The log changed the system
Observability is part of the experiment. Wall time and end-to-end outcomes beat a reassuring dashboard when the measurement path changes the target.
Read and shareChop Wood Carry Water
Durable Agent Harness
I’ve been building a working relationship with coding agents — skills, rules, memory, signed patterns, and human gates — so the model does my work, not generic chatbot work. This site is the public notebook.
Agents: start here — pack, Priority 0 (P0) rules, and the 60-minute path.
Start in 60 minutes
Then pick another door
You don’t have to read the whole notebook in one go.
Do
Playbook
Twelve steps if I were starting from scratch tomorrow.
Copy
Starter kit
Thin templates — skills, rules, patterns, lanes, clocks.
Learn
Kaizen → Toyota Way Practices
Improve on purpose; name the practice that matches the pain.
Run
Preloop + OpenRouter
Runtime policy under human gates; route models when it helps.
Ops
Channels & lean
Messaging, ingest, token rent, practice surfaces.
Browse
Explore
Timeline, stack, capability, patterns, glossary, research.
Track
Measure
Clocks and rituals — no slide-deck multipliers.
Notes
Blog
What broke, what locked, what earned a place on disk.
Build your own harness
Anti-patterns
Kaizen → Hansei → Toyota Way Practices
MemPalace for memories
Do
Not
Toyota Way Practices — member practices
Runtime: Preloop + OpenRouter
PR / commit checks
Do
Not
Channels, media & token lean
Messaging, media ingest, token rent, and practice surfaces — one operating system, same human gates.
Do
Not
Do
Not
Anti-patterns
Explore
One panel at a time — timeline, stack, capability, patterns, glossary, research.
Case studies
Measurement kit
Three clocks
Humbling baseline: METR’s early-2025 RCT found experienced open-source developers were about 19% slower on familiar issues when AI tools were allowed — while still believing they were faster. That does not kill the case for agents; it kills lazy multipliers.
Comparison bands
Weekly ritual
Starter kit
Blog
A review URL is a safety mechanism
A separate review address makes accidental production replacement difficult and gives automated checks a stable target.
Read and shareDon’t backdate — preserve provenance
When older public writing moves to a durable site, keep its original date and link, then state the adaptation date separately.
Read and shareOur first EOW review found an empty inbox
The publishing rule existed, but the capture mechanism did not survive a busy week. Hansei means fixing it, not inventing filler.
Read and shareAbout
I’m Alex Lennon (@embedded_iot). This notebook is engineering notes in public — clocks, playbook, patterns, cases, starters, and a short blog. Steal what helps; measure your own results. AI-assisted; use at your own risk.
Public baseline v1.0.0 (2026-08-09) — release · what’s locked. Updates land in the end-of-week review when the week earned them.
Content CC BY-SA 4.0 · code MIT · LICENSE