I have a habit of interrupting the work to build a tool for doing the work. Sometimes that saves time. Sometimes it becomes a second project I didn’t need.
The worthwhile ones usually start with something I keep repeating: gathering context for a coding agent, translating a creative idea into a sequence of steps, checking what happened to a payment. I can explain the irritation before I can explain the tool.
My custom coding harnesses come from that habit. So do Produca and the AI tooling I’m experimenting with for Blender and Godot. I want fewer awkward handoffs between what I mean and what the software lets me do.
The annoying cases are often the interesting ones. A reference gets lost between generations. An agent changes a file it didn’t need to touch. A request times out after the provider has already done the work. Those cases force me to look beyond the model or the interface and follow the whole operation.
I’ll write about some of that here. Also 3D, art, music and whatever else catches my attention. This doesn’t need to become a catalogue of things I’ve shipped.