Notes for builders on making agents think, and checking what they ship.
Writing
Making Sand Think
Pieces I publish. The shelf stays empty until one lands.
From chat window to bot swarm: five stages, each learned when it broke
2026-10-10
Every step from chatting with AI to running a floor of agents left me less building and more checking.
Same AI, same chess app, 100x the bill
2026-10-10
A thought experiment: an experienced coder and a novice build the same app with the same AI. The difference in cost comes from the decisions, not the typing.
My trading bot isn't allowed to trade
2026-10-10
An AI agent watches my options trades, flags the good ones, and never presses the button. The scariest failure so far was the day it silently didn't run.
My bots tested whether login works. Nobody tested who else it works for.
2026-10-06
I started doing some of my coding in Cursor alongside my overnight bots and found a login hole every check had passed.