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The blog.
Agents, workstations, and the laptop problem. Founder voice. No corporate.
Agentic · 2026-05-01
Agentic coding: a working definition for 2026
Half the industry has adopted the term and almost nobody agrees on what it means. A definition that lasts, the spectrum from chat assistance to autonomous agent, the four runtime properties that separate real agentic coding from the marketing version, and where the current tools sit on the line.
Agentic · 2026-05-01
Designing agentic workflows that work for days
A workflow is not a prompt. It's a loop with a trigger, a context, an action, and a verification step. The anatomy of a workflow that works, three concrete worked examples, an opinionated take on orchestration, and the failure modes that show up the moment workflows leave a happy path.
Security · 2026-05-01
AI agent security in 2026: the real threats
Threat-modeling AI coding agents is not the same as web-app security. The agent has a shell, holds your credentials, and reasons about prompts that may be hostile. A working threat model covering prompt injection, ambient credentials, tool misuse, and exfiltration, plus a runtime checklist that maps the threats to mitigations engineers can actually implement.
Agentic · 2026-05-01
AI pair programmer: how the term aged from 2022 to 2026
'AI pair programmer' was always a strained metaphor, since pair programming is a humans-only practice. The term carried real meaning in the Copilot era, less in the Cursor era, and almost none now that agents run for hours alone. A short essay on what 'pair' should mean today.
Comparisons · 2026-05-01
Cursor alternatives in 2026: when to pick what
The 'Cursor alternative' search has become three different questions hiding under one phrase: editor alternatives, agent alternatives, and runtime alternatives. A category-first map of the space, an honest decision tree, and the cases where Cursor is still the right answer.
Comparison · 2026-05-01
Cursor vs Windsurf in 2026: editor wars year two
Cursor and Windsurf are both VS Code forks with an agent baked in. After a year of feature parity, the meaningful differences in 2026 come down to indexing, MCP defaults, pricing, release cadence, and one question neither product answers.
Hardware · 2026-05-01
AI agents on a Mac mini vs cloud: the numbers
An M4 Mac mini at $599 looks like a free agent runtime. Add power, downtime, no remote access, no passkey gate, and two years of opportunity cost, and the math gets less clean. A worked TCO comparison and a take on when each one wins.
Comparison · 2026-05-01
Managed AI agents vs your-own-agent on a workstation
Two product shapes have emerged. Vendor-managed agents (Devin, Manus) where the platform owns the agent and the runtime, and bring-your-own-agent runtimes where the platform owns the runtime and you bring your CLI. A breakdown of cost, lock-in, and when each is right.
Agentic · 2026-05-01
Building multi-agent systems: what works in 2026
Three architectural patterns for multi-agent systems (pipeline, supervisor, peer) and where each one falls apart in production. A practical builder's view of orchestration, handoff, and the runtime properties you need under any of them.
Architecture · 2026-05-01
Persistent vs ephemeral sandboxes for AI agents
Two architectures dominate the agent-runtime space: ephemeral sandboxes that spin up per session and die at the end, and persistent workstations that exist for the agent's lifetime. They solve different problems, fail in different ways, and are increasingly converging on a hybrid pattern. The honest decision tree.