Jamie Duncan
@jduncan.bsky.social
Tech & History Nerd. Wood worker. F1 fan. Dad. Commanders & Canes Fan. Living in The Triangle in NC. Currently @google. Former @vmware and @redhat
I rebuilt my agent harness from scratch to stop over-verifying, and the new one still developed a testing fetish: a 6,000-test suite, fourteen times, for a sixty-line changeset. You don't delete your anxieties by deleting the code that held them.
How I'm Building Software in August 2026
I threw out my prescriptive agent harness and rebuilt it around Anthropic's v5 guidance. The migration was miserable. The results are worth it.
jduncan.io
I asked two frontier models for a color-coded ASCII map of US cloud regions. I got a potato, then squares, then a Jackson Pollock, then a Mon Calamari cruiser. Turns out there's real research on this: models read ASCII fine and can't write it. The gap is 13 to 27 points.
Is ASCII Art the True Turing Test?
Two frontier models couldn't draw an ASCII map of the US. Why LLMs read ASCII art fine but can't write it, and what that says about the jagged frontier.
jduncan.io
Sam Altman's actual reaction to DeepSeek R1: 'legit invigorating to have a new competitor.' The panic you remember about Chinese AI labs catching up? That came from everywhere except the people who actually build the models.
LLMs Were Always Going to Be a Commodity
Chinese AI labs keep matching frontier models for a fraction of the cost. Here's why that was inevitable, and why US AI CEOs stayed calmer than the headlines.
jduncan.io
I ripped the RAG-over-MCP layer out of my marketing agent and turned the whole repo into a wiki the model reads directly. It's turning out well. But once your main reader is a machine, the old wiki instincts start working against you: a model reads everything with equal weight, so a contradi…
Running a Wiki Whose Main Reader Is a Machine
I replaced a local RAG setup with an LLM wiki: a repo my marketing agent reads directly. The pattern that keeps a machine-first knowledge base true over time.
jduncan.io
How You Do Something Matters A horror show about a town with no rules cracked open something I've been chewing on: what belongs in an AI harness, and what should be left to the agent.
How You Do Something Matters
A horror show about a town with no rules cracked open something I've been chewing on: what belongs in an AI harness, and what should be left to the agent.
jduncan.io
If you support the deportation of children with cancer and the vilification of immigrants and you believe that the New Testament is the Word of God, get ready to fry in hell.
Why do the McDouble and the Double Cheeseburger exist at the same time at McDonalds?
Trump's lawyers are absolutely flailing in the courts right now
What's the over/under on when The Rapist in Chief starts talking about eliminating presidential term limits? We all know it's coming. Right?
I'm increasingly amazed at the apparent correlation between "rate the Super Bowl halftime show" and "who did you vote for". The work done to polarize and divide this country is masterclass in tearing down a country.
Trying to compare Kendrick Lamar last night to Prince's halftime show is like trying to compare one of Shakespeare's sonnets to Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. They weren't designed to serve the same purpose. They're both beautiful and incredibly effective.
This game is out of control. I've got recycling to get to the curb.
Best #scifi TV series 1. The expanse 1a. Battlestar Galactica (reboot) 2. Firefly 3. For All Mankind I will not be taking notes.
OpenAi - spends $2Billion to train their model Deep Seek - spends $6Million optimizing it How are we so stupid as a society?
a young boy in a purple basketball jersey is screaming while watching a basketball game .
ALT: a young boy in a purple basketball jersey is screaming while watching a basketball game .
media.tenor.com
This op-ed explains how to start an ICE Watch neighborhood program in your community. ⤵️
How to Keep Tabs on ICE Agents Who May Be Surveilling Your Neighborhood
Here’s a step-by-step guide.
teenvogue.com
I have to read constantly for my job. I've turned to podcasts for fiction and entertainment. Some of my all time faves @magictavern.bsky.social @thewhitevault.bsky.social Magnus Archives from @rustyquill.com And #1 @oldgodspod.bsky.social is worth EVERYONE'S TIME AND LOYALTY.
It took Trump 3 hours to delete the Spanish version of the White House website and the White House’s Spanish Twitter account. Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote.
I haven't worn contacts since the late 90s, and recently started to again. They're harder to tell if they're inside out than they were back then.
