Ai
16 entries
Where the games are
Where I've been for the last two months: building Dave's Arcade, my ultimate personal project.
A totally unscientific comparison of building an RTS twice with Spec Kit
I wanted to get a bit more hands on with Spec Kit, what better way than building a Command & Conquer inspired game? Doing it twice of course!
What does AI Native actually mean?
"AI Native" is the phrase of the moment, and nobody agrees what it means. My definition comes down to one uncomfortable question: could your team delete its codebase and rebuild the software inside a week?
Specs.md: agile ceremony, rebuilt for agents
I went into a spec-driven framework expecting waterfall in an agile costume. What I found mapped almost exactly onto Scrum ceremony — intents, work items, runs — with one of the people in the room swapped for an agent.
Disassembling slop
Slop isn't bad AI code. It's code that is cheap to produce and expensive to verify, a trade LLMs knocked out of balance. Name the imbalance and you can act on it, instead of just asking people to be more careful.
From vibe to spec
The methodologies fighting for attention such as vibe coding, spec-driven development, structured prompt-driven development, keep getting framed as rival camps. In fact, they're stages of one pipeline, and the real leverage is in the transition point between them.
Tested by accident
I accidentally deleted my website this weekend. The forced rebuild was the first real-pressure test of the standards-first experiment I wrote about a few days ago. The standards held — and revealed what is still unfinished.
Slop is a standards problem
AI slop is real. The diagnosis is wrong. Slop is what AI does when no one sets the standard — and the same technology can elevate the bar instead, if you choose to use it that way.
Evolving Agile in the age of AI agents
The agile practices that survived AI-assisted development weren't the process ones — they were the philosophical ones. A look at what changed and what stayed when building a real product with AI agents.
Goal-Driven Development with AI Agents
Starting with a real problem — the "did we get cinnamon sticks?" moment in the kitchen — and figuring out the solution as you go. Part 1 of a series on building a real product with AI agents.
Part 2 — The Handoff (From the AI's Point of View)
The second part of a documentation experiment, written from the AI's perspective. GPT inherits a codebase cold, reads the principles doc, and uses it to constrain a feature decision — validating the thesis that the right documentation shapes choices, not just describes code.
What's Left When the Code Becomes the Source of Truth
I wrote 786 lines of documentation, then deleted 83% of it. Here's what survived — and why it's the only documentation that matters.
AI Can Explain Your Code. Stop Documenting the Obvious
AI can now explain what a system does and how it works. That changes what documentation is for — and what's still worth writing down.
Teaching AI to Design What I Mean, Not Just What I Say
My experiments trying to take back control of AI-generated UI
Stretch, Don't Hide: Ambition, Empathy and AI
AI expands what we can attempt — but that speed can trigger Dunning-Kruger overconfidence. The fix is curiosity over proof: show your working, ask what surprised you, and let cross-discipline experiments build empathy instead of ego.
Avoiding the AI Tell: How to Write in a Way That Sounds Like You
The "You're not X, you're Y" pattern is everywhere in AI-generated writing — punchy, rhythmic, and a dead giveaway. This post identifies the tell and offers four concrete rewrites to keep the impact without the polish that signals AI.