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Steering the Vibe: Orchestration

Steering the Vibe: Orchestration

Cross-posted from staffordwilliams.com. Earlier this year I spoke to the idea of Agent Orchestration where changes to software span multiple context windows, and work needs to be split and passed to agents while monitoring progress deterministically. There are a number of approaches to solving this problem but the majority

I spent weeks writing a CSP by hand, then I automated it away

I spent weeks writing a CSP by hand, then I automated it away

Content-Security-Policy is one of those headers that sits quietly in the "we should really do this properly" pile until a security review forces the issue. Then you sit down, open the devtools console, and spend a week clicking around your own app. I did this often enough that

The agentic washing machine

The agentic washing machine

What is the agentic washing machine? It's a reference skill that demonstrates a pattern for building a CLI-like interface that accepts natural language input to perform a task. It works well by directly slash-activating /the-skill or through context activation, where the AI itself must decide to activate it.

The agents are here and we're all doing waterfall again

The agents are here and we're all doing waterfall again

I can't code. I should say that upfront because it matters for what comes next. For the past year or so I've been obsessed with vibecoding. Sitting with Claude Code, describing what I want in plain English, and watching working software appear. I've shipped

Quality and Suffering in Software Delivery

Quality and Suffering in Software Delivery

Cross-posted from staffordwilliams.com. The way I deliver software is grounded in a belief that quality matters and is the route to less suffering. After building software for a long time my approach has become tacit knowledge - helpful in work I'm directly involved with but elusive to

Beware of Confident Liars: Why Your Data Matters More Than Your Model Size

Beware of Confident Liars: Why Your Data Matters More Than Your Model Size

There's a common refrain in AI circles: open-source LLMs can't compete, small models are garbage, and frontier providers like Anthropic or OpenAI will always outperform everyone else. That's increasingly untrue. Unless your task is writing a poem or an essay about the French Revolution.

Steering the Vibe: Verify

Steering the Vibe: Verify

Using deterministic verification scripts to steer AI code-assist tools toward more maintainable code.

Building Financial Collaboration for a Global Community

Building Financial Collaboration for a Global Community

Moja is a people-focused technology company on a mission to make group-based financial collaboration accessible and easy for everyone, everywhere. Using stablecoin technologies, Moja's mobile and web platforms help families, friends and communities manage money together, simply, securely, and transparently, wherever they are in the world. Think of

Catch up on the new NPM Trusted Publishing feature

Catch up on the new NPM Trusted Publishing feature

NPM Trusted Publishing replaces risky long-lived tokens with secure OIDC authentication. Learn how this new feature eliminates token exfiltration attacks and makes publishing packages safer with zero token management overhead.

Bottom-Up is the New Top-Down: How AI Rewrites the Rules of Digital Transformation in the Enterprise.

Bottom-Up is the New Top-Down: How AI Rewrites the Rules of Digital Transformation in the Enterprise.

Digital transformation has become the corporate world's most expensive failure. Despite investing over $100 billion between 2016 and 2018 alone, a staggering 70-80% of transformation initiatives crash and burn, according to consistent findings from McKinsey, Gartner, and BCG. The culprit? An outdated, top-down approach that's fundamentally

Passkeys and Verifiable Credentials: A Perfect Authentication Partnership

Passkeys and Verifiable Credentials: A Perfect Authentication Partnership

Two technologies are reshaping digital identity: passkeys and verifiable credentials. Separately, they solve different problems. Together, they could eliminate passwords while giving users control over their personal data. Here's why this combination matters, and how it might transform authentication sooner than you think. Understanding the Players Passkeys: The

Architecture Decision Records: How we make better technical choices at MakerX

Architecture Decision Records: How we make better technical choices at MakerX

Have you ever joined a project midway and wondered, "Why on earth are we using this technology when there are better options available?" You're not alone. At MakerX, we believe that transparent decision-making is essential for successful software delivery. That's why Architecture Decision Records

AI Code Assistance: Are we talking about the same thing?

AI Code Assistance: Are we talking about the same thing?

Feedback on AI coding assistance is varied and often at polar opposites. Understanding how to apply AI assistance to software development is essential for making sense of the wildly different experiences.

Experimentation by Design: What Innovation Looks Like in an R&D Studio

Experimentation by Design: What Innovation Looks Like in an R&D Studio

The art of R&D isn't chaotic—it's strategic. Visionary experiments provoke new possibilities, Investigative work tests viable solutions, and Applied R&D brings concepts to market. Each requires different approaches, but all demand disciplined creativity and courage.

Start with the Problem: Our Framework for Meaningful Internal Initiatives

Start with the Problem: Our Framework for Meaningful Internal Initiatives

As a small, new company, and with founders who love to try new things, we started with no fixed approach for many of our core business processes. We all have a genuine desire to create a company that works well for the whole team, now and into the future. And

Alignment workshops

Alignment workshops

My favourite method for getting from a big idea to something small and practical is what I call an alignment workshop. This post outlines the overall approach and has enough detail for you to give it a go next time you want to align on a set of next steps for your product.

Why it’s ok to roll it back (and why that builds trust)

Why it’s ok to roll it back (and why that builds trust)

In the People & Culture industry, we’re often encouraged to be brave and drive change, to launch new initiatives, roll out bold ideas, shake things up! That’s great advice. But here’s something equally important that doesn’t get talked about enough: Knowing when to roll something back.

Running TypeScript Directly with Node.js: No Build Step Required!

Running TypeScript Directly with Node.js: No Build Step Required!

Node.js now supports running TypeScript directly by stripping types at runtime, eliminating the need for a build step. TypeScript 5.8 introduces the erasableSyntaxOnly flag to ensure compatibility. This may streamline workflows and speed up development, although there are limitations to be aware of.

Rethinking Remote Engagement: Flexibility, Autonomy & Belonging

Rethinking Remote Engagement: Flexibility, Autonomy & Belonging

At MakerX, we're a remote-first R&D studio building more than just world-class products, we’re building a culture that respects individuality, supports curiosity, and invites people to belong in their own way. Our approach to remote engagement is simple, create opportunities to connect, not obligations. Let

Embrace Vibe Coding, Know Its Limits

Embrace Vibe Coding, Know Its Limits

Vibe coding dramatically lowers the barrier to software creation, benefiting both non-programmers and experienced developers, though it's best suited for prototyping and personal projects rather than large collaborative codebases.

You might not need an AI Framework

You might not need an AI Framework

Say you have a manual, but useful, AI workflow and feel it's time to release it from your local machine and deploy it. "What AI Agent Framework should I use?" is a question often asked, and considering the current trajectory of both software development and AI

Understanding AI-assisted coding workflows

Understanding AI-assisted coding workflows

Not all AI-assisted coding workflows are created equal, and the variance across foundation models is substantial. With different available tool integrations and prompting strategies for each model, there's a lot of confusion around how to best use them, and, whether the benefits are real at all, or just

UX graduates: You don't need a UX job to do UX

UX graduates: You don't need a UX job to do UX

I recently spoke to Marc Majers on his excellent UX Pathways Youtube/podcast - a show where Marc talks to UX folks of all kinds about how they got to where they did and advice for people trying to do the same. While we talked a bit about what'

Why Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are Coming to the Forefront in Digital Security and Identity Verification

Why Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are Coming to the Forefront in Digital Security and Identity Verification

Verifiable Credentials are revolutionising digital identity verification by providing secure, verifiable claims usable across multiple sites. Learn why VCs are essential, how they differ from passkeys, and how MakerX's partnership with Verified Orchestration brings these solutions to market.

Supercharging Product Development with AI Code Gen

Supercharging Product Development with AI Code Gen

The software development landscape has seen remarkable advancements in recent years, and one of the most exciting is the rise of AI-powered code generation tools. Tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Roo Code, and Cline have transformed how developers approach their work, making product development faster and more innovative. But, as