Turn your agent on auto-pilot with ADRs
New agent chats keep asking product questions you already answered. Write short ADRs so the next agent opens the no instead of making you the memory. (00:00) - Fill the agent's mind (00:36) - Better with Kent (00:46) - The problem: decisions die in chat (02:06) - The solution is ADRs (03:06) - Epic Stack + Remix origin (03:32) - Template + AGENTS.md pointer (04:21) - What to write ADRs about (05:22) - Cameron - 0001 + 0006 (06:59) - Darren - wait on skills / 0015 (07:54) - One-off hooks - 0021 (08:50)…
Here's how the new MCP spec works
MCP is stateless now. Any instance can answer a tool call. Kent walks the 2026-07-28 release: sticky sessions vs a normal load balancer, CIMD vs DCR, multi-round-trip elicitations, and how to run both lanes until the metrics say you can drop the old one. (00:00) - They fixed MCP (01:13) - Better with Kent (01:37) - Cloudflare + the dual-lane upgrade (03:13) - MCP is now a stateless protocol (03:25) - Sticky sessions vs any instance (06:20) - Self-describing requests and headers (07:17) - What else…
The craft "dying" is your OPPORTUNITY
People worry AI is destroying craft and making developers lazy. Kent says that is incomplete: most will hand judgment to the agent. The differentiators own the system, the UX, and what the agent learns to care about. (00:00) - AI is destroying the craft? (00:22) - Humans were never deterministic (01:17) - Judgment was always easy to outsource (02:27) - Your opportunity (04:21) - Ownership is the job (05:25) - Close the loop (06:41) - Walk away from the code (07:53) - Homework Better with Kent -…
Use AI to make product decisions
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…
How to increase your leverage with agents
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…
Forget "read the code," I don't even merge PRs myself
Your agent opened the PR. Now you're refreshing CI and arguing with bots. Kent shows the ship-pr skill that closes that loop - mark ready, fix CI, triage review, Discord handoff - so you spend attention on risk, not chores. (00:00) - Still reading the code? (01:18) - "I read the code" kicked off a war (01:51) - I do read the code sometimes (02:31) - You're the PR babysitter (03:33) - I turned the loop into a skill (04:14) - Discord handoff is the product (04:33) - When it won't auto-merge (05:25) -…
Stop Reviewing Diffs. Start Reviewing Systems.
Agent PRs are too big to read line by line. Kent shows a visual system recap in the PR description - classify what changed as composes, extends, or adds - so you review the architecture first, then the code that matters. (00:00) - Still reviewing git diffs? (00:25) - Spectrum: not every line, not zero review (00:43) - Review the system, not just the diff (00:51) - Steve's visual recap (Builder.io) (01:17) - Why I rolled my own (02:30) - System recap + PR #662 (adds) (05:08) - PR #686 (composes — low…
My Agent Ships Across 6 Services Without Seeing a Secret
Want the system from this episode? Check out Kody at https://heykody.dev/ Kent replays a real publish night — one Cursor conversation where the agent drove Notion, Canva, Kit, Transistor, Bluesky, and LinkedIn through Kody packages, with every secret kept out of the agent's reach. (00:00) - Stop copy-pasting between your agent and your services (01:25) - What we're learning today (01:49) - The real publish-night conversation (02:52) - Search: how the agent discovers capabilities (04:12) - The Notion…
Fable nailed my production YOLO infra migration
One orchestrator prompt, six platform swaps, and a real production cutover on kentcdodds.com — the workflow, the review loop, the perf scare, and where the agents were wrong. (00:00) - One prompt, 40,000 lines (00:44) - The site and why migrate (06:38) - PR #813 — 483 files (07:09) - Kickoff prompt anatomy (11:35) - Orchestrate with subagents (16:13) - Steering + scope expansion (21:33) - Three-layer review (23:22) - Kody closes the loop (25:24) - The performance scare (30:22) - Merge and cutover…
Your Coding Agent Needs Better Primitives
If your coding agent keeps producing garbage, better prompting may not fix it. Kent shows how intentional system primitives make agents more reliable, efficient, composable, and auditable. (00:00) - Bad agent output starts in the system (00:37) - We are all tech leads now (01:28) - What is a primitive? (04:57) - Four moves: create, combine, delete, expand (06:01) - Create: role-based access control (07:59) - Combine: downshift and Kody packages (10:37) - Delete: Instagram and Kody email (12:22) -…
The Framework wars are over. Why no one dethroned React
Kent reacts to Dax's question on X — why no framework dethroned React — and connects it to Jobs Theory, network effects, and why framework choice matters less when agents write the code. Chapters 00:00 — Why did nobody dethrone React? 00:24 — Dax's question on X 00:49 — React is the last UI library (2020) 02:47 — Functional first, then social and emotional 03:36 — What made React functionally better 06:43 — Network effects and "nobody got fired for choosing React" 07:38 — Why…
What the devil is a Factory Engineer?!
Kent reacts to Zach Lloyd's Warp memo on "factory engineers" — where the software-factory vision is right, where it misses product context, and why factory work still comes back to users. Better with Kent — durable skills for people who ship software. Warp CEO Zach Lloyd told his team they are now factory engineers, not product engineers. Kent reads the memo aloud and pressure-tests the framing: automated development, cloud software factories, agent workflows, and the metrics that can game you if…