On the Loop, Not In It — But Code Quality Still Matters
On the Loop, Not In It — But Code Quality Still Matters
Yesterday one of my AI agents wasted 15 minutes chasing a bug that didn’t exist. The function was called transformPayload() — but it didn’t transform anything. It validated. The agent built three layers of transformation logic on top of it before realizing the name was a lie. I’ve seen this pattern dozens of times now. And it’s exactly why I think Kief Morris’s latest piece gets the big picture right but undersells one critical detail.
Technology Evolution Doesn't Move in a Straight Line—It Spirals
Technology Evolution Doesn’t Move in a Straight Line—It Spirals
The Proud Ops Colleague
Years ago, an Ops colleague proudly showed me something new. ClusterSSH—cssh [1]. A tool that opens multiple terminals to multiple machines—at the same time. You type once, it executes everywhere.
Back then, machines still had names. Ops folks knew their history, their specs, their quirks. They could tell you which server had been acting up last Thursday and what firmware it was running. And cssh? It let them follow the runbook consistently across every node. No more SSH-ing into machines one by one, hoping you didn’t forget a step on node 7.
💰 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸—𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗨𝗜 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮
💰 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸—𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗨𝗜 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮
Just before heading out for my lunch run, I read the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s article “Advertising is coming for GenAI”[1], which is interesting, but from my perspective just scratching the surface. 🤔
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲
The surface being, in a way, just the user interface which is used by human users to interface with some AI Agent. Here you can place ads, informed by the context of human-AI interactions, in multiple places:
𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗛𝘂𝗯: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝘀 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲
𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗛𝘂𝗯: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝘀 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲
Just returning from an internal Amazon Connect deep[1] dive. I haven’t touched this particular product since maybe 5 years?! Dirk Fröhner — I’m sure you remember our joint large-scale workshop with one of your customers.
What stuck with me from that time was how fast you can actually set up a contact center in the cloud — less than 30 minutes from zero to the first call received — and how much AI was already improving both the customer and agent experience back then. That hasn’t changed.
Most comprehensive overview on RAG I have seen. We came a long way from vanilla RAG. Still remember
Most comprehensive overview on RAG I have seen. We came a long way from vanilla RAG. Still remember the time of arguments that RAG is just a “hot fix” to be obsolete soon. Reality is it is not a fix but the backbone of the majority of enterprise applications.
Kudos to Jin for putting this togehter. Should go to every practitioner’s back pocket !
🔧 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽: 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗧 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀
🔧 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽: 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗧 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀
After years of watching organizations struggle with outdated systems, I’ve written about a pattern we all know too well—the maintenance trap in IT.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We’ve all seen those systems that haven’t been updated in years. Aging interfaces, accumulating bugs, mounting security risks. We assess the cost of updates, weigh the business value, and often decide to “just skip this one.”
IT System Maintenance in the age of AI
IT System Maintenance in the age of AI
Introduction - The Maintenance Trap in IT
You don’t need to be in the IT industry for long to have witnessed this firsthand. Even non-IT users do. Those systems that haven’t been maintained for ages. From a user perspective, you “just” see a maybe aged user interface, non-evolving features, and old bugs or quirks become accepted by, possibly generations of, users. From a user perspective, you should have an eye on this. Often, this not only means that the system becomes cumbersome to use, but it also means that there are possibly no security updates being made. We will see just in a bit that it might even not be possible anymore. So think about which kind of data you want to put in there.
What Anthropic is describing is the weaker version of this technique: applied externally, without pe
What Anthropic is describing is the weaker version of this technique: applied externally, without permission, at an adversarial scale. Yet 16 million exchanges suggest MiniMax found the weaker version worth the effort. That’s the structural problem: if meaningful capabilities can be extracted even from outputs alone, the model itself is a depreciating asset. The moat is the rate of improvement, not today’s benchmark score. The labs that can stay ahead of the distillation cycle have defensible positions. The ones that can’t are selling last quarter’s capability at this quarter’s price." - straight to the point. Thanks Julien for this insightful analysis and sharing it. TIL - a lot!
From my perspective balancing AI Agents Agency with Control is one of the most important themes for
From my perspective balancing AI Agents Agency with Control is one of the most important themes for 2026. We need to get this right both as builders and users for AI Agentic systems.
Anthropic’s study “Measuring AI agent autonomy in practice”[1] nicely fits into this as the started to study autonomy of ai agents based of usage of Claude Code and tool invocations. Already this first iteration provides some nice insights. Obviously a high focus on Coding use cases, but also indicating a wide variety of other use cases which resonate with my experience from customers I’m working with.
𝗠𝗖𝗣 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗼𝘀 - 𝗴𝗼𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲?!
𝗠𝗖𝗣 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗼𝘀 - 𝗴𝗼𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲?!
Agentic coding has become reality for developers everywhere 🚀. Tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and Amazon’s Kiro are leading the charge, boosting coding efficiency and developer experience—as long as you stay firmly in the driver’s seat. But with great power comes challenges, especially as agentic workflows drive more tool integrations via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Developers and teams now juggle multiple MCP servers, each with its own endpoints, authentication flows, and security requirements. This raises key issues: How do we guarantee security and compliance at scale, whether for solo devs or enterprise teams? And from a pure DX perspective, who wants to wrangle endless auth methods? 😩