jonathannen.com

Vibe code your own harness tools.

I set a goal of 100 PRs a day because I was drowning in context switches.

Specs, code, tests and docs are projections of one intent.

A subscription makes idle capacity feel like loss.

How I structure my day in 2x20-minute sprints an hour -- a pomodoro shape that fell out of AI coding.

Anthropic treats safety as a model behavior problem.

Claude Design isn't vibe-coding.

The moment a task or chore enters my head, it goes into Claude Code.

You can't A/B test a performance review.

With messy people data and long feedback loops, output schema isn't just an interface concern -- it's a useful steering mechanism.

AI is collapsing the value of coordination.

An HR team vibe coded their own performance review tool.

The skeptics say AI is another Kubernetes — a misapplied tech hype cycle.

My dad's safety philosophy turns out to be a great framework for agentic coding: don't bubble-wrap the world, engineer one where you can take risks.

The teams succeeding with AI aren't the ones with the best tooling.

Invest in your AI dev tools, but vibe code them.

Last week our customer success team shipped their first two pull requests.

Same task, three different prompts.

Vibe coding is the headline.

Junior developer hiring is stalling.

Your context window is not a diary, don't forget to /clear.

AI is creating a genuine dichotomy: teams drowning in AI-supercharged chaos, others are thriving.

Your linter, compiler, and test runner already talk to the AI.

Dan McKinley's classic advice on "choosing boring technology" is even more true in the AI era.

The bottleneck in software has moved.

Your AI assistant holds a mirror up to your codebase. 5 ways to make sure it reflects the good parts.

AI prompts are wishes.

My shortlist of coding skills I'm genuinely comfortable handing to AI.

AI vibe coding tools aren't truly there yet.

Why I prefer single-prompt one-shotting with AI coding tools over multi-step agents, swarms, and planning modes.

AI coding tools need a high degree of parallelism to work.

Software engineers routinely juggle multiple AI models.

Optimism isn't the naive, easy position — it's the one that demands the most from you.

Not all AI productivity gains are real.

Using an Axe branch when iterating on your AI coding workflow.

I'm using a single long-running AI chat each day to prioritize in the morning and summarize at the end.

AI is brilliant at adaptive processes.

Human-in-the-loop only works if the human has (and retains) the skills to actually be in the loop.

A snapshot of how I'm working with AI coding tools right now (Feb 2026).

What happens to our navigation skills when we rely on GPS?

My day, my tooling, and the system changes that make high-volume AI-assisted shipping possible.

A new prompt I've found useful: Don't make any changes, just put a comment where you intend to make changes.

We're moving into an era where a team of 5 engineers can outperform a team of 50.

2026: Wait, AI is a senior engineer now?

Can we have AI maintain abandoned npm packages?

The rate that AI coding tools are adding workflow features is wild.

Is RTO throwing away organizational infrastructure that AI agents need?

Bitcoin forked in August 2017.

In this series I look at some of the failure modes for Bitcoin.

The tragegy of the commons suggests self-interest spoils shared resources.