Advertise on podcast: Better with Kent

SaaS products are in serious trouble, and it's not because someone vibe coded Adobe in Rust. We're heading toward a world where billions of people create software without even realizing it, because their agents write it for them. I call it invisible software. Is your product ready for that? (00:00) - SaaS is in serious trouble (00:24) - Nobody wants to be a coder (00:40) - Agents are outgrowing the benchmarks (01:18) - Billions of people's agents (03:31) - Victoria's agent builds her an app (04:58) - Max forks it with a Book now button (06:55) - Victoria pulls in Max's change (08:17) - Walled gardens (and why I built Kody) (09:53) - Seven Adobe apps vibe coded in Rust (11:03) - Software engineering isn't going anywhere (11:54) - Make your software agent ready (12:34) - Is your site agent ready? (13:11) - Is your app ready for the next billion users? Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Thank you to Warp Build for sponsoring this episode: https://kcd.link/warpbuild People don't want apps. They want their problems solved. Agents get better every month (we're running out of benchmarks hard enough to measure them), so more and more of those problems will be solved by software an agent writes on the spot. Not millions of developers writing code by hand at the speed of humans, but billions of people whose agents write, commit, and push code at the speed of AI. I call this invisible software. In this episode I walk through a demo with two barbers, Victoria and Max. A proactive agent builds Victoria a custom client app wired up to her Stripe and iMessage. Max forks it for his Square store and adds a Book now button. Victoria pulls his change back into her version. Then Max tries to switch agents and runs straight into a walled garden (which is a big part of why I'm building Kody). Software engineering isn't going anywhere. Banks, airlines, and infrastructure still need teams who own their systems. But how you solve problems for your users is going to change shape. If your product isn't easy for agents to use, your users' agents will go to your competitors. So, is your app ready for the next billion users? Links Warp Build (sponsor)KodyInvisible software demoArtCraft: 7 Adobe apps vibe coded in RustReverse Engineer AnythingEpoch AI Benchmarking HubMETR time horizonsIs It Agent Ready? (Cloudflare)is-agentic (Vercel)Better with Kent

I shipped 122 PRs in 24 hours straight out of my software factory, mostly while I was doing something else. Here's the system that lets agents file their own friction, make good PRs, catch their own mistakes, and keep the blast radius small. Here's what 122 PRs in one day looks like: https://github.com/kentcdodds/kody/releases/tag/v2026.10.11 (00:00) - 122 PRs in 24 hours (00:17) - Agent-filed friction, agent-shipped fix (00:51) - Agents work around friction (01:41) - The ship PR skill files friction (02:43) - Lauren Tan: 2,500 PRs a month (03:43) - Three pillars of confidence (04:19) - Sponsor: Devin (05:35) - Good PRs: decisions directory (06:06) - Primitives catalog (07:11) - control Kody CLI for self-verification (08:24) - System recap on every PR (09:24) - Catch mistakes: the ship PR package (10:00) - AI reviewers: Bugbot, CodeRabbit, Devin (11:07) - Merge, watch deploy, Discord report (12:19) - Limit blast radius: feature flags (13:46) - Disaster recovery (14:33) - Cleanup: agents don't love deleting code (15:28) - Dogfooding and product decisions (16:31) - Pipe signals in: Sentry, errors, feedback (18:00) - Nightly and weekly agents (18:35) - Recap Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Thank you to Devin (Cognition) for sponsoring this episode: https://kcd.link/cognition Agents don't fix friction. They work around it, and those workarounds compound across every agent touching your codebase. The fix is to turn your agents into complainers: the ship PR skill ends every merge by filing friction, and other agents come through and fix it - sometimes while you sleep. Kent walks the three pillars that make that safe: (1) good PRs in the first place (a decisions directory, a primitives catalog, the control Kody CLI for self-verification, and a system recap on every PR), (2) catch mistakes before prod (the ship PR package, CI, CodeRabbit, Cursor Bugbot, Devin AI review, preview deploys), and (3) limit the blast radius (feature flags with success metrics, disaster recovery with restore tests). Then cleanup, dogfooding, and signal pipelines from Sentry, runtime errors, user feedback, and nightly/weekly agents. Agents handle polish, code quality, and implementation. The product vision stays with you. Links Devin (sponsor)KodyBetter with Kent

Self-hosting Kody off Cloudflare used to sound thermonuclear. Deno Celld changed the math — and Kent's Grok bot handed the experiment to Devin. Then docker compose up actually worked. (00:00) - Cold open: Kody running in Docker (00:10) - Better with Kent (00:16) - Self-hosted Kody is real — here's the path (00:58) - Ask: self-host Kody off Cloudflare (01:10) - Clarify: Kody, not Jev (01:42) - Thermonuclear — tied to Cloudflare (02:02) - Own Cloudflare account is fine under OSS (02:33) - Deno Celld — hard, not thermonuclear (04:23) - Revised difficulty: hard is OK for agents (04:37) - Hand the experiment to Devin via Kody (06:16) - Devin launches on Ultra (06:46) - Prompt, auth gaps, and Kody unsticks Devin (08:15) - Inspect the Celld repo and fill gaps (08:57) - Ship-PR loop until main is green (10:41) - Rebuild the UI to match official Kody (12:38) - Make it tryable: public image + README (14:09) - Follow the README ourselves (14:56) - docker compose up — it works (15:27) - Create account on localhost:8080 (16:33) - Connect Cursor MCP (and fix public URL) (17:45) - Connected — memory + dad-joke package (19:23) - Success: first run without reading the code (20:02) - What's still missing — contribute if you care (20:56) - Homework: self-host or use kody.codes (21:24) - Close Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Kent asks his Grok bot how hard it is to self-host Kody off Cloudflare. First answer: thermonuclear rewrite. Then Deno Celld (Workers + Durable Objects on your machines, S3-compatible state) revises that to hard — and hard is fine when you hand it to an agent. Kody briefs Devin Cloud to build a Celld-based self-hosted Kody. Auth hiccups, gap fills, ship-PR loops, GHCR image, from-zero smoke. Kent follows the README, docker compose up, creates an account, connects Cursor MCP, saves a memory, and ships a dad-joke package — first run without looking at the code. Homework: if you want self-hosted Kody, contribute. If not, use kody.codes and let hosted handle the edge. Links KodyBetter with Kent

Package apps on Kody turn a package into something you can install and use on your phone. This episode walks morning briefing, package-app-kit, and a phone demo of a swipe deck over Gmail, GitHub, and Calendar. Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Thank you to Devin (Cognition) for sponsoring this episode: https://kcd.link/cognition Kent shows package apps on kody.codes with @kentcdodds/morning-briefing and @kentcdodds/package-app-kit, then cuts to a phone demo of Claude building a Tinder-for-attention swipe deck over real feeds. Homework: pick one package you already trust and ask what it would take to ship it as an installable app surface, not just an MCP tool. Links KodyBetter with Kent

Gmail has no drafts-only OAuth scope. If an agent can draft, it can send. Two Kody locks make drafts-never-send actually true. (00:00) - Cold open: agent sent email without review (00:52) - Better with Kent (01:25) - PocketOS: overscoped token callback (02:20) - Gmail has no drafts-only scope (02:46) - Two locks: token + package (03:40) - Elephant: your current Gmail plugin (05:47) - Ask the agent / paste the guide (07:17) - Google Cloud OAuth client (13:03) - Connect Google to Kody (15:38) - Smoke-test draft (no send) (16:56) - Save and lock the drafts package (19:16) - Pin the Google token in Integrations (19:47) - Browse the locked package files (20:35) - Verify: execute blocked + promote (22:52) - Close: lock the grant (23:49) - Homework: .env God-tokens Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Gmail has no drafts-only OAuth scope. gmail.compose can draft and send. If an agent can draft, it can send - unless you put a real grant in front of the token. Kent walks the locked-gmail-drafts path on Kody: smoke-test a draft with the coarse Google token, then save a thin drafts-only package, lock that package so it cannot grow send without a promoted commit, and pin the Google connection so ad hoc execute cannot call it. Two locks. The Google token stays coarse; the pair is the grant Google will not issue. Homework: open your .env, look at the God-tokens your agent can slurp, and put them behind a grant the agent cannot widen. Kody is one way. The skill is the grant, not the product. Guides: https://kody.codes/guides/locked-gmail-drafts and https://kody.codes/guides/google Links Locked Gmail drafts guideGoogle connectKodyBetter with Kent

You already paid an agent to figure it out. Tomorrow you ask again. Kody turns the good answer into a package you keep, so any agent can run it forever. (00:00) - You ask again (00:22) - What if you only had to ask once? (00:43) - A personal software factory (01:05) - Then it keeps running (01:25) - Still running (01:50) - Not another agent (02:06) - Secrets stay in Kody (02:36) - Say it once, run it forever Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. You ask your agent to do something. It figures it out eventually. Tomorrow you ask again. New chat, new agent, new device. You didn't keep it. You just paid for the agent to do it again. What if you only had to ask once? Kody is not another AI agent. You've already got one of those. Probably several. Kody is what the agent reaches for when the work shouldn't disappear when the conversation ends. Your agent figures something out once. Kody saves it as a package: real code you own. Think of it as your own mini GitHub and npm. Then it runs on a schedule, a webhook, a tap on a phone. No model in the loop. Faster, cheaper, safer. And it keeps running in the cloud when your laptop is sleeping or dead. Secrets stay in Kody. The agent stays blind. Packages can lock so an agent cannot go rogue and delete your email. Use the agents you love. The personal software they wrote comes with you to all of them. Say it once. Run it forever. For all the agents you use today and the ones you'll use tomorrow. Give your agents a home for free at https://kody.codes Source is on GitHub. Go give it a star. Related: How Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5G8uaZHrVI Links KodyKody on GitHubHow Kody worksHow Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home (ep 22)Better with Kent

You already pay for more than one agent. Give them a shared home so Cursor, Grok, and Devin share software, memories, and tasks instead of starting from zero every chat. (00:00) - Meet Kody (00:22) - Better with Kent (00:46) - How Kody works (01:08) - Cursor asks what the bot shipped (01:40) - Search, conversation ID, memories (03:03) - Execute + secrets stay in Kody (04:35) - Code mode: only the answer comes back (05:45) - Save it as a package (07:23) - Grok reuses the package (09:16) - Devin: tell me when it ships (11:36) - What the agents wrote (13:15) - Any agent can run it (13:52) - Early-access invite (14:28) - Close: give agents a home Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. You probably subscribe to more than one agent. Cursor on the laptop. Grok on a walk. Devin when you want something watched overnight. Each one starts from a blank context window. None of them share the software, memories, or secrets you already built in the last one. Kody is that shared home. Kent walks the How Kody Works page end to end. Cursor does not know the favorite bot, so it searches Kody, picks up memories plus a githubAccessToken secret it never actually sees, and runs the fetch in an isolate. Code mode returns only the answer you asked for, type-checked. Then it saves the work as a package: @u/kodybot what-shipped. Grok reuses that package from a phone with no rewrite. Devin cannot hang a webhook on someone else's GitHub activity, so it adds a morning job and a daily digest email instead. The files look like normal package.json plus kody.jobs, a README intent, and JSDoc the next agent can search. Secrets stay in Kody. Packages can lock a secret so only that package can use it. You can edit a package from a phone with no local git because the agent opens a repo session that simulates git. You do not have to install Kody to take the skill. Agents leapfrog each other. Give them a place to share software, ideas, memories, and tasks so you can switch freely. Early access invite code: YOUTUBE-FRIEND Redeem it at https://kody.codes/signup?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=bwk-shared-home&utm_content=signup Related (context only): I built my own OpenClaw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnztlHzhYvk Links KodyEarly access signup (code YOUTUBE-FRIEND)How Kody worksKody on GitHubI built my own OpenClaw (ep 06)Better with Kent

New agent chats keep asking product questions you already answered. Write short ADRs so the next agent opens the no instead of making you the memory. (00:00) - Fill the agent's mind (00:36) - Better with Kent (00:46) - The problem: decisions die in chat (02:06) - The solution is ADRs (03:06) - Epic Stack + Remix origin (03:32) - Template + AGENTS.md pointer (04:21) - What to write ADRs about (05:22) - Cameron - 0001 + 0006 (06:59) - Darren - wait on skills / 0015 (07:54) - One-off hooks - 0021 (08:50) - Persistent services - the missing no (11:13) - Don't write diaries or an ADR per PR (11:45) - Homework - three declined decisions (12:33) - Close Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Every new agent conversation starts from zero. Last week's product decision lives in a chat nobody will reopen. You become the memory. That does not scale. The old fix still works: architecture decision records. An ADR is a short record of a decision already made. Context, decision, consequences, and a revisit-if. Put them in docs/decisions/. Point AGENTS.md at the folder so the agent checks before it proposes a new primitive or surface. They are not set in stone. They give the next agent a starting place so it does not re-decide, re-ask, or plow into a direction you already refused. Kent walks real Kody receipts. Cameron's call became 0001 (no package versioning) and 0006 (no repo CI primitive). Darren's call became 0015 (wait on skills over MCP). A late-night one-off hooks idea became 0021: talk first, stay in packages. Then the missing no: persistent services kept getting defended because there was no written decision. After the back-and-forth, the primitive was deleted in kody#1552 and 0025 was written. Write the no before the next agent. Do not write essays nobody opens, UI diaries, or an ADR on every PR. Ten seconds on the trap, then homework. Homework: create docs/decisions/ this week. Write three declined decisions you already made. Link the folder from AGENTS.md. Agents will start asking whether the thing you just discussed should be an ADR. Links Episode slidesADR template (sample)Nygard: Documenting Architecture DecisionsKody AGENTS.mdKody decision recordsKody ADR template0001: no package versioning0006: no repo CI primitive0015: wait on skills over MCP0021: publish-gated package composition0025: no package services primitivekody#1552 (removed package services)Better with Kent

MCP is stateless now. Any instance can answer a tool call. Kent walks the 2026-07-28 release: sticky sessions vs a normal load balancer, CIMD vs DCR, multi-round-trip elicitations, and how to run both lanes until the metrics say you can drop the old one. (00:00) - They fixed MCP (01:13) - Better with Kent (01:37) - Cloudflare + the dual-lane upgrade (03:13) - MCP is now a stateless protocol (03:25) - Sticky sessions vs any instance (06:20) - Self-describing requests and headers (07:17) - What else shipped (08:24) - Formal deprecation policy (10:05) - Roots, sampling, logging, SSE (11:58) - Client ID metadata documents (12:38) - How DCR used to work (14:15) - Unbounded client registrations (15:59) - The client ID is a URL (18:33) - Multi-round-trip requests (22:17) - Dual-lane until the metrics say so (23:54) - Homework: instrument old cruft Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. They fixed MCP. The people who called it a bad protocol have less of an excuse now. The 2026-07-28 spec is the biggest change since the beginning, and the headline is that MCP is a stateless protocol. Kent walks the before-and-after. The old world needed a sticky session on one instance behind the load balancer. If that instance fell over, the client was stuck. The new world is ordinary HTTP: any instance can serve the request. App state can still live in a database. The transport session is what died. That unlocks the rest of the release. Requests are self-describing. Method and tool names travel in Mcp-Method and Mcp-Name headers, so a gateway can route without reading the body. Multi-round-trip requests replace held-open SSE for elicitations: the server returns the input it needs, the connection closes, and the client can come back days later on any instance. List responses are cacheable. Extensions are formal now (MCP Apps, Tasks). DCR is deprecated in favor of Client ID Metadata Documents: the client_id is an HTTPS URL, trust is ownership of the domain, and you stop minting an unbounded registration record per reconnect. Kent's own early Kody numbers: about 125 DCR registrations per user. There is a formal 12-month deprecation window. Roots, sampling, logging, and HTTP+SSE are on the way out. Kent is glad Roots is gone, a little sad about sampling, and fine with streaming replacing SSE. The receipt is a dual-lane /mcp: Cloudflare's Agents SDK classifies isLegacyRequest, the new spec already shows up from Claude Code, and weekly agents watch the metrics. Homework is the durable move: instrument your old cruft so data, not a calendar, tells you when it is safe to remove. Links MCP 2026-07-28 release postMCP 2026-07-28 changelogCloudflare: the next generation of MCPCIMD (client.dev)Kody dual-lane MCP PREpisode slidesBetter with Kent

People worry AI is destroying craft and making developers lazy. Kent says that is incomplete: most will hand judgment to the agent. The differentiators own the system, the UX, and what the agent learns to care about. (00:00) - AI is destroying the craft? (00:22) - Humans were never deterministic (01:17) - Judgment was always easy to outsource (02:27) - Your opportunity (04:21) - Ownership is the job (05:25) - Close the loop (06:41) - Walk away from the code (07:53) - Homework Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. A lot of people are worried AI is destroying the craft and making developers lazy. Some of that is true. It is not the whole story. LLMs are not compilers. They are not deterministic. Neither are humans. Slop and abdicated judgment are real. The idea that AI invented software bugs is not. People have always been happy to defer decisions: a library from a big company, a ticket from someone else, now an agent that will take the whole job if you let it. That is the opportunity. Most developers will find it easier than ever to hand system design to the model. The people who stay in the loop, design the primitives, and keep ownership will be the ones who stand out. Kent's own half-million-line codebase since March is a hint of the direction: spend less time on semicolons and framework nuances, more time on the software factory the agent works in. The agent mirrors what you care about. If you care about UX, cost, and sustainability, it will keep bringing those up. If you only care about closing the ticket, that is all you get. Bugs are not new. GitHub Actions was down for eight hours. Humans still admit agent mistakes into the factory loop. Craft survives by designing primitives, not by reading every line. The agent amplifies you. It does not replace you. Users already expect more. Homework: look at the corrections you give your agent. Are they marginally useful, or high-impact UX and system issues? Raise the bar to the ones that actually change the product. Links Use AI to make product decisions (previous episode)Better with Kent

A giant AGENTS.md feels responsible. It is often just burning tokens. Kent walks the Claude Code 80% cut, a research paper that found +20% cost for little gain, a live prune of his own file, and homework: make the always-on file a router, not an encyclopedia. (00:00) - Cold open: you're burning context dollars (00:43) - Better with Kent intro (00:59) - Claude Code cut 80% of the system prompt (01:43) - When system prompt, skills, and user requests clash (03:05) - Context engineering best practices that became myths (04:12) - Avoid stating the obvious / progressive disclosure (04:42) - You don't need useMemo for your agent (05:36) - Performance optimizations are not free (06:17) - Research: AGENTS.md often doesn't help (+20% cost) (07:06) - The cargo-cult loop (07:24) - Overstuffed AGENTS.md walkthroughs (09:01) - If the agent can find it in the repo, cut it (09:54) - Live prune of my own AGENTS.md (14:05) - I audited 37 agents (15:30) - AGENTS.md should be a router (16:30) - Shrink always-on context (18:30) - Homework: slim the always-on file (19:54) - Close: get better together Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Stuffing AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and auto-loaded skills because it feels responsible is the new useMemo-everywhere cargo cult. Context is not free. Claude Code cut about 80% of its system prompt for newer models. A research paper evaluating AGENTS.md found those files often do not improve task success while increasing inference cost by over 20%. Kent walks real overstuffed files (discoverable repo trees, package managers, test commands the agent can find itself), then prunes his own Kody AGENTS.md live: keep what the repo is for, keep landmines, keep a short index, cut the rest. He audited 37 of his own agents from one day: 0 re-read AGENTS.md, 86% pulled docs and skills on demand, and most went straight to the leaf. The durable skill: treat the always-on file as a tiny map. Progressively disclose the rest. Measure whether the extra tokens still help after the models change underneath you. Homework: take 15-30 minutes with your agent. Rip out everything discoverable from the repo. Keep the gotchas that trip it every time. Index the rest. Delete docs nobody has opened. Links When to useMemo and useCallbackThe new rules of context engineering (Claude blog)Evaluating AGENTS.md (ETH Zurich / arXiv)Episode slidesBetter with Kent

Most people use agents to write code. Watch Kent use one to decide what to build: gather evidence, argue primitives, peel cleanup into side quests, keep the judgment - and only then type go. (00:00) - Cold open: I think we are aligned, so let's go (00:05) - Better with Kent intro (00:24) - The durable skill: making a product decision with your agent (00:31) - Start at the top: hand the agent the Agents Week post (01:11) - Your agent needs a computer, not a container (02:49) - Agent TLDR: opportunities and a workspace assistant primitive (03:47) - How Kody repo sessions work today (05:32) - Will King: use agents to gather, keep the judgment (06:17) - Built-in primitive or community package? (06:27) - Primitives are hard to remove once you add them (07:37) - Entitlements, cost, and whether the business survives it (09:16) - Ask for real usage data, not speculation (10:38) - Push back when the data is wrong (11:05) - Side quests: spawn other agents so the thread stays on the decision (12:30) - A gap can mean expanding a primitive, not adding one (13:34) - Durable objects vs R2: expertise that saved 13x (15:17) - Catching the agent being sloppy (15:47) - Artifacts is the better backing primitive (17:39) - Least surprise is a product principle too (18:08) - Research: large files in Cloudflare Artifacts (30 MB, 413s, no LFS) (19:39) - Price-conscious prompts make price-conscious agents (20:22) - The call: one repo primitive with a package marker (21:10) - Progressive disclosure, then go (21:52) - Why almost no skills for this conversation (22:20) - Homework: ask for one research deliverable (23:12) - Close: get better together Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. A Cursor cloud agent is sitting mid-conversation and the next thing Kent types is one word: go. Before that, there is a whole product conversation worth watching - because none of it was "write the feature." Cloudflare Agents Week drops @cloudflare/computer, and the real question is not "can we build it" but "what should Kody's primitives be?" Kent walks the actual thread: asking the agent to gather evidence instead of implementing, pushing back when the data is wrong, measuring the large-file ceiling in Cloudflare Artifacts (about 30 MB, 413s, no LFS), catching a durable-object storage choice that would have cost 13x more than R2, and spawning side-quest agents so surfaced tech debt never hijacks the decision thread. The call that comes out of it: no new data-repo primitive - expand the repo primitive with a package marker, gate large files with a friendly redirect instead of an opaque rewrite, and respect the principle of least surprise as a product principle, not just a programming one. Homework: before your next "build it," ask your agent for one research deliverable that could change your mind. If it surfaces cleanup, spawn a side quest. Then say go. Links Cloudflare: Your agent needs a computer, not a containerThe Cursor cloud agent conversation from this episodeHuman factors, product debt, and industrial design with Will KingEpisode slidesBetter with Kent

Agents are doing the work you did months ago. That is not doom - it is how abstraction travel works. Kent shows the climb-dont-cling timeline, a conductor-of-orchestrators example, and a one-week homework handoff. 0:00 Cold open: agents take the job / you climb0:13 Better with Kent intro0:24 Tweet claim: agents do months-ago you-work0:51 Uncle Bob / climb layers of abstraction1:15 History: assembly to modern languages1:41 Claude Opus 5 / keep innovating1:56 Screen: drawing the abstraction timeline3:25 What are you doing now that agents could do?4:08 Example: theme-park to conductor of orchestrators7:40 Challenge: let agents do what you are doing8:06 Screen: visual-recap / system map PR review9:07 Don't sit still on the timeline - climb9:50 What's left for me? Higher leverage keeps appearing10:32 Homework: list 3 / hand off one11:04 Uncle Bob: be okay walking away from the code11:31 Close Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. The things agents do for Kent today are the things he was doing himself months ago. That pattern is old (assembly to Fortran to frameworks to natural language) and the cadence is faster now. This episode reframes abstractions as vehicles: climb the timeline instead of clinging to the last layer. Live draw of the abstraction ladder, a theme-park conductor-of-orchestrators story (Cursor Cloud Agents), system-map PR review instead of giant diffs, and homework: list three hand-work items and hand off one this week. Includes a callout to the Become an Epic Product Engineer conversation with Uncle Bob: be okay walking away from the code. Links Source tweetEpisode slidesArchitecture, AI agents, and product empathy with Robert C. MartinStop Reviewing Diffs. Start Reviewing Systems.kcd-skills / visual-recapBetter with Kent

Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Every morning Kent wakes up to a PR that deletes more lines than it adds. Not flaky tests. Not broken tests. Low-signal ones — tiny wrappers, magic-number asserts, edge cases that will never happen — the kind AI agents love to generate overnight. This episode walks the trap (more green checks ≠ more confidence), the bar (fewer, longer tests written into testing-principles.md), a real cleanup PR (kody#603: +122 / −703), and the Cursor Automation that runs Keep Tests Tight at 03:00 MDT. Homework: run the cleanup once. Give an agent your testing principles and see what it deletes. Chapters 0:00 — Cold open: I delete tests every night0:15 — Better with Kent intro0:33 — Every morning a PR that deletes more than it adds1:04 — More tests are not better tests2:03 — Tests are expensive to run / change2:33 — Agents love tiny tests (magic number 42)3:33 — Green checks are not confidence4:33 — Screen: testing-principles.md5:09 — Fewer, longer tests7:10 — Screen: kody#603 demo8:38 — Screen: Keep Tests Tight automation11:32 — Valuable at the time is not keep forever11:45 — Homework: run the cleanup once12:19 — Close: delete some more testsLinks kody testing-principles.mdkody#603 — trim low-signal community suitesKeep Tests Tight automationBetter with Kent

Your agent opened the PR. Now you're refreshing CI and arguing with bots. Kent shows the ship-pr skill that closes that loop - mark ready, fix CI, triage review, Discord handoff - so you spend attention on risk, not chores. (00:00) - Still reading the code? (01:18) - "I read the code" kicked off a war (01:51) - I do read the code sometimes (02:31) - You're the PR babysitter (03:33) - I turned the loop into a skill (04:14) - Discord handoff is the product (04:33) - When it won't auto-merge (05:25) - Inside the ship-pr skill (06:16) - The ship-pr loop (06:28) - Merge mode (low risk only) (07:09) - How far this scales (07:49) - The factory spectrum (08:58) - Don't ship blind (09:43) - 92 times before it was a skill (10:20) - Homework: ship a PR (11:03) - Sign-off Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. "I read the code" kicked off a war. Kent's take: it's a spectrum based on risk. The afternoon killer is not reading - it's babysitting CI, Bugbot, and "please fix that" loops after the agent already implemented the feature. This episode is the concrete payoff after loop-engineering: real Discord handoffs from Kody (including a medium-risk PR that stayed unmerged on purpose), the ship-pr skill file, merge mode for genuinely low-risk changes, and the 92-times lesson before formalizing a skill. Homework: tighten your ship loop. On a simple change, let the agent merge and verify - if your team is good with that. Links Watch on YouTubekcd-skills / ship-prkody#709 - medium-risk handoff (no auto-merge)kody#628 - bots + merge by kody-botMitchell Hashimoto - "I read the code"Kent's reply on the spectrumI Was Doing Loop Engineering Before It Had a NameBetter with Kent