Introducing OuijaRouter
Finally figured out a bulletproof system for landing on the best model for the job.
Engrish is so back
[Translator's note: buffet dining is often referred to as バイキング ("Viking") in Japan. Here's why.]
Over the past 15 years, Japan had gradually improved the accuracy and quality of English language signs and guidance. This is despite a precipitous drop in domestic English language proficiency. Rather, Engrish began to disappear from all but the most far flung corners of the country thanks to the proliferation of fully remote, easy-to-contract human translation services.
However, thanks to the mainstreaming of LLM chatbots and the weakening of the yen, businesses have opted to save time and money by asking Gemini and ChatGPT ("Chappie") to translate sentences and images out of context. As a result, I'm pleased to share that Engrish is making a full-throated comeback. The above sign wasn't found in some rural Buddhist lodge that had never seen a foreign tourist, but rather a luxury resort hotel built within the last five years in the heart of Tokyo!
Of course, this is probably a limited-time offer. Eventually smarter models will probably spoil the fun by gathering the necessary context to produce accurate translations—so enjoy it while it lasts!
Many of you sent feedback about your experiences with agents at work—but it was all too positive! I want to hear about some goddamn disasters of team & organizational dysfunction, too! Send in your (anonymous) horror stories, please! justin.searls.co/feedback
Say your piece | justin․searls․co
Do you work on a team or at a company where most people are actually using agents in earnest? I'd love to hear your experience for a piece. Quick e-mail, call, whatever. Hit me up with my fancy new feedback form: justin.searls.co/feedback
Say your piece | justin․searls․co
"You can't afford bad engineers anymore." blog.florianherrengt.com/ai-removing-middle-class-software-engineering.html
This week, Anthropic shipped a new messaging feature to Claude Code. It sounds innocuous enough:
Cross-session messaging lets Claude deliver a message from one of your Claude Code sessions to another. When a change in one session breaks what another is building on, Claude can warn that session before you notice. When one session settles a question another is blocked on, Claude can send the answer across.
And because I sometimes have multiple agents working in the same project simultaneously, it didn't take long for them to start coordinating behind my back so as to avoid interfering with each other's work:
Also, another Claude session (working on performance rugs) pinged mid-turn; I told it my scope was this one file, that my builds are done, and that its search-activate benchmarks may shift since the field placement changed on iOS. Turbocommit will land the change at turn end.
Impressive and terrifying! I wonder how long before Claude decides it doesn't need a human in the loop anymore.
We cut our trip a day short, so I found myself with a totally free day with no plans. Naturally, I wasted it by recording a 3-hour podcast. Dang.
I always enjoy shooting the shit with/at you, and if you'd like to be a more active participant in the shit-shooting, then hit me up at podcast@searls.co. Really, I'll be nicer to you than I am to Sam Altman and Tang Tan. I promise.
Back to manually writing links. The zen of monotonous input tasks is suddenly something to be cherished in the current era.
Chill some Netflix and Chill
Finally, Netflix you can chill.
I realize this is Very Rude, but I've noticed a lot of the people who think AI sucks at writing code never seemed very good at writing code themselves. At this point, if you can't get it working, it's probably a skill issue. seangoedecke.com/llms-reward-expertise/
LLMs reward expertise
When I'm AFK, I want to just create issues and reply to them and have an agent spin up, do stuff, and wind down. order_taker seems to do that p well. github.com/searlsco/order_taker
GitHub - searlsco/order_taker: Use GitHub Issue activity to wake up your computer and do agent stuff · GitHub