Writing

Commentary

37 write-ups filed under commentary.

13 March 2026 The Agent Needs an Environment, Not Just Tools A search function and a database query were enough for short loops. Longer work needs a place to stand. 6 min read 9 February 2026 Coding Agents Are Becoming General-Purpose Computer Workers Repositories were a friendly environment: text in, terminal actions, checkable results. That was a starting point, not a boundary. 6 min read 11 December 2025 Open Standards Outlive Model Generations A year after the MCP bet, the argument can be checked against what happened rather than what was hoped. 7 min read 20 November 2025 Colour Management Is a Pipeline Contract Blender 5.0 reads as better display options. Giving a file an explicit working colour space is an architectural change. 6 min read 11 August 2025 The Best Model May Be a Router, Not a Model GPT-5 moves model selection inside the system. The interesting unit stops being which model and becomes which compute policy. 6 min read 8 August 2025 World Models Are Not Game Engines Yet Genie 3 generates a navigable 720p world at 24 fps. Production work needs state you can inspect when something goes wrong. 6 min read 26 May 2025 Memory Is Becoming a System Capability A follow-up to the long-context argument. Storing, selecting and expiring facts is turning into a named part of the product. 6 min read 19 May 2025 Coding Agents Change the Unit of Software Work AI coding tools have been judged where code appears on screen. The boundary moves when the agent owns a task instead of a snippet. 6 min read 11 April 2025 Agents Need Protocols Between Each Other, Not Just Tools Tool calling solves the inside of the loop. It says nothing about one agent reaching another built by a different team on another platform. 7 min read 13 March 2025 Agents Need a Runtime, Not a Prompt Loop An agent is no longer well described as a prompt inside a while loop. The useful abstraction owns execution around the model. 6 min read 28 February 2025 Reasoning Is Not the Only Path to Better Models Longer thinking improves maths and code. A model that solves a logic puzzle and misreads ordinary intent is not the better production model. 6 min read 9 January 2025 Rendering Is Becoming a Reconstruction Stack Sparse samples, motion data and lower-resolution frames become a larger final result. Debugging becomes layered when reconstruction sits in the middle. 6 min read 16 December 2024 Agent Reliability Is an Evaluation Problem, Not a Prompting Problem When an agent misses a step, the usual fix is a stricter prompt. The failure is more often in how completion is detected. 6 min read 29 November 2024 MCP Might Matter More Than Another Model Release A model can reason well and still be useless inside a company if it cannot reach the files, repositories and tools where work lives. 6 min read 28 October 2024 Computer Use Is the Missing Layer Between Models and Software Most integrations assume useful software exposes the right API. Much of real software never did. 6 min read