PUBLIC ACCESS // THE ARCHIVETHE ARCHIVE
Writing on technology, building, comedy, and the absurdity of everything in between.
Running ten agents broke my brain
A real story about scaling up parallel coding agents, crashing hard, and the tool I built after working out why. !The same engineer later, calm, directing two robot drones at eye level while a...
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A live timestamp in a cached prompt will quietly wreck your bill
Prompt caching only works if the cached part of your prompt never changes. Put anything that changes on every call, even something as innocent-looking as the current time, inside that cached section,...
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io-auto-mode: the missing security layer for autonomous agents
!A gatekeeper figure waves most incoming agents straight through a gate while a second reviewer pulls a few aside for closer inspection Useful and dangerous are the same setting An agent running...
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A second opinion only works if it's actually a second opinion
The same read twice If you want a genuine second opinion on your agent's output, it needs to come from a different model, on a different codebase, with different blind spots. That's the whole case...
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MCP vs A2A: which one do you actually need?
Both let agentic systems reach further than themselves. Only one of them is worth your attention today. !Illustrated propaganda-poster artwork: one robot figure reaching down toward a service...
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We've open sourced the UAIL (Universal AI Level)
Sophie published the Universal AI Level today: a 0 to 10 scale for what someone can actually do with AI, not which tools they have opened. Eleven levels: 0 for never touched it, 10 for building the...
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The Brain: a memory system for my AI agents, and why the "why" is the bit that actually matters
I've built a memory system for my AI agents. I call it the Brain. Here's how it works and why I built it. !Illustration of a lone keeper tending a glowing memory vault, threads of light connecting...
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MCP vs raw API: one interface you learn once, or one you rebuild every time
MCP and a raw API both let an agent reach an external service. Only one of them scales past the second service. I get asked which to use often enough that it is worth writing the answer down once,...
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MCP or CLI: the right answer depends on where your agent runs
Anthropic invented the Model Context Protocol in late 2024, and it has since become the standard way to let AI agents call external systems. My agents use it every day. They also spend a good part of...
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AI agents have a goldfish memory. Here's how to fix that.
AI agents have a terrible memory. As bad as a goldfish. Past a certain point, they just forget. That's not a criticism, it's a fact you have to design around if you're building an agentic system...
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Spend your expensive model on judgement, not on typing
Fable came back for a short, limited window this month. I burned through 70% of a week's allowance in a single day, because I let it do everything: planning, implementation, verification, testing,...
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The Maker's Mindset: Why Small Victories Lead to Big Outcomes
When you're building a business, it's easy to get caught up in the desire for the finished product. You want the perfectly branded social feed, the comprehensive website, and the marketing strategy...
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How Claude Code injects context: hooks, native memory, and the prompt cache
My agents have long-term memory, and at some point that memory has to actually reach the model. The lazy answer is to shove everything into every prompt, every turn, and let the LLM sort it out. That...
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Built to Work How You Work: Designing Tech Around Your Life
Have you ever felt like you are working for your tools, rather than the other way around? It is a common trap for small business owners. We find a shiny new piece of software, spend hours trying to...
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Why We're Live-Demoting Marketing AI Agents at EVOLVE Brighton Today
If you walk through the doors of the Brighton Centre today, you will likely hear a lot of big, shiny words. Artificial intelligence, paradigm shifts, cognitive architectures, and the inevitable...
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The Digital Loom: How AI is Democratising Custom Software
When we look back at the Industrial Revolution, we often think of massive, thunderous textile mills. We picture the Luddites protesting against the automation that they feared would replace their...
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Building an OAuth-ready MCP Server: A Meta Journey
Building an OAuth-ready MCP Server: A Meta Journey There's something wonderfully recursive about writing a blog post using the very tools you're writing about. That's exactly what's happening here:...
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