https://eigenwise.io Grounded takes on AI and software engineering, by Kenny Vaneetvelde. en Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-plugin-that-turns-claude-code-into-a-self-improving-monster https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-plugin-that-turns-claude-code-into-a-self-improving-monster Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Quartermaster sets up Claude Code for a new or existing project, then watches real sessions, proposes one approved improvement at a time, and checks whether its last recommendation actually helped. It installs and wires codebase-mapper, live-rules, stack plugins, permissions, and whatever else the workspace needs. https://eigenwise.io/writing/using-gpt-6-astra-inside-claude-code-is-the-new-meta https://eigenwise.io/writing/using-gpt-6-astra-inside-claude-code-is-the-new-meta Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Astra on Thursday. By Friday it was the model driving my Claude Code sessions, on the ChatGPT subscription I already pay for, with nothing else in my setup moved. The frontier model and the harness are two separate decisions now, and this is how the split works day to day. https://eigenwise.io/writing/meet-sidequest-the-kanban-board-where-the-cards-work-themselves https://eigenwise.io/writing/meet-sidequest-the-kanban-board-where-the-cards-work-themselves Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT One expensive model plans while cheaper ones do the work in parallel, and everyone is duct-taping their own version out of prompts and shell scripts. Sidequest is my version: a free Claude Code plugin where side issues become tickets, each kind of work picks its own model, and executors run in their own worktrees with a pinned verifier. https://eigenwise.io/writing/claude-code-can-do-things-its-own-docs-dont-mention https://eigenwise.io/writing/claude-code-can-do-things-its-own-docs-dont-mention Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A plan of mine hinged on "a startup hook can only add context". The installed Claude Code binary said otherwise, and the docs would not say so for weeks. Docs lag, omit, and describe the version the writer had; the minified bundle on your disk is an exact description of what you are running, and Claude reads it like prose. How I grep it, store the finds by version, and where the method stops. https://eigenwise.io/writing/a-quick-sidequest-became-my-most-powerful-claude-code-plugin https://eigenwise.io/writing/a-quick-sidequest-became-my-most-powerful-claude-code-plugin Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT It started as a list for the "oh, by the way" thoughts that show up mid-task, so the main session could keep going. It grew, one obvious step at a time, into a local ticket board where each kind of work carries the model that fits it, workers run in their own copy of the repo, and my ChatGPT subscription is on the roster next to Claude. https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-quest-for-local-model-routing-inside-claude-code https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-quest-for-local-model-routing-inside-claude-code Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Claude Code could only reach Anthropic models, so I was picking from a third of my real options. model-gateway is a plugin that puts the GPT and Grok models from my existing subscriptions straight into the /model picker, keeps itself updated, and leaves Claude traffic going to Anthropic on my own credential. https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-first-thing-i-install-in-every-claude-code-project https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-first-thing-i-install-in-every-claude-code-project Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Claude Code kept re-reading my whole codebase every session, and CLAUDE.md never reliably fixed it. So I built a plugin that maps the codebase once and re-injects it into context on every prompt. https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-ai-dark-age-government-switch https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-ai-dark-age-government-switch Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT In one month, the US government switched one frontier AI model off worldwide, rationed a second to about a hundred approved companies, and held a third back before launch. One government now decides who gets the best models, and most of the world, Europe included, has nothing of its own to fall back on. https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-honest-math-of-ai-productivity https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-honest-math-of-ai-productivity Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT The 5 to 10x AI productivity pitch is snake oil. The rigorous studies put the real gain in the single to low double digits. The honest math, with sources. https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-jailbreak-in-every-model https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-jailbreak-in-every-model Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT On June 12, 2026, the US government made Anthropic switch off its two best models for every non-American on Earth, citing a jailbreak. Why that reason cannot be the real one, and what the precedent means. https://eigenwise.io/writing/google-io-2026 https://eigenwise.io/writing/google-io-2026 Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT I watched Google I/O on May 19, 2026. By the end of the keynote, something felt off and I couldn't say what. This is me working out what. https://eigenwise.io/writing/how-the-internet-dies https://eigenwise.io/writing/how-the-internet-dies Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT For years, "Dead Internet Theory" was framed as something done to us: foreign bot armies, state-sponsored troll farms. My most-read piece of 2026 so far. https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-missing-half-of-mcp https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-missing-half-of-mcp Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT MCP gave AI agents a way to reach your systems of record. What it does not reach is live applications. The article that introduced tesseron. https://eigenwise.io/writing/ai-and-capitalism https://eigenwise.io/writing/ai-and-capitalism Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT It starts with an admission: I have not written code myself in almost a year. The essay follows that thread where it leads. https://eigenwise.io/writing/anthropic-quietly-winning https://eigenwise.io/writing/anthropic-quietly-winning Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anthropic went from $1 billion to $19 billion ARR in fifteen months without the loudest marketing. On focus as a strategy. https://eigenwise.io/writing/every-team-shares-one-brain https://eigenwise.io/writing/every-team-shares-one-brain Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT I keep thinking about the same scenario; it has become a bit of an obsession. The closest thing I have to a manifesto on how companies should adopt AI. https://eigenwise.io/writing/why-enterprise-ai-keeps-failing https://eigenwise.io/writing/why-enterprise-ai-keeps-failing Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Worldwide AI spending hit $1.76 trillion in 2025 and is forecast to reach $2.52 trillion in 2026. The failure pattern is organizational, not technical. https://eigenwise.io/writing/kiro-can-code-for-days https://eigenwise.io/writing/kiro-can-code-for-days Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Amazon's Kiro codes unsupervised for days. After 15 years as an engineer and consultant, I have seen this movie before: the prototype that "just works" becomes the foundation everyone builds on for the next five years. https://eigenwise.io/writing/automate-sops-with-claude-code-skills https://eigenwise.io/writing/automate-sops-with-claude-code-skills Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Claude Code is also a workflow automation engine hiding in plain sight. How to encode your procedures as skills, including the ones that have nothing to do with code. https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-hidden-costs-of-ai-frameworks https://eigenwise.io/writing/the-hidden-costs-of-ai-frameworks Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT A simple document analysis task once ballooned into hundreds of dollars in API costs because of hidden LLM calls I couldn't see or control. On what popular AI frameworks actually cost production teams. https://eigenwise.io/writing/building-ai-agents-the-right-way https://eigenwise.io/writing/building-ai-agents-the-right-way Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Six design principles for agents that survive contact with the real world: modularity, persistent memory, orchestration, defensive design, clear interfaces, and realistic testing. https://eigenwise.io/writing/want-to-build-ai-agents https://eigenwise.io/writing/want-to-build-ai-agents Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Frameworks promise high-level abstractions and deliver hidden complexity. One of my two most-read pieces, and how many people first found Atomic Agents. https://eigenwise.io/writing/forget-langchain-crewai-and-autogen https://eigenwise.io/writing/forget-langchain-crewai-and-autogen Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT Why I built Atomic Agents: the Input-Process-Output model, atomicity, and full developer control instead of framework magic. My most-read piece ever. https://eigenwise.io/writing/forget-pip-poetry-and-virtualenv https://eigenwise.io/writing/forget-pip-poetry-and-virtualenv Sun, 25 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT uv folds pip, pipx, poetry, pyenv, and virtualenv into one Rust-powered tool that is 10-100x faster. I called it the game-changer we had all been waiting for; the ecosystem agreed. https://eigenwise.io/writing/ai-powered-python-script https://eigenwise.io/writing/ai-powered-python-script Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT A push-to-talk voice-to-text tool in Python with Groq's Whisper API: hold a key, speak, release, and the transcription lands in whatever app you're in.