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 container
• The Cursor cloud agent conversation from this episode
• Human factors, product debt, and industrial design with Will King
• Episode slides
• Better 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 climb
0:13 Better with Kent intro
0:24 Tweet claim: agents do months-ago you-work
0:51 Uncle Bob / climb layers of abstraction
1:15 History: assembly to modern languages
1:41 Claude Opus 5 / keep innovating
1:56 Screen: drawing the abstraction timeline
3:25 What are you doing now that agents could do?
4:08 Example: theme-park to conductor of orchestrators
7:40 Challenge: let agents do what you are doing
8:06 Screen: visual-recap / system map PR review
9:07 Don't sit still on the timeline - climb
9:50 What's left for me? Higher leverage keeps appearing
10:32 Homework: list 3 / hand off one
11:04 Uncle Bob: be okay walking away from the code
11:31 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 tweet
• Episode slides
• Architecture, AI agents, and product empathy with Robert C. Martin
• Stop Reviewing Diffs. Start Reviewing Systems.
• kcd-skills / visual-recap
• Better 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 night
• 0:15 — Better with Kent intro
• 0:33 — Every morning a PR that deletes more than it adds
• 1:04 — More tests are not better tests
• 2:03 — Tests are expensive to run / change
• 2:33 — Agents love tiny tests (magic number 42)
• 3:33 — Green checks are not confidence
• 4:33 — Screen: testing-principles.md
• 5:09 — Fewer, longer tests
• 7:10 — Screen: kody#603 demo
• 8:38 — Screen: Keep Tests Tight automation
• 11:32 — Valuable at the time is not keep forever
• 11:45 — Homework: run the cleanup once
• 12:19 — Close: delete some more tests

Links

• kody testing-principles.md
• kody#603 — trim low-signal community suites
• Keep Tests Tight automation
• Better with Kent