craft

Automation ROI follows a power law — automate the constraint, not whatever is easiest to automate.#automate-the-bottleneck

Fix small visible decay immediately — tolerated rot signals that rot is tolerated, and the standard collapses fast after that.#broken-windows

Code’s second zero-cost property is experimentation — you learn faster than anyone operating in atoms.#code-compresses-learning

Every piece of knowledge should have one authoritative representation — duplication is where truth goes to diverge.#dry-principle

Quality is a requirement you negotiate with the user, not an absolute you chase.#good-enough-software

Keep components independent so a change in one does not force changes in others — coupling is what makes systems expensive to change.#orthogonality

The instrument’s presence changes posture from consumer to participant before a single mark is made.#pen-changes-reading

When producing code stops being scarce, the constraint moves to knowing what is worth building.#taste-is-the-new-bottleneck

Build a thin end-to-end path first and aim from real feedback, rather than specifying the whole system in advance.#tracer-bullets

Improvement usually comes from removal — subtract the harmful before adding the helpful.#via-negativa

You cannot predict which attempt will land, so the only reliable lever is making more attempts.#volume-beats-perfection