Topic

Agent systems

How agent systems behave under real work, from prompts and caching to tools and restarts.

All technical writing

2026

  1. A browser for agents needs more than one score

    A Rust browser engine built for agents, compared with Chrome across 1,024 sites, and why text, links, pixels and scripts each need their own result.

    Agent systemsEvaluationPlatforms

  2. A browser that writes down the form instead of sending it

    An agent-first browser engine runs a click the way page code expects, then records a form submission and stops, leaving network access, protocol transport, threads and session state with the application that embeds it.

    BrowsersAgent systemsRuntimeArchitecture

  3. A deadline has to live outside the code it limits

    A handler that never yields defeats timers inside the isolate, so the deadline for agent-generated JavaScript has to be a process kill from outside it.

    Agent systemsPlatformsSecurity

  4. A faster check has to fail the same way

    Two optimization campaigns and a queue change on agent tooling, where golden outputs, differential checks and A/B gates test whether a speedup keeps its behaviour.

    Agent systemsPerformanceVerification

  5. A prompt that holds still while the files change

    How provider-specific reasoning replay and a frozen working set of files keep a prompt prefix cacheable while the agent is still told what changed.

    Agent systemsPerformance

  6. Admitting one turn from an at-least-once queue

    Why a mention needs redelivery to survive a crash, and how keeping the dedup marker in the commit that admits the turn stops a teammate answering twice.

    Agent systemsPlatformsOpen source

  7. Making an agent’s memory useful without slowing its next reply

    Capture, evidence, retrieval, projection and delivery can each fail alone. A small replay found a fact lost before search could see it, and 92 live calls carried no receipt that any memory had arrived.

    SelectedAgent systemsMemoryRetrievalPerformance

  8. Compacting agent conversations without losing the source

    How a compaction ledger keeps instructions verbatim, ties each fact to the journal entries behind it, and recovers original evidence within a fixed scope.

    Agent systemsMemoryVerification

  9. Comparing an agent’s context without copying the expected answer

    What it takes to show a port builds the same model request: rebuilding each part from independently captured inputs, labelling copied parts as supplied, and reading zero differences beside zero complete requests.

    SelectedAgent systemsPortingContextVerification

  10. Counting input tokens when the answering provider can change

    Why one usage field means different things across model providers, and how to normalize token counts without hiding missing or contradictory data.

    Agent systemsPlatformsInterfaces

  11. The decisions a restart shouldn’t get to make twice

    Which coordination decisions an agent runtime must persist before acting, which it can re-derive, and how recovery separates unstarted work from uncertain effects.

    Agent systemsPlatforms

  12. Delivering background job results to the turn that owns them

    Binding background jobs to their owning turn and sandbox so that completions survive restarts, arrive at least once and report a result someone can vouch for.

    Agent systemsPlatformsVerification

  13. Did your agent experiment test what you think it tested?

    Wrong models, arms that never switched on, shifting workloads and features that ran without helping: checks that show an agent comparison contains the change.

    SelectedAgent systemsEvaluationVerification

  14. Evidence should belong to the run that used it

    How per-run source rows, revision checks and publication-time binding keep a research report tied to the evidence it used, and what that doesn't prove.

    Agent systemsMemoryVerification

  15. Following a streaming transcript without fighting the reader

    A follow controller for agent transcripts that keeps reader intent as explicit state, separate from scroll geometry, and the cases that shaped it over two months.

    InterfacesAgent systems

  16. Following an agent failure down to the process

    Tracing a completed-but-failed agent run through thread, deployment, tool call, adapter and terminal pane, and what to do when logs and status mislead.

    Agent systemsPlatformsVerification

  17. Forgetting a memory must survive the retry that created it

    How a delayed create can bring a deleted memory back, and what stops it: durable operation receipts, a tombstone that keeps only the ID, supersession edges moved before a duplicate is forgotten, and recall whose staleness has a stated bound.

    SelectedMemoryStorageAgent systemsReliability

  18. Giving an agent project a durable owner

    What has to change when a coding conversation becomes a project that keeps running while you are elsewhere: a coordinator added to existing threads, a record that outlives any one conversation, and an interface that won't infer one state from another.

    SelectedAgent systemsOrchestrationProductArchitecture

  19. Grading agents without trusting the simulator

    An evaluation lab where the oracle never calls simulator code, grades in ten gates, tests itself with mutations and can answer that it doesn't know.

    SelectedAgent systemsEvaluationVerification

  20. Keeping a coordinator responsive while its workers are busy

    When a coordinator shares a process with its workers, load and every recovery action land on both. How the deciding agent was separated from the process that holds the tree, sandboxes and workers, what the relay between them costs.

    SelectedAgent systemsOrchestrationArchitectureRuntime

  21. Keeping scheduled work moving after a crash

    A morning pipeline built on durable, date-keyed obligations, leases and a five-minute sweep, so a crash between steps cannot silently drop the work that is owed.

    Agent systemsPlatformsVerification

  22. Keeping the real workspace beside the conversation

    Giving a browser workspace stable panel identity, separate lifetimes for layout and shell, and the agent’s real files and terminal instead of a plausible substitute.

    InterfacesAgent systemsSecurity

  23. Letting an agent edit the canvas

    A canvas prototype where an agent and a person edit the same typed document, with selection-aware snapshots, canvas operations, and aliases for objects just created.

    InterfacesAgent systems

  24. Keeping long agent turns steerable and within their context budget

    A steer could wait 40 minutes behind a foreground command, and a rule meant to spare people from summaries let threads overflow. Bounded yields and a budget judged on the request actually sent address both.

    Agent systemsRuntimeContextCompaction

  25. Merge or refuse? Choosing a conflict model for text, cards and drafts

    A test for when concurrent writes should merge and when they should be refused, applied to a text CRDT, a task board and fenced draft publishing.

    Agent systemsInterfacesPlatforms

  26. Model concurrency is not machine capacity

    Why admitting sub-agent sessions and admitting work to a shared machine are separate problems, handled with queues, resource preflights, leases and useful refusals.

    SelectedAgent systemsPlatforms

  27. One application definition, several ways for an agent to use it

    Generating discovery files, OpenAPI and MCP tools from one declared surface keeps the formats agreeing. It can't make a flag true, write a recovery procedure or count as extra test coverage. A skills pilot and a live byte comparison show where the line falls.

    SelectedAgent systemsMcpApi designVerification

  28. Why opening a conversation should not wait for its whole history

    A page asking for twelve entries could still wait 31 seconds. Pagination limited the answer and not the work behind it, so the design serves the first view from read models the writers maintain.

    PerformanceArchitectureAgent systems

  29. “Ported” is several different claims

    Why a parity percentage can't describe a port of an agent toolkit: a ledger that keeps gaps as rows, and the separate proofs a behaviour needs natively, in a constrained application, when hosted and against a real provider.

    PortingVerificationAgent systemsArchitecture

  30. Porting an agent by making omissions visible

    How a checklist generated from the syntax tree, clean-context reviewers and a ledger that keeps “translated” apart from “reviewed” exposed what a model-assisted port of a 340,000-line Python agent had left out.

    SelectedAgent systemsPortingCode reviewFormal methodsVerification

  31. Real files on disk, with sync running beside them

    Two systems that give tools an ordinary directory and sync alongside it: echo detection without clocks, a guarded remote commit, and measured cold-restore times.

    PlatformsPerformanceAgent systems

  32. Rebuilding Catalina as a React interface

    How a React library reproduces macOS Catalina's look and its window logic in a browser: interaction from Base UI, appearance as CSS tokens tagged by the evidence behind them, window state carried by the cascade, and a repository where concurrent contributors rarely need the same file.

    ReactCssDesign systemsAgent systems

  33. Recovering an agent’s half-finished edits

    How expected and intended digests let a restarted coding agent tell whether each file edit landed, is still owed or was overtaken, and when it must refuse to write.

    Agent systemsVerification

  34. Reducing allocation churn in an agent platform

    Why an agent gateway with broad retained state allocated gigabytes a minute, how repeated sizing and serialization drove it, and what bounded buffers and encode-once paths do and don't fix.

    PerformanceMemoryProfilingTypeScriptAgent systems

  35. Replaying the deterministic part of an agent

    Recorded model replies and terminal output drove a port through whole sessions, so each difference could be located, classified and rechecked from a checkpoint. What the loop found, how its masks stayed honest and where live runs fit.

    SelectedAgent systemsPortingReplayVerification

  36. Reviewing code that won’t hold still

    Binding review approvals and test results to the exact source revision they examined, and stopping when the latest change has gone unread.

    Agent systemsVerification

  37. Routing sub-agents to models without risking the run

    A router with a bounded judge, a fallback that keeps the child task moving, layered settings, and a record of why each sub-agent got its model and effort.

    Agent systemsPlatforms

  38. Giving a shared revision store the repository tools an agent expects

    How agents get familiar status, diff, log and publishing tools over a shared revision tree with no .git, and how those tools say where their contract differs from Git's.

    Agent systemsDeveloper toolsVersion controlTool designConcurrency

  39. Every draft passed the judges

    A pipeline of model judges passed every draft. What those scores measured, how a reader’s preference differs, and why taste and facts need separate evidence.

    WritingAgent systemsEvaluationCraft

  40. Ten stories is a maximum: letting a morning briefing run short

    How a briefing pipeline lets issues run short: a per-source cap, an evidence floor, smaller budgets for thin stories and a lexical audit of the final prose.

    Agent systemsVerification

  41. Testing a release without turning every release into a research project

    How a release on an agent-operated platform stays finite: scope chosen once, evidence reused only where it still applies, limits on retries, and a plain record of what never got checked.

    SelectedRelease engineeringVerificationAgent systemsOperations

  42. The same scheduled occurrence, delivered twice

    Giving scheduled work a stable occurrence name so redelivery can be recognised, and what that name can’t settle once work leaves the commit or reaches a provider.

    Agent systemsPlatforms

  43. Twenty-one workspaces sharing one filesystem flush

    Diagnosing a 5.6× slowdown across 21 agent workspaces with a durability-matched control, and why a filesystem-wide syncfs made deployment layout part of its design.

    PerformancePlatformsAgent systems

  44. Two ways a tool description goes stale

    Why a discovered tool definition is not permission to call it: re-checking catalog, policy and capability at call time, and deriving every format from one source.

    SelectedAgent systemsSecurityInterfacesEvaluation

  45. Voice shouldn’t have its own idea of the task

    Building voice as one more client of existing thread operations, with guards for steering races, ambiguous references and a spoken “yes” that names nothing.

    InterfacesAgent systemsSecurity

  46. Waiting for an async host by running the program again

    How a synchronous QuickJS guest in WebAssembly waits for async Rust: abort on each host call, answer it, then replay the program with the answers preloaded.

    Agent systemsPlatformsSecurity

  47. What a tool-call approval actually approves

    Binding a human yes to one tool call, with exact inputs, policy revision, thread and turn, spending it once across replicas, and asking where the last check sits.

    SelectedAgent systemsSecurity

  48. What an agent can afford to lose

    Sorting an agent platform’s data into irreplaceable work and rebuildable cache, and letting that decide journal storage, migration, eviction and restores.

    Agent systemsPlatformsPerformance

  49. What an agent may find, read and publish

    How a read-only context library keeps discovery, search, observation and publishing apart, with a capped catalog of untrusted text and access rechecked for each observer. This is a contract rather than a deployed service.

    Agent systemsSecurityContextArchitecture

  50. What an agent runtime has to write down before it says yes

    What a durable agent runtime must store before acknowledging a turn, how it recovers a crash mid tool call, and what at-least-once still leaves to the tool.

    Agent systemsPlatformsSecurity

  51. What did the agent actually change?

    How an agent platform computes a pull request from a registered base and a scoped view of the workspace, and keeps absent, unverifiable and unknown outcomes distinct.

    Agent systemsPlatformsVerification

  52. What should be identical in a five-language agent SDK

    Which parts of a multi-language SDK must match exactly, such as errors, identity and event order, how shared fixtures enforce them, and what each language keeps.

    SelectedAgent systemsInterfacesVerification

  53. What should travel when you share an agent

    A blueprint shares an agent's code and the connections it needs, but never its history, credentials or schedules, and the recipient wires in their own grants.

    Agent systemsSecurityOpen source

  54. What survives when you replace the client

    Replacing a browser client on a shared TypeScript package and adding a native Rust client on the protocol alone: what each reused, and where scrolling and login cut across.

    InterfacesAgent systemsSecurity

  55. Where an agent’s URL actually connects

    Following an agent's URL past the allowlist: resolving every address, pinning the connection, vetting each redirect, and why each browser backend differs.

    Agent systemsSecurityPlatforms

  56. Whose mistake did the coding-agent benchmark catch?

    Reference and empty-patch controls, test-file collisions and environment faults: how to adapt a coding-agent benchmark and tell an agent's failure from the harness's.

    SelectedAgent systemsEvaluationVerification

  57. Why a project worker needs to own the whole job

    Why splitting implementation, review and follow-up into disconnected turns loses obligations, what belongs to the coordinator, the worker and its helpers, and the leases, anchored findings and content-bound checks that let ownership survive on a shared tree.

    SelectedAgent systemsOrchestrationCode reviewConcurrency