Part 4: When It Breaks, Just Fix the 'Raw Parts'. The Self-Reliance to Maintain Tools Yourself by Commanding AI

This article was originally published on e-shikumi-labo . Hello, I'm Shin from e-Shikumi-Labo. This is the final installment (Part 4) of "Systematized Thinking," where we use AI to build our own tools and independently maintain them. So far, we have discussed creating a prototype that automatically saves Gemini chat logs, converting them to Markdown for Obsidian integration, and elevating it to a safe, fully automated system. In this final installment, we will cover the "countermeasures for downtime due to screen specification changes," an unavoidable issue when operating tools that handle web data, and the core of the "self-reliance" humans should possess in the AI era. 1. The Web Data Extraction Compromise: "You Can't Extract What Isn't on the Screen" During development, there was a time when I thought, "I also want to record the exact date and time (timestamp) when the chat was sent." However, no matter how much I analyzed Gemini's screen structure, the exact timestamp of each utterance did not exist in the HTML. The fundamental rule of web data extraction is: "You cannot extract data that does not exist on the browser screen." As long as you are extracting data from the screen (DOM) rather than via an API, forcing the extraction of something that isn't there will require complex guesswork processes and will instead become a cause of trouble. Understanding this "technical limit," gracefully giving up on what cannot be done, and judging to maintain simplicity is also an important element of tool building. 2. Specification Changes Are Not Defects, But "Fate" As long as you deal with tools that extract data from other people's websites, the time will inevitably come when the tool suddenly stops working one day due to design changes or updates on Google's side. "It was working fine until yesterday, but suddenly it stopped saving." This is not a defect in the tool, but an unavoidable "fate" as long as you depend on someone else's platform. The important thing is not t