Blog posts

Thoughts on AI, technical writing, and software.

Claude Code beyond prompting

Turns out I'd been using a Swiss Army knife with only the main blade

Claude Code beyond prompting

Code execution with MCP: separating context from computation

TL;DR: Traditional tool calling eats away at an agent's context window. All the tool definitions and every intermediate result pass through it.

Code execution with MCP: separating context from computation

On agency, abstraction, and AI-assisted coding

I still feel like I'm using my brain?

On agency, abstraction, and AI-assisted coding

Testing docs IA with AI agents

Testing information architecture with agents, impatience, and one very frustrated bot.

Testing docs IA with AI agents

Can AI help test IA? A Wikipedia game experiment

I don't actually know, but it reminded me of a few things about human navigation.

Can AI help test IA? A Wikipedia game experiment

The Exploratorium boulder: why enthusiasm isn't always contagious

On becoming the colleague I used to roll my eyes at.

The Exploratorium boulder: why enthusiasm isn't always contagious

Docs metrics and the stories we tell ourselves

My roles prior to developer education were in site reliability and infrastructure.

Docs metrics and the stories we tell ourselves

How onboarding a human made my AI smarter

Apparently neither humans nor AI can read my mind?

How onboarding a human made my AI smarter

Digging into "Your Brain on ChatGPT"

How educational is a 20 minute SAT essay, really?

Digging into "Your Brain on ChatGPT"

Learn MCP with me, part 2: working with MCP servers and clients

Okay, I'm actually excited about MCP now.

Learn MCP with me, part 2: working with MCP servers and clients

Learn MCP with me, part 1: what is this even for?

Because LLMs can't stop hallucinating parameter names.

Learn MCP with me, part 1: what is this even for?

We all fall down: notes from an ordinary outage

On loops, priorities, and the fragility of complex systems.

We all fall down: notes from an ordinary outage