·27 min read
Is AI sentient?
Probably not yet, but we've been confidently wrong about sentience before, and the research on it is much stranger than I expected.
Matt's posts
CTO & software developer. I run two products: Polytask, AI staff for your back office, and SupplyWise, which helps food and drink wholesalers take orders, get paid and track stock with less admin.
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All notesOctober 29, 2026
When an agent makes a mistake
Latest Posts
·8 min read
My AI Stack
A short but comprehensive overview of the stack I use to build software with AI agents, and why each piece is there.
·4 min read
Crowdsourcing product development
The next era of software engineering will be to create an environment that allows anyone to contribute to your product without compromising on quality.
·5 min read
Bootload.app failed, but it wasn't a waste
A post-mortem on Bootload, what a "magic moment" is and why a product needs one, and where I'm taking the idea instead.
·2 min read
We May Soon Have a Digital War with AI on Our Hands
As AI agents get autonomy, tool access, and persistence, “cybersecurity” starts to look like a continuous machine-vs-machine conflict. We should prepare for that now.
·6 min read
AI Has Reached an Inflection Point in Software Development
AI coding tools have crossed a threshold, and it's changing what it means to build software.
·3 min read
Ralph Loops and Multi-Week AI Coding
A simple loop lets AI keep building software for weeks at a time.
·4 min read
Autonomous AI Coding with the Ralph Loop
How a simple bash loop and a todo folder can turn AI agents into autonomous software builders.
·2 min read
The Glorification of Software Complexity
In some ways the software industry has glorified complexity
·2 min read
Healthy Doubt of Your Code
One of the valuable skills of a senior software developer is to have an accurate amount of confidence in your code.
·2 min read
Choosing New Dev Tools
Speed and quality of development is a differentiator for a company, but a specific tech stack is not. Which is why in my experience the simple, tried and tes...
·10 min read
Auto-Increment IDs are not Strictly Monotonic, here's some Solutions
How to generate sequence numbers that don't commit out of order.
·13 min read
Solving High Data Contention Problems with a Typical Web Stack
Using command sourcing and ledgers to solve serial execution type problems.
·4 min read
Oracle v Google
What does the result of Oracle v Google mean to the rest of us?
·2 min read
Building Better APIs: Lessons from a Decade of REST
After 10 years of building APIs, these are the patterns that matter and the ones people just copy without thinking.