Field notes overview

Field notes are the dated essays on this site. Each one records what was built, measured, or believed on the date at the top of the page. The reference pages are kept current as tools and prices change. Field notes are not. Each one is a record of a specific moment, and that is deliberate.

Opinion is welcome here in a way it is not elsewhere on the site. One rule still applies: every claim comes from a system that actually shipped and ran, and every number traces to a real measurement or a published report.

When a conclusion changes, the old note is not quietly edited. A new note says what changed and links back, and the old note stands as an honest record of its date. Read every note with its date in mind.

All notes

• 2026-07-02: CLI vs MCP: real benchmarks — the measured comparison behind the CLI vs MCP reference page, and the numbers behind any cost and ROI conversation about running agents against your pipeline. It walks through what each approach costs in time and money, and it explains every caveat.
• 2026-07-02: Human-shaped automation — why the automations that survive in production keep a person in charge of the final decision before anything lands in the pipeline. Drawn from three shipped systems.
• 2026-07-02: Spec-first agentic engineering — when AI agents write the code, the written plan becomes the most important document. What that looks like in two real builds.

See also

• Reference — the concept pages these notes build on, kept current
• Glossary — every technical term on the site, defined in one paragraph
• VC playbooks — what to run in your fund, described in fund terms