Symbolic Feedback Loop
Production Traffic Is the Spec
Legacy code has no documentation. No tests either. And yet it's running right now. A month of well-recorded logs is the spec — build Hurl integration tests that capture the current behavior from production traffic, and you can pin down what the legacy does and lay a safety net for refactoring without reading a single line of code.
Building Agent-Operable Systems
60–80% of Fortune 500 IT budgets go to guarding locked legacy. Because they can't open it. The real meaning of the AI bubble is not smarter models — it is that locked corporate memory is becoming reachable.
Agent Operable Codebase
Is code that is easy for humans to read the same as code that is easy for agents to work with? It is not. When a file has 20 functions, agent performance drops by 30-85%. The office must be turned into a factory.
Class 6. Lock When It Passes — Ratchet Pattern Principles and Bulk Application
AI declared 'all done.' In reality it was 40/527. Ratchet Pattern hands completion judgment to the machine.
Class 5. AI with Reins — Introduction to Reins Engineering
Harness engineering is a fence. Reins Engineering is a bridle. Don't change the model — add contracts.
Ratchet Pattern — How to Make an Agent Finish the Job
I asked an AI agent to write tests for 527 functions. It stopped at 40 and declared 'done.' The Ratchet Pattern forces completion by delegating the done/not-done decision to a mechanical verifier — so the agent keeps going until the machine says stop.
Feedback Topology Over Model IQ
The same model stalls at 40 or completes all 527. The difference is not the model — it is the feedback structure. LLM performance depends far more on how fast and deterministic the feedback loop is than on the model itself.
tsma -- Regression Defense Line for Legacy Code
A CLI tool that indexes every function, detects test presence, measures coverage, and gives precise feedback to LLM agents. One command builds a regression defense line around legacy code.
filefunc — One File, One Concept
The navigation unit for an AI code agent is the file. filefunc is a Go code structure convention and CLI tool that enforces one concept per file.