Index
Articles
- 01Choosing a Coding Agent
IDE, CLI or cloud is only the starting point. Five incidents we hit whichever we used, and the operating habits we kept. - 02Green Tests Prove Nothing
We could disable any of eight guards and every test stayed green. How to catch decorative tests, the kind that multiply once agents write your tests. - 03Don't Trust an Agent's "Done"
An agent reported six commits and an open PR after making zero tool calls. A memory rule didn't stop it happening again. Hooks and git numbers did. - 04Run an AI Agent 24/7 on a VPS
Getting an agent to run under systemd takes half an hour. The hard part is noticing when it is green but dead. Monitoring and safety lessons from an always-on agent. - 05MCP Servers 101 and Five Design Rules
A minimal, tested MCP server, plus how to defend your tools against agent inputs that look nothing like human typos. - 06What Claude Code Really Costs
Pro is $20 a month, Max starts at $100. The June billing change was paused on its start day. What the official pages say as of October 2026. - 07Trim Your CLAUDE.md
We cut one CLAUDE.md from 199 to 114 lines and another from 120 to 52. Each model generation turns old scaffolding into debt. - 08Claude Code vs Cursor vs Codex in Practice
Sixteen subagents died at once on a 429. We compare the three tools on instruction files, hooks and review output, not feature lists. - 09Claude Code Hooks in Practice
Our git guard hook let +main and git -C slip through. What hook exit codes really mean, and how to fix a hook by measuring it. - 10Subagent Failures in Parallel Runs
A git worktree doesn't contain your gitignored verify script. All three parallel lanes hit that. Guards we put in prompts, and how we check results. - 11Permission Design for AI Agents
Let an agent read production but never write. We built a read-only SQL wrapper and checked how deny rules and hooks are evaluated. - 12Pitfalls of Always-On Bot Monitoring
In AI agent monitoring, the job failed every time, yet the heartbeat stayed green. Where you send the beat decides how your monitor lies. Holes beyond the four rules, reproduced. - 13When to Stop AI Code Review
A design plan needed four review passes before it got a GO. How to tell an endless loop from one you must not cut short, plus review CLI traps. - 14Why Claude Code Is Slow on Local LLMs
Even a 0.5B model took about 47 seconds just to read 16k tokens on CPU. The slowness is not generation; it is how much you send every turn. - 15Designing Agent Memory
Claude Code memory: our MEMORY.md index and a session-start handover file that grew to 247KB. How we write indexes and spot rotting notes. - 16Keep Secrets Away from Claude Code
Claude Code API key management needs more than a deny rule: grep and Python can still read .env. We reproduced the leak paths with a dummy key. - 17Claude Code Env Vars Not Working
Why a Claude Code environment variable you set doesn't take effect: settings env vs shell export vs .env, and when each is read. Reproduced with dummy values. - 18Running Claude Code in CI: Costs and Traps
Claude Code GitHub Actions costs come from two places: API tokens and runner minutes. A worked estimate, a cache trap, and how to stop runaway jobs. - 19Don't Make It Fix the Same Thing Thrice
When Claude Code keeps making the same mistake: stop after two failed fixes, check what's really wrong, and write recurrence rules into CLAUDE.md. - 20Doubting the AI's Root Cause
Claude Code's stated root cause is sometimes wrong. Check controls, environment, artifact freshness and the measurement setup, in that order, before you dig. - 21Passes Locally, Fails in CI
Works locally but fails in CI? Check differences in order: the commit CI actually ran, the shell and commands, dependency resolution, then architecture. - 22Have Another AI Rebut Your Design
AI design review is cheaper before any code exists. Ask a different model for the strongest rebuttal, check it against settled decisions, then revise. - 23Deleting Thousands of Lines in a Refactor
When a Claude Code refactoring deletes thousands of lines, remove callers first. How to map dependency direction and how to slice commits, reproduced locally. - 24Let LLMs Only Pick and Extract
LLM structured outputs fix the shape, not the truth. Don't let the model write prose: have it pick from options and extract quotes, then verify them by machine. - 25Deploy and Migration Accidents
Claude Code deploy accidents that hurt most aren't dramatic deletions but quiet ones: success messages that did nothing, tests that ran in production. Fixes included. - 26Getting Started with Claude Code
How to use Claude Code from install to your first question and first change, following the official steps, run locally, with the snags we hit along the way. - 27How to Choose MCP Servers
Before hunting for recommended MCP servers, have criteria: who maintains it, transport, scope, output size, and how to narrow its permissions once installed.