One Developer, Two Dozen Agents, Zero Alignment
Why we need collaborative AI engineering and a tour of Ace: the multiplayer coding workspace
DesignTech
Maggie Appleton.
Digital gardens, visual explanations, and anthropology of technology.
Recent essays
26 of 26Gas Town’s Agent Patterns, Design Bottlenecks, and Vibecoding at Scale
On agent orchestration patterns, why design and critical thinking are the new bottlenecks, and whether we should let go of looking at code
January 2026
I entered the new year holding an inconsolable, shrieking baby while London set off an armageddon of fireworks around us. So goes parenthood. The baby is fine, just congested and teething. I am as “fine” as anyone can be after months of chronic sickness, broke…
A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment
On chatbot sycophancy, passivity, and the case for more intellectually challenging companions
Vibe Code is Legacy Code
Vibe code is legacy code by Steve Krouse
May 2025
In a wonderfully dramatic change to my life, I became a mother two months ago. My son was born at the end of March via an unplanned but otherwise uncomplicated c-section. Parenthood has been predictably overwhelming, exhausting, and existentially glorious.
Statistically, When Will My Baby Be Born?
A tiny tool to calculate when your baby might arrive
ChatGPT Would be a Decent Policy Advisor
Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice by Chris Stokel-Walker for the New Scientist
March 2025
It’s been a sad time. Everyone I worked with there was exceptionally talented and kind. I’m thankful I got to build with them for a short while.
Humanity's Last Exam
Humanity's Last Exam by Center for AI Safety (CAIS) and Scale AI
DeepSeek
If you're not distressingly embedded in the torrent of AI news on Twixxer like I reluctantly am, you might not know what DeepSeek is yet. Bless you.
Common Misconceptions in AI
Common Misconceptions About the Complexity in Robotics vs AI by Dan Ogawa
Undetected AI Exam Answers
A real-world test of artificial intelligence infiltration of a university examinations system: A “Turing Test” case study by Peter Scarfe, Kelly Watcham, Alasdair Clarke, Etienne Roesch
Unbaited
Unbaited by Daniel Petho
Smidgeons
Welcome to the smidgeon stream. This is a new kind of content on the Garden. One that was
How to Import Academic Papers from Zotero into Tana
How to use Zotero's translator and Tana Paste formatting to easily import papers into Tana
Growing a Human: The First 30 Weeks
Reflections on the strange experience of growing a human from scratch, without any conscious understanding of how you are doing it
December 2024
We’re back in that glorious post-Christmas, pre-New-Year’s liminal period when the days blur together and I’m allowed to spend inordinate amounts of time tinkering on side projects and laying on the couch eating handfuls of Twiglets.
Aesthetic Command Lines with Hyper, Spaceship, and Oh My Zsh
My fairly banal, basic, but beautiful command line setup
Leaving Elicit
Reflections on two years of working at Elicit and why it's time to leave
July 2024
Until then I’m touching grass, prototyping new ideas for language model interfaces, writing things, shrinking my bedside book pile, improving this website a bit, and getting married somewhere in the middle. I now have a lot of thoughts on the trad femme world…
Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers
The emerging golden age of home-cooked software, barefoot developers, and why the local-first community should help build it
Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History
Buying fake William Morris prints on Etsy and other early signs of epistemological collapse
On Opening Essays, Conference Talks, and Jam Jars
How to open pieces of narrative non-fiction writing, conference talks, and sticky jars
Spinning Worlds, Seasickness, and Dealing with Vestibular Neuritis
Gaining a strange disease and losing my ability to see straight
A Collection of Design Engineers
Collecting people I know who work at the intersection of design and engineering, in an attempt to figure out what a design engineer is