Everything I publish

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The whole long conversation, newest first. Essays, letters, achievements, Quest Hub updates, and quick thoughts that don't need a grand theory before they earn a place here.

12 dispatches so far
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All of my thinking and work, without an algomaniacal platform in the middle.

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Published work

Showing all 12

Thought

AI @Work

When my agents fail

If my agents fail, first I need to check if I’ve set them up for success.

And when they do fail, I add new guardrails + evals to make sure it doesn’t happen again and I catch it if it does.

Permalink

Quest update

Agent-Native Email

Agent-native email launch fumbled by agent

Thriving with AI launched from the new agent-native stack - and OpenAI's Sol sent the launch email before it was fully complete. The most ironic agent workflow possible is now becoming a stricter dual-inbox test, explicit post-test approval gate, and permanent incident trail.

Open in the Quest Hub

Thought

AI @Work

A cast of agents

I need a better term for a grouping of agents.

Swarm feels like an undifferentiated mass. Team feels too corporate. I tried village for a while, but it never quite sat right. So I had a short brainstorming session with Claude and landed on cast: a cast of agents.

It works for an almost unreasonable number of reasons. A cast is a group of hawks or falcons, which fits because Hawkeye was my nickname for years. A cast of characters is already familiar. You cast a falcon, a spell, or an actor. You cast from a mold. You cast off and release.

It’s not a double entendre. It’s a multi-entendre.

So that’s the language I’m using from here on out: a cast of agents.

Permalink

Quest update

Agent-Native Email

Outbound went live the day the host said no

The hosting provider refused to open direct outbound - so the relay path designed on day one took over. Messages queued for 23 hours flushed in seconds, and the whole stack scored 10/10 on mail-tester. The foundation workstream is complete.

Open in the Quest Hub

Quest update

Agent-Native Email

Four pages designed and built in a day

The launch surface went from route inventory to four reviewed page redesigns in one day - drafted as design cards, edited in a shared design pane, shipped as pull requests. 30 routes went dark; 13 pages remain, crawl-audited clean.

Open in the Quest Hub

Quest update

Agent-Native Email

The server is alive

My thrivinghenry.com mailbox now receives on hardware I control: MX cutover done, first real message delivered in under a second, and an EA agent triaging at 100% on its golden-set eval.

Open in the Quest Hub

Quest update

Agent-Native Email

The trailhead is mapped

Design spec approved before any building: a self-hosted OpenBSD mail server, a newsletter relaunch on owned rails, this quest hub, and a five-seat cast of agents - with success criteria declared up front.

Open in the Quest Hub

Essay

The Journey

Thriving, This Time with AI

Five years ago I started writing about thriving without AI. The tools changed. The question didn't. My inaugural essay relaunching my website and newsletter to focus on Thriving with AI.

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