Writing
Make It Write a Skill
If your agent figured something out once, make it write it down.
Raise the Baseline
People optimize for peak moments. But I think that's usually backwards.
New laptop in thirty minutes
A new work laptop usually means a day of reinstalling and reconfiguring. Mine was ready for real work in about 30 minutes.
Does this alert need a response?
Do you get alarms and notifications that you find not actionable?
Handmade is mostly a story
We tell ourselves handmade means better. Most of the time, it doesn't.
The Steam Deck Black Screen Is Fixable
My Steam Deck sat empty for weeks and then refused to turn on, even after hours on the charger. It is not dead. It is a stuck BIOS, and one button combination brings it back.
"Retrieve more: hash" in Claude Code is Headroom compression
Claude Code shows "items compressed to" with a "Retrieve more: hash" marker, or a <<ccr>> tag, then claims it cannot read the file. That is Headroom context compression. Tell it to call headroom_retrieve.
Error messages are instructions
Error messages are instructions. Both for humans as well as agents.
Automating work that should not exist
The most expensive thing AI does is let you automate work that should not exist.
Every AI Workflow Is a Verification Loop
Every AI workflow needs to run the same loop: generate, then check, then fix if the check fails.
Free Attractions in Istanbul
Istanbul feels overpriced and some of it is an outright scam. The good part of the city is free. A long list, every entry linked to Google Maps.
Pre-assemble the context
Don't give an agent MCP tools and hope it fetches the right context. Pre-assemble the context deterministically and put it straight in the prompt.
Who Signs Off Matters More
You are paid for your accountability, not your execution.
When Claude Code forgets your MCP servers
Claude Code started telling me it had no access to MCP servers I use every day. It would claim GitLab or Slack were not connected, even though the tools…
Design for Delegation Not Participation
Too many agentic products waste your time by keeping you watching.
Instrument your agents
If you run automated AI agent sessions, instrument them.
Tech debt is melting
Everyone worries that AI is burying us in tech debt. In our codebase the opposite is happening. Tech debt is melting.
Routing z.ai GLM Through Headroom in opencode
A short tutorial for adding a z.ai GLM coding model (GLM-5.2) to opencode, routed through the Headroom proxy so requests still get context compression.
Stop complaining automate it
Stop complaining and just start automating it. You don't need the automation to be good. You need it to be able to get better.
Filing is the bottleneck
Filing the work is now harder than doing it.
Raise the Floor of Capability
The bottleneck for smart, non-technical people who want to build with AI is not intelligence. It is setup.
The ceiling is your imagination
Fable is not as good as you thought. But maybe the problem is the user.
Forget what school taught you
The first step to getting good at anything is forgetting what school taught you.
Bugs that fix themselves
Why is your setup not auto-healing? Why are your bugs not fixing themselves yet?
AI cannot write in my voice
I gave my agent hundreds of thousands of words of my own writing. It still cannot draft a paragraph I would recognize as mine.