Systems I’ve built

I build AI-augmented developer systems: plugin marketplaces, multi-repo workspaces, review pipelines, agentic workflows. Each one started inside a real engineering org with a real problem, not as a feature exploration.

Below is the working set, grouped by what kind of system it is. Each link goes to a post that names the problem solved, the technical decisions made, and the real limitations.

AI coding systems in practice

• Per-team plugin marketplace — one Git repo, one plugin folder per team, plus a shared common plugin promoted bottom-up. Replaces three incompatible ways of distributing Claude skills across teams. → How a per-team plugin marketplace stopped Claude skill duplication across teams

• Multi-repo Claude workspace — open Claude one level above your repos so a single context, a single memory folder and a single permissions scope cover ~25 services at once. → Multi-repo workspace

Claude Code for real automation

• Fork-session pattern — branch the current Claude conversation to try an alternative without losing the in-flight state of the original. → Fork a session

• The ! shortcut as deterministic-input shortcut — drop shell output into the conversation without going through the model when you need exact bytes, not a paraphrase. → Bang shortcut

• Scope vs. permissions, kept separate — cwd decides what Claude sees, .claude/settings.json decides what Claude does. Treat them as two independent levers in every project. → Scope vs. permissions

Agentic workflows in production

• Subagent-based exploration to keep main context lean — push grep/read-heavy work into an Explore subagent so the main session pays ~1k for a summary instead of ~40k for a transcript. → Subagents have their own context window

• /goal loop for autonomous iteration — stop typing “keep going” between turns; declare a condition and let Claude iterate until it’s met. → The /goal loop

• Persistent memory as cross-session state — markdown files Claude writes on its own and reloads next time, indexed by cwd. Use it deliberately, prune it like a .bashrc. → Persistent memory

Failure cases & lessons learned

• Skill priority and silent overrides — a personal skill silently wins over a project or plugin skill with the same name. Distinctive names, not clever overrides. → Which skill wins when names collide?

• The context window as a budget, not a capacity — once compaction starts, the model is reasoning over a lossy summary. Plan the session so you don’t get there by accident. → Context window

• Session rewind for cheap recovery — small unit of undo on a Claude session so a bad turn doesn’t poison the rest. → Sessions rewind