Posts about systems
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Enzyme, Receptor, Cell Type
Three components of a living system map cleanly to tool, skill, and agent. The biology isn't decoration -- it's the test.
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Tools Are Instruments, Skills Are Recipes
The tool/skill/agent distinction isn't just compression ratio — tools are instruments, skills compose them with judgment. Same thing only at the leaf.
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Name Your System After Biology, Then Rename It
Force your software's vocabulary into a biological framework. The gaps between the mapping and your system are design questions you'd never otherwise ask. Then switch to a different framework and ask different questions.
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The Emergence Ladder: From Molecules to Economies
The larger the system, the less it can be managed and the more it must be emerged. This pattern — from water to ant colonies to AI agents to economies — reveals the design principle for scaling autonomous systems.
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Cross-Model Review: Why Model Diversity Beats Model Capability
When AI models review each other's work, independence matters more than intelligence. The same principle that makes external audit valuable makes cross-model review sharper than same-family review.
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The One-Cycle-Late Test
A simple heuristic for deciding how often to review anything: pick the longest interval where being late by one full cycle is still fine.
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The TODO Intake Gate
Most TODO systems fail from too many items, not too few. A four-test intake filter for what deserves your attention.
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Match the Tool to the Shape
Not every goal is a flywheel. The most common mistake in personal systems is treating a checklist as something that compounds.
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When a Heuristic Has Two Homes
Dual-mapping as a diagnostic for gaps in your knowledge architecture.
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The Immune System Pattern
What biology already knows about self-healing systems, and why your automation probably isn't one
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The Pipeline Paradox
Monitoring systems need consumers before they need features
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Systematise Decisions, Not Actions
Actions are cheap to redo. Bad decisions compound. Build systems around the judgment calls, not the mechanical steps.
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I Made AI Remember to Remember
Most AI memory is either always-on or ephemeral. The missing category is prospective: remember until a context arises, then forget.
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Not Every Cron Job Is a Feedback Loop
Automation that collects without learning is just a cron job. The difference is a feedback signal — a number that goes up or down.
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The Byproduct Trap
When the paper becomes more interesting than the answer you set out to find
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The System for Checking Is Not the Checking
On the difference between eliminating friction and eliminating anxiety — and how to know when you've crossed the line.
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The Accidental Life OS
I spent an afternoon researching AI tools for personal life management. The conclusion was that I should stop looking.
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The Comfort Trap
The right test for any AI interaction isn't 'did it help me?' but 'am I more capable after it?'
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The Personalised System Era
AI coding agents didn't just make developers faster. They changed who gets to have a bespoke system.
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Let the OS Schedule, Let Your Tool Dispatch
The moment I stopped building scheduling into my tools, everything got simpler.
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The Infra Trap
Building tools to support your work can quietly become a substitute for the work itself.
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Where Rules Live
The difference between a rule that works and a rule that doesn't is usually not the content of the rule — it's where it lives.
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The Experiment Loop Without the GPU
Andrej Karpathy's autoresearch project is being read as a demo of what H100s can do overnight. It's actually a discipline for doing rigorous work on anything measurable.
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Instructions Don't Enforce Behavior. Templates Do.
Why the structure of an output matters more than the instructions that produce it.
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I Made the AI Remind Me of My Own Blind Spots
I kept missing things at the end of AI sessions. So I stopped relying on willpower and systematised the nudge instead.