The core observation here is the one most agent builders miss: the model is a component, the agent is the system. Most engineering goes into the system, not the model. I've spent months building exactly that - CLAUDE.md files, memory layers, tool permission hierarchies - and the ratio feels about right. Maybe 20% of the work is model selection.
The other 80% is orchestration, context management, and deciding when to loop versus escalate. The AGENTS.md approach for project-level context is essentially what I've been doing with layered markdown files.
Different name, same principle. The bidirectional mid-task approval mechanism is the part I'd push on - in practice, most agents either run fully autonomous or fully supervised. The middle ground is harder to design than it looks.
Is the color coding in the App Server Process Flow diagram correct? Grey is referred as the Client color but never used. Or, I'm an idiot and missed something.
Two ByteByteGo posts in a row where the punchline is the exact same: the model is the least interesting part.
For Stripe's Minions and OpenAI's Codex both teams found that the real engineering is everything around the model.
Context management, sandboxing, prompt caching, multi-surface protocols. We have already entered the era where AI product differentiation comes from orchestration not intelligence.
The core observation here is the one most agent builders miss: the model is a component, the agent is the system. Most engineering goes into the system, not the model. I've spent months building exactly that - CLAUDE.md files, memory layers, tool permission hierarchies - and the ratio feels about right. Maybe 20% of the work is model selection.
The other 80% is orchestration, context management, and deciding when to loop versus escalate. The AGENTS.md approach for project-level context is essentially what I've been doing with layered markdown files.
Different name, same principle. The bidirectional mid-task approval mechanism is the part I'd push on - in practice, most agents either run fully autonomous or fully supervised. The middle ground is harder to design than it looks.
Is the color coding in the App Server Process Flow diagram correct? Grey is referred as the Client color but never used. Or, I'm an idiot and missed something.
Two ByteByteGo posts in a row where the punchline is the exact same: the model is the least interesting part.
For Stripe's Minions and OpenAI's Codex both teams found that the real engineering is everything around the model.
Context management, sandboxing, prompt caching, multi-surface protocols. We have already entered the era where AI product differentiation comes from orchestration not intelligence.