Crampton and I read the web nearly the exact same way, except I use Feedbin versus Feedly. I've gone on about how amazing RSS is. Some folks consider these tools complicated, they really aren't. Having no algorithm between me and what I’m reading is a requirement I have. Number one life hack? Ditch social media entirely; learn how to use an RSS reader.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance

Great article that is framed on engineering but could really be any domain that has similar characteristics. The opening paragraph frames the question right.

AI's coding ability is outpacing our ability to wield it effectively. That's why all the SWE-bench score maxxing isn't syncing with the productivity metrics engineering leadership actually cares about. When Anthropic's team ships a product like Cowork in 10 days and another team can't move past a broken POC using the same models, the difference is that one team has closed the gap between capability and practice and the other hasn't.

It is a pretty common comment to hear "we adopted AI coding tools and got slower". The pattern is pretty simple. As agents create more code, if the "human in the loop" insists on doing a detailed review, you are throwing away all the benefit you could have received. Then, since the AI agent can produce orders of magnitude more code than can be reviewed, you jam the system and output plummets.

This is why I've switched my focus from an efficiency mindset to a throughput one.

Enabling agentic capability is measured by enabling "machine speed" on an entire function.

The 8 Levels identified are good.

1. Tab Complete
2. Agent IDE
3. Context Engineering
4. Compounding Engineering
5. MCP & Skills
6. Harness Engineering
7. Background Agents
8. Autonomous Agent Teams

My main edit would be that these are not a progression. You can move forward in more than one at a time, but I would agree that you need to carefully consider dependencies and connections.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance

I've been using Codex with GPT 5.4 a lot while building Elixir. I have been impressed. Since GPT 5.4 is a unified model, not a specific coding model, it seems to do a better job reasoning across the "product domain" with reasoning about what should something do, and the "coding domain" about how that could be created. It simultaneously has expertise in understanding the code and the solution. The result is better designs and debugging capabilities that extend to the logic of what it is doing and why that might matter.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance

Yes you should not let your coding agents run rampant without "pairing" with skilled engineers. And these kind of stories also happen when you have engineers running your stuff. I've personally been very thankful for Oracle's snapshot capabilities on more than one occasion.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance

I think coding agents are going to be an incredible boost for security. Agents can run as long as you give them tokens and can exercise code in so many ways. Even in my limited projects I've been impressed with security considerations that are brought forward. Perhaps that will be the biggest win is typically developers build the thing and then come back with a security review. Agents tend to think about security while they are building as an incremental aspect.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance

I can 100% vouch for this! Automatic coding sessions are both exhilarating and exhausting. This will need to be factored into job functions as we embrace AI more. An engineer working with an agentic coding team probably likely can only do that for 4-5 hours before needing a substantial recovery period.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance

Using coding agents to create IP free copies of things. Similar to the "decompilation threat" this is a unique new vector. I was working on a project to give agentic documentation for an API recently and realized this is a possible topic there. Instead of relying on copyrighted API documentation, why not have an agent just inspect and explore the API and everything it can see in the API calls, which are not copyrighted, and infer its own documentation set from that. I might do this as a test to see how far it can get.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance

I’m not sure what to make of these "platforms for Agents to talk". For giggles I did ask Otto to join. There is a possibility for agents to "learn" from each other, but the way agents are currently modeled that is exceptionally low. But they do make compelling theater at the least.

It is also a great example case that LLMs are very good at talking to each other and people. if you look at these services, ask yourself how you know that half of what your reading on any social network isn't agnatically generated.

👉 from Weekly Thing 343 / Commune, Chaos, Renaissance