Have been trying for weeks to make AI better at course planning Tried a new method today. Notecards, pen, paper, scissors. Turns out not using AI is pretty good guys↗

I've been trying to use AI for knowledge work (course planning). Here's what seems to work so far: 1. Give each 'deliverable' a Karpathy-style LLM-wiki (for me, a deliverable is a course, or a talk. A sizeable piece of work, more than 1 day's labour) 2. Split the deliverable i…↗

Four of AI's most confusing terms explained: An agent is just a model, harnessed, in an environment.↗

mattpocock/skills v1.1 is out! - /wayfinder helps you plan more ambitious work than ever - /to-spec and /to-tickets replace /to-prd and /to-issues - /implement + /code-review complete the whole lifecycle - /research and /prototype help support wayfinder, or can be used independe…↗

Here's a step-by-step process to kill all the bloat from your Claude Code system prompt: 1. Run a proxy so you can see exactly what gets sent to Claude Code (included in the article) 2. "Fuck, there is so much cruft in there" 3. Use my settings.json to kill all the bloat Down t…↗

@humblyonline 90% of people can delete their AGENTS.md and their output will improve. Use it as an index of pointers to important files, and even then aggressively prune it for no-ops. How's that for vague↗

Getting sick of setting up third-party services So I built a skill for it /wizard builds you an interactive CLI for the task you're currently doing, and takes as much work off your hands as possible #1 is how the agent described the wizard, #2-3 is what it looks like:↗

Just recorded my AIE SF talk remotely, and I'm sad that I won't get to have a corridor Q&A. My talk's called "The Missing Manual: How To Write Great Skills" So, AMA. What do you want to know about writing better skills?↗

Doing my first ever experiments with a personal, entirely agent-managed Karpathy-style wiki X, Discord, Gmail are all being ingested into it every few hours This is the knowledge base that will serve as the environment for all of my future loops↗

Take a look at your favourite skill. Go on, take a look. Check for lines like: - "Make the commit message very detailed" - "Be thorough" - "Make the implementation easy to read" What do these lines have in common? They're no-ops. They do nothing to change the agent's behavio…↗

Usually the more of a skill I've handwritten, the better it is Paying attention to each word as you write it is unreasonably effective↗

I have a deep distrust of almost any 'self-improvement' loop in coding agents I.e. automatically created memories, CLAUDE.md suggestions applied after every session Often the suggestions themselves are shit But even if they're good, the agent often over-indexes on them in a wa…↗

I poured my 10 years of teaching experience into a skill. It's called /teach, and it can teach you anything. Here's how it taught me to solve a Rubik's cube:↗

Just wrote a /teach skill on the tube It encodes all my instincts about good teaching. Using it to teach me Linux user permissions properly so I can fix Sandcastle bugs LMK if you like it: github.com/mattpocock/ski…↗

One thing people underrate about the smart zone: It's a great way to save on tokens. When you're in the dumb zone, sending 600K tokens on every request gets expensive FAST Yes, you get charged for cache hits. Less, but it still adds up.↗

This is the clarity we've been crying out for. But it's a poisoned chalice. This is a 10X cut to claude -p disguised as a monthly bonus. Anthropic is discouraging any kind of programmatic usage. And that's fine - no subsidy lasts forever. But it's time to try Codex.↗

Anthropic has given us a "dedicated monthly credit" Which, in effect, slashes AFK usage limits of Claude Code by ~5-20X Here's how it affects you:↗

Two new skills this week! - /handoff compacts your current session to a markdown file - /prototype helps you prototype anything - UI or backend And a bunch more updates. Here's the changelog:↗

I gave a viral talk recently, and @swyx asked me to put something together to explain how I did it - to help future AIE speakers and anyone who wants to learn. I am, oddly, extremely qualified to do this because I spent 6 years as a voice coach. So I've not only given countless…↗

The more I replace plans with prototypes, the better the outputs Who'd have thought that low fidelity prototypes were better than walls of spec Oh yeah, the entire industry for 20 years Stop going against decades of knowledge because someone in SF shipped it as a 'mode'↗

Fuck I think I've figured out good creative writing with AI It's really fun↗

AI helps you move faster, but it just accelerates software entropy. Here's how to de-slop a codebase ruined by AI, with one skill:↗

I built my own software factory, and I open-sourced it. It's called Sandcastle. Here's how to use it:↗

Everyone who's worked with AI a lot agrees: LLM's hallucinate. A LOT. But to this day, I see friends and family trusting ChatGPT blindly, whether it's is working off retrieved data or not. So, I made this. Share it with anyone who you think trusts AI too much.↗

Personal software is INSANE in the age of AI I use mine to: - Manage my course videos/material - Use AI to help me write accompanying text - Use AI to transcribe my videos WHILE RECORDING Folks who know how to build have a crazy advantage↗

Instead of markdown files, I've been getting my AI to save plans in GitHub issues. Claude Code is AWESOME at using the GitHub CLI. Means you don't have endless THROWAWAY_PLAN.md files spamming the repo.↗