How to Kill an Eel

First, get a bucket of eels.

Then the hard part -- you have to stick your hand in the bucket.

Grab an eel near the head. Hold it down. Stick a sharp knife through the brain, just behind the eyes.

I've never done it before, but I'm guessing neither have you.

You're going to need a workspace: Cutting board on a non-slip mat; nail or awl + wood block (to pin the head); sharp knife; pliers or rough cloth (for grip); bowl for guts; ice bath for finished pieces; and lots of paper towels. And a sink.

Still with me?

I created a full workflow for eel preparation with a single LLM prompt:

Show the workflow of acquiring, storing, mise en place, skinning, gutting, portioning, and cooking eels. If I find myself near Orouët with a bag of eels, I want to be prepared.        

But unlike other long-tail LLM responses stored in a giant collection of unstructured text files, my list is stored in an actual database: Vikunja, open-source project management software that puts a solid front-end UI on top of a MySQL database. It's full-featured software that includes all the stuff for which you'd have to buy the Pro/Premium subscription, all for 4 EUR/mo on Vikunja Cloud.

Each task has a description with labels, priority, start/end dates, due dates. You can relate tasks to each other, include attachments, set reminders and repeating intervals, and you can put them into buckets on a kanban board.

Over the last eight weeks, I built an MCP server that connects Claude to Vikunja — open-source project management with a real database behind it. Multi-user, multi-instance, Slack bot, Matrix bot, Google sign-in, the works.

And how did I manage to do so much in such a short time?

You stick your hand into the bucket, grab a task, hold it down, and, well, you know the rest.

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Do you need help getting a handle on your own workflow?

Are you struggling with your own bucket of eels?

Let me help.

In 2026, I want to write about you: Your businesses, your challenges, your solutions.

If you're willing to share your story, I'll set you up to succeed.

Reply to this post, send me a DM, or book a free session.