELLHARBOUR 2529SEARCH/MO 1,200+CPC $5.16KD 54/100POP 6k
05 / STRAIGHT ANSWERS
Common questions about Shellharbour marketing
06 / FROM THE STUDIO
Marketing insights for Shellharbour
AI Development·15 MIN
When Is Claude Fable 5 Coming Back? What the Markets, the Mechanism and the Mob Actually Say
Eleven days after the US government switched off the most capable public AI on earth, nobody official has given a return date. So we read the three things that actually move it — the export mechanism, the betting markets, and the community — and landed on a real window. No hype, all receipts.
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AI Development·14 MIN
What's Next for AI: The 2026 Model Reckoning
Musk says China hits the frontier 'probably Q1'. In 2026 the AI race stopped being about the smartest model and became about cost. What it means for your business.
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AI Development·10 MIN
The Verification Layer: Making AI SEO Audits Trustworthy
AI SEO audits are confidently wrong in predictable ways. Our process is built around a verification layer that catches them — here are the three failure modes we engineer against, demonstrated on our own site.
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AI Development·14 MIN
Who Really Controls Frontier AI?
The Fable 5 shutdown was reported as a security story. Underneath sits a tangle of money, rivalry and government power. A map of the forces, the players, and the scenarios from here.
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PPC·9 MIN
How to Spend a $5,000/Month Ad Budget for a Local Business
A $5k/month local ad budget rarely fails on the split. It fails on what you optimise to. Here's the allocation, the defaults to refuse, and the 2026 edge.
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07 / THE NETWORKALL 661 LOCATIONS
Digital marketing across New South Wales
The same agent-run playbook, tuned to each market's own demand data — Shellharbour is one node of 661 we cover.
NEAR SHELLHARBOUR
MORE IN NEW SOUTH WALES