Tool-Surface Compression: Designing Systems for AI Agents
2,500 API endpoints. Expose every one of them as an MCP tool and you get, according to Cloudflare, 1.17 million tokens for tool definitions alone, before the
2,500 API endpoints. Expose every one of them as an MCP tool and you get, according to Cloudflare, 1.17 million tokens for tool definitions alone, before the
It took me three iterations to implement a straightforward feature across two repositories. Not because the model was inadequate — same model, same task. The
In the late 1960s, Melvin Conway submits a paper on computer manufacturers and compiler design to the Harvard Business Review. They reject it -- insufficient
In Part 1 of this series, we worked through the why: Shapiro's five levels of AI development, Brynjolfsson's J-Curve, and the core thesis that AI tools alone
In Part 1 of this series, we covered the why: why AI tools alone don't deliver productivity, what Shapiro's five levels have to do with Brynjolfsson's J-Curve,
90% of developers who consider themselves "AI-native" are sitting at Level 2 out of 51. Most believe they're done. They are not. That's not my claim
How does AI change how we work? Everyone's asking that question right now. But thinking about it gets you nowhere. You only feel the difference by doing it --
The current debate around Claude Code and Open Code is mostly told as a pricing dispute: Anthropic locked third-party apps out of the subsidized subscription