30
Mar
Agents Reprice Everything
We run three backend languages. That was never a goal — it's what happens when pragmatic choices accumulate over
9 min read
Eric Merritt
CTO and engineering leader. Self-taught from books. Co-author of Erlang and OTP in Action. Creator of the Dao of Delivery. Writes at The Desk Reference.
23
Mar
The Hoist
Most people building with AI are still the orchestrator — the thing holding their own tools together. The hoist is the moment you realize those tools aren't for you. They're for an agent. Stop being the agent. Become the arbiter.
4 min read
16
Mar
Discipline Is the Point
The prevailing narrative goes something like this: agents are getting better, fast. Soon they'll plan, execute, test, and
6 min read
09
Mar
Code Used to Be a Moat
The economic protection of software was always reproduction cost. AI collapses that cost. Any business whose moat depended on software being expensive to reproduce is now structurally exposed.
3 min read
02
Mar
The Typewriter Defense
Atlassian won’t vanish overnight—but inertia isn’t a moat. In an agentic world where software is cheap and specs replace tickets, workflow tools built for human task tracking face structural risk. The need for coordination remains. The shape of it doesn’t.
7 min read
23
Feb
The Agentive Product Stack: How the Layers Compose
The taxonomy describes roles. Products of Consequence, Judgment, Counsel, Action. Four categories, four different jobs.
But products don't
6 min read
09
Feb
Planning in the Agentive Era
Agentic dev breaks planning. Work finishes before tickets get written. Estimates don't apply. But orgs still need dates. The fix: plan outcomes, not tasks. Artifact in the repo where agents read it. Ranges, not commitments. Most orgs aren't ready. Figuring it out live.
9 min read
02
Feb
Humility breeds success
Self-awareness is a form of self-knowledge that emerges when you know your strengths as well as your weaknesses. A self-aware leader knows when he can succeed as well as when he's licked. Such a leader has the strength of character to step aside in favor of a better alternative.
4 min read
26
Jan
The Mastery Gap
What the Industrial Revolution Tells Us About the Junior Engineer Crisis
The anxiety running through engineering right now has a
6 min read
19
Jan
The Cockpit Has to Change Too
We optimized our work environment for humans writing code. Now we need to optimize for humans orchestrating agents. Monitors, voice tools, PR queues, the boring infrastructure nobody's talking about. That's how you know we're early.
4 min read