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Recommend A, implement A: behavioral contracts for AI collaborators

My AI assistant argued for prevention, then implemented detection. Behavioral contracts in CLAUDE.md turn recommend-A-implement-B drift into a review comment.

· 8 min read

Never verify a result with the tool that produced it

Orthogonal verification for AI-assisted development: check results through a mechanism independent of the one that produced them, and at every pipeline stage.

· 7 min read

The research lineage from recursive neural networks to human-AI collaborative development

Tracing the intellectual thread from Richard Socher's compositional representations through DecaNLP to the systems-level engineering challenges of human-AI soft

· 12 min read

From learned representations to engineered context: what Richard Socher's research tells us about working with AI

Richard Socher's research arc — from GloVe to DecaNLP to 'managers of AI' — maps directly onto the principles behind synthesis coding. The connections are struc

· 9 min read

RAG Architecture Lessons from Practice

Building a retrieval-augmented generation system revealed patterns the tutorials don't cover. Contractions break search. Not everything needs an LLM. Full docum

· 5 min read

Data Format Contracts for AI Pipelines

When tools interact, implicit assumptions break silently. Explicit data format contracts prevent the debugging sessions you don't have time for.

· 6 min read

Context Loss and How to Prevent It

Why AI assistants forget what you told them, and practical strategies to prevent it. The difference between context that survives and context that gets lost.

· 5 min read

The Foundation-First Pattern

Why the most effective AI-assisted projects start with humans writing code by hand. The counterintuitive pattern that makes everything else work.

· 6 min read

How Claude's Memory Actually Works (And Why CLAUDE.md Matters)

Understanding Claude's context architecture changes how you work with it. The tradeoffs between automatic continuity and on-demand depth explain why persistent

· 7 min read

What OpenAI's Sora Build Teaches Us About Synthesis Coding

Four engineers shipped a #1 Play Store app in 28 days using AI agents. Their approach validates the patterns I've been writing about — and adds new ones worth s

· 6 min read

The Tool Chest: What Carrying a Multitool Teaches You

What years of using a Leatherman and a Swiss Army Knife in the situations that allow them have taught me about preparedness, well-made things, and the disciplin

· 7 min read