tcash.ca · field dispatches
№ 27 · coding agents & the HTML question
fredericton, nb publishing_
tcash.ca · est. 2026 · a working blog

TCASH.ca

Files dispatches from inside the agent loop, not the changelog.
Field report 011 · now a skill

Take the instrument

Drop it into your agent. It triggers itself whenever substantial output has to be trusted: before a pull request, before you ship, any time you are deciding whether something is actually done.

↓ Download the skill .claude/skills/verification-tax/SKILL.md
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§ 01 · Latest

The one up top

New this week
31
2026·05·31
Field Notes · routines · self-triggering agents

Don't wait for Enter

A routine is just a Claude Code session that triggers itself. Field notes on the three decisions every routine comes down to, with a work order builder you fill in and copy.

The field rule. Decide three things and the rest is infrastructure: when it wakes up, what context it gets, and how far it can steer on its own. What you stop owning is the point.

Dispatch record
Filed31 May 2026
BeatField Notes
Length8 min
StatusPosted
§ 02 · Colophon

From the desk

Who's writing, and what's on the bench

Hi, I'm TCash. I ship with coding agents for a living and use this place to think out loud about the parts that don't make it into anyone's docs: where the loop stalls, which corrections actually unstick it, and why the artifact that survives the session is the one that lets the work compound.

Every dispatch here ships as a single, self-contained HTML file you can open on a double-click. Which is the whole argument, really. The nine surfaces where HTML beats markdown come from Thariq's “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML”; the beats below are just where my own work keeps landing.

No hot takes I can't run in production. If a dispatch didn't survive contact with a real repo, it doesn't post.

Filed by TCash · Fredericton, NB · night-watch hours
On the bench
RunningClaude Code against a deliberately 40-line CLAUDE.md
Readingthe dissent slate: Kurtis Redux, one more time
Buildinga single-file kanban editor I keep not finishing
WatchingKimi K2.6 pricing vs. where it folds
Most of what your agent hands back wants to be a page, not a paragraph.
§ 03 · The Ledger

Recent dispatches

Newest first · filter by beat below
Showing 11 of 11 recent
29 MAY2026
The Verification Tax

The agent can produce more than you can responsibly inspect. The next skill is keeping verification cheaper than generation, so the loop creates leverage instead of review debt.

Reports12 min
19 MAY2026
Stop handing me the markdown your agent had to fight

Six months of defaulting to HTML for plans, reviews, and diagrams: what changed, what broke, and the one carve-out I keep. A reply to Thariq and Kurtis Redux.

Reports14 min
14 MAY2026
The CLAUDE.md I actually keep

Twenty-one rules went in. Five survived contact with real work, and one of them was “write less here.”

Config9 min
06 MAY2026
Four moves for a stuck agent

When the loop stalls, I reach for the same four corrections, in order, before I touch the prompt.

Workflow7 min
28 APR2026
Annotated PR review, in one file

An HTML diff with the reviewer’s notes pinned in the margin beats a comment thread every single time.

Code Review6 min
19 APR2026
Kimi K2.6, two weeks in

Where the cheaper agent holds, where it folds, and how its prompting wants to be shaped differently.

Field Test11 min
10 APR2026
Reading like Karpathy

Treat the agent as a study partner, not a vending machine. A reading method that survives long sessions.

Research8 min
30 MAR2026
How OpenAI actually uses Codex

Notes from how a shop that ships every day delegates to its agents, and where the humans stay.

Field Notes10 min
22 MAR2026
Meta-prompting, the Garry Tan way

Ask the model to write the prompt before you write the task. Why the extra hop earns its keep.

Technique5 min
14 MAR2026
The seven crossings

Seven points where a human still has to step into the agent’s loop, and what each one costs you.

Essay12 min
05 MAR2026
Learning on the shop floor

Skill compounds where the work happens, not in the docs. A case for letting the agent watch you work.

Essay9 min
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