Geoffrey Huntley: “I could … update AGENTS.md, but there's still a delta, and it'll drift. Instead, I write a pre-commit hook … fail the commit, inject a prompt telling the agent to use the diagnostics library. All of a sudden it's ten out of ten”
translated by AI, reviewed by the editors
· Software development · developer, author of the “Ralph” technique for running agents in a loop, who works at the software-testing company Antithesis, in the essay “nobody should type code by hand anymore”, in the section calling skill packs and AGENTS.md “astrology for software engineers”
original
“You know what isn't astrology? Engineering. If the agent isn't using my diagnostics library, I could introspect and update AGENTS.md, but there's still a delta, and it'll drift. Instead, I write a pre-commit hook that checks the git diff for direct calls to observability modules that bypass my diagnostics module. Boom: fail the commit, inject a prompt telling the agent to use the diagnostics library. All of a sudden it's ten out of ten. Josh called it Danger Systems in the loop. It's on rails now, and it's not hard. We've been doing this forever.”— Geoffrey Huntley, ghuntley.com, 13.10.2026 ↗
backs
Vibe coding+Autonomous AI agents → Agentic engineering (2026)
verification
✓ checked against the source
The original is given verbatim and only as an excerpt — as much as the meaning needs; “[…]” marks a cut. The translation is ours.
¶ cp7q58796