This is written somewhat in jest. You don’t actually have to be doing any of these things. These are just things i’ve done to some extent that I think are…‘worthwhile’.
Agents
- You should be hating agentic coding
- You should be enjoying agentic coding
- You should be thinking about ways to scale up agentic coding
- You should be saying things like ‘launch 10 subagents to do X’
- You should be saying things like ‘launch a subagent to review plan Y’
- You should be thinking that you are still in your infancy of agentic coding
- You should be thinking of launching subagents like you’re learning to program…a ralph-loop is like a do-while loop https://cmdcolin.github.io/posts/2026-03-15-maxagent/…
Workflows
- You should be using git worktrees to implement changes. I previously said I wasn’t using these but now I am
- You should be using a custom claude statusbar (mine https://github.com/cmdcolin/dotfiles/tree/main/claude)
Responsibility
- You should be thinking of ways to avoid making your software take on more responsibility
- You should be demonstrating how responsibilities can be externalized to other tools
- You should be demonstrating how AI can agentically operate your tools
- You should try to minimize your dependencies, even vendoring dependencies https://htmx.org/essays/vendoring/
Docs
- You should be using agents to generate tutorials for your software
- You should be aiming to make every single screenshot in your docs automatically generated https://cmdcolin.github.io/posts/2026-07-31-autogenscreenshots/
GUI and CLI
- You should realize that using agents to write tutorials for your GUI software can improve accessibility, since they use accessible selectors
- You should realize that your point-and-click GUI software is a bottleneck potentially scalability issue, and make CLI solutions
Rewrites and refactoring
- You should be trying to break through significant performance barriers with AI
- You should be doing large scale rewrites with AI
Writing
- You should be writing english prose by hand still
- You should be using LLM to check your english prose though
- You should write the shitty first draft by hand at least
- You should use AI to look for AI writing patterns. When you identify them, make a list of AI tropes. My list https://github.com/cmdcolin/claudish#references
Learning and concepts
- You should be learning how to train models yourself (note to self: still need to do this)
- You should be making your visualization system use grammar of graphics concepts
- You should be thinking about ways to generalize your software
- You should be making side projects. Think fun. Think big. Lessons from these can often apply to your work