Context Clues
How to keep AI agents building what matters, not just what compiles.
What is the modern product development lifecycle?
Coding agents made engineers faster. The rest of the organization still runs the same meetings.
- No. 94Parkinson’s Law of TrivialityThe shed gets forty-five minutes. The reactor gets two and a half.8 min
- No. 93Disagree and CommitThe commitment is the easy part to remember. The disagreement is the part worth keeping.7 min
- No. 92Escalation of CommitmentThe more a decision belongs to you, the harder it is to let it lose.8 min
- No. 91ResultingAn outcome is one draw. The decision was the bet.7 min
- No. 90TripwireDecide what evidence will force the plan to react.8 min
- No. 89PremortemAssume the plan failed. Find out why before it does.6 min
- No. 88The Outside ViewThe details explain a project. Its reference class predicts it.5 min
- No. 87Stop ConditionAn agent run needs more than one way out. Finishing is only one of them.8 min
- No. 86Blast RadiusThe size of an action is not the size of its consequences.4 min
- No. 85Reversible by Whom?A decision may be reversible for the company and irreversible for the people who trusted it.5 min
- No. 84One-Way DoorsAgents made every decision fast. That was only ever safe for most of them.9 min
- No. 83Signal vs. NoiseWhen everything matters, nothing does.6 min
- No. 82Honest UncertaintyThe best agents know what they don’t know.7 min
- No. 81The Certainty TaxHigh-confidence outputs are expensive. Sometimes that’s worth it. Often it’s not.7 min
- No. 80Approval TheaterA sign-off that skips the actual checking is worse than no approval at all.7 min
- No. 79Dry RunWatching an agent long enough to trust it means it was already running unsupervised the whole time you were watching.5 min
- No. 78Conflict DetectionTwo changes can each look just as related to an old decision.6 min
- No. 77Decision DebtA decision does not stay correct just because nobody has formally reversed it.6 min
- No. 76Current StateUpdates tell you what happened. A current state tells you what is true now. Those are not the same job.6 min
- No. 75Standing BriefA system that only speaks when something clears its bar for interrupting you is right to be stingy about it.6 min
- No. 74Coase TheoremTwo sides can both be describing the same friction honestly.8 min
- No. 73Conway’s LawA system’s seams don’t come from a design meeting.7 min
- No. 72Nerve CenterHanding off a decision and handing off the reasoning behind it are two different transfers.7 min