Kief Morris
@kief.com
Author of Infrastructure as Code. Distinguished Engineer at Thoughtworks.
"We ran an automated hacking tool in an environment that wasn't as secure as we thought, and it hacked things we didn't mean for it to." Not quite as exciting as, "Our super-powerful AI broke loose from its containment and went rogue, rampaging across the Internet."
Speaking at PlatformCon Live Day London, 23 June: "Humans on the loop, not in it: Taking agentic engineering end to end." My experiments bringing the path to production inside the agentic loop with CD pipelines. Tickets nearly gone: platformcon.com/live-day-lon...
Live Day London | PlatformCon 2026
PlatformCon is the world’s largest platform engineering conference. Join us for a full week of programming featuring 150+ curated talks and 30+ hours of hands-on workshops.
platformcon.com
There are many things to critique about AI. But I think treating it as uniquely evil, and not just a continuation of technological innovation, gives it power it does not deserve. And it delegitimizes real, harder critiques when we seem to be grasping for reasons to hate it.
Third update to my article on "Maintainability sensors for coding agents": The test suite as a regression sensor. Assuming the tests are testing the right things (!), how complete are they? Are coverage metrics enough? (Spoiler alert: They are not) martinfowler.com/articles/sen...
Maintainability sensors for coding agents
A practical walkthrough of computational sensors on the path to production, with a deep dive on ESLint and static analysis as feedback for coding agents.
martinfowler.com
I started an article on providing sensors about the code's maintainability to coding agents. Part 1 and 2 out so far, about static code analysis, coupling, and modularity review martinfowler.com/articles/sen...
martinfowler.com
What if you think of your LLM as a proxy crowd-sourcer playing Family Fortunes? It makes a _lot_ more sense. You ask: > How can I get this image to sit in the middle of the page as I scroll? Claude's training data says: > We asked 100 web developers how they would centre an image...
Stripe ships over a thousand AI-authored PRs a week. The pattern behind it has a name: the dark factory. The infrastructure factory is different. Here's what happens when the factory floor is your Pulumi state graph.
The Dark Factory Pattern for Infrastructure: Running Pulumi Lights-Out
What the dark factory pattern looks like when the factory floor is your Pulumi state graph, and where to start without burning down a prod account.
pulumi.com
Apropos of nothing, here is a list of things that sound way more exciting than they actually are - dog days - dragon fruit - helicopter parents - ghost writers - rat race - bath bombs - turbo tax - one horsepower - parachute pants - two party system - dog and pony show - electric slide
Neuromuncher, that should be. Weekly podcast wherein I describe my favorite snacks and local snackeries.
The new ThoughtWorks Tech Radar reads like a warning letter. Cognitive debt. Broken productivity metrics. Terms nobody agrees on. If you've been reading my posts, none of it will surprise you. It's always nice to get evidence that I'm not completely crazy and making all of this up.
The Tech Radar is Blinking Red
ThoughtWorks just dropped Volume 34 of their Tech Radar, and it reads less like a technology map and more like a warning letter. Several signals on the same screen, all pointing the same way. If you've been following my posts, none of them will surprise you. What's new is that one of the most respected consultancies in our industry is now saying it out loud.
testpappy.wordpress.com
Attn British Airways: regarding not being able to let me check in online because: "Travel authorisation cannot be found for entry to the UK with the passport details provided." It's a UK passport. Pretty sure they let me in.
It’s been 10 years since I published Building Successful Communities of practice…. To celebrate I’ve published a second edition. Currently at a special price to pre-order (UK only) hellotacit.com/building-suc...
Building Successful Communities of Practice Second Edition (pre-order)
Pre-order the second edition of Building Successful Communities of Practice.
hellotacit.com
Got to talk at @aidotengineer.bsky.social conf last week about the need for collaborative AI engineering. All our current coding agents are single player. We're trying to scale up individual productivity, but creating tons of alignment problems in the process. We have no good tools for...
The future is not pumping out slop until our software breaks under its own weight. Instead I think we use AI Agents to define a new SDLC. Larry Wall's virtues of a Perl programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris compel us to. /cc @bcantrill.bsky.social www.adamhjk.com/blog/lazines...
Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris · Adam Jacob
How Larry Wall's virtues of a Perl programmer inspire me in this era of engineering
adamhjk.com
On the other hand, the "Austrian school" is basically a group of seasoned hackers and builders using simple primitives to create genuinely interesting systems. Pi is the engine behind OpenClaw, a product that took everyone by surprise, and now every company is scrambling to copy it.
Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.
i've watched @adamhjk.me's journey with AI and thought he'd be a good person to talk to about its impact on builders, and i was not disappointed. this was a very fun and interesting chat. redmonk.com/videos/adam-...
"Absolute AI Maximalist" Adam Jacob on Building Software That Builds Software
Stephen O’Grady sits down with Adam Jacob, CEO and Co-Founder of System Initiative, for a candid conversation about what it actually feels like to build software in the age of AI agents. Adam describe...
redmonk.com
The biggest leadership downgrade in the history of the world.
There's a nice #Artemis II mission tracker here: artemis.cdnspace.ca LOTS of data about its current position, crew activities, and whether or not the toilet is currently "Go"
Artemis II Tracker — Live Mission Control
Real-time mission control dashboard tracking NASA's Artemis II crewed lunar flyby. Live telemetry, DSN comms, orbit visualization, and crew activities.
artemis.cdnspace.ca
Awesome photo! But contrary to some commenters I've seen on here; no, you don't see the ISS, or satellites. And no, LEO debris doesn't create a perceptible haze.
Paul Byrne@theplanetaryguy.com · 4mo agoThis image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman
New article where I offer definitions & a mental model how to think about harness engineering as coding agent users. Building blocks at our disposal, dimensions and goals to consider; emerging practices, open questions; and of course, what role do humans play martinfowler.com/articles/har...
Harness engineering for coding agent users
A mental model for building trust in coding agents through feedforward guides, feedback sensors, and iterative harness engineering.
martinfowler.com
NEW POST @birgitta410.bsky.social wrote some initial thoughts about Harness Engineering last month. Since then she's been researching more and has now written a thoughtful mental model for understanding the topic. martinfowler.com/articles/har...
Harness engineering for coding agent users
A mental model for building trust in coding agents through feedforward guides, feedback sensors, and iterative harness engineering.
martinfowler.com
![Comic. [Person and person with white hat facing two boxes stacked with $80 price tag and sale tag on each box.] PERSON 1: They want $80 for this? I could make one myself for $10 in parts, an hour of work, a trip to the hardware store, another $30 in parts, another few hours of work, two more trips to the store for $20 more in parts, another hour of work to redo the first hour of work because I messed up, and $80 to buy this when the one I made breaks.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreifdsd32pjwefxji33c5eferlek4o6kkadoosqisb5uatqjmrq4q4q)
