Technical insights into multi-agent orchestration, local protocols, and
developer-centric terminal workflows.
An unattended loop that reads git log -5 each pass has a five-pass memory. In a 12-item plan, the decision made at pass 3 ages out at pass 9, two passes before pass 11 needs it. One line in PLAN.md pointing at the commit hash recovers it, for zero extra commits.
Auto-compact looks like memory because the session keeps running. Each pass is a lossy summary, and the loss compounds: two passes leave a Phase 1 decision a 25% chance of still being known. A plan-file relay holds 100% at any phase count.
Task selection is the one decision still routing every ticket through you. Write the priority order down once, and the 80 touches a sprint costs you collapse to 1 - same agent, same backlog.
The gap between agent capability and SME knowledge is the only problem worth solving. Context engineering is how you close it.
Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode all converged on the same primitive - a rules file the agent reads on every session. Use it.
MCP is the standard protocol for plugging external systems - issue trackers, databases, design tools - into AI agents. Here's what changes when you use it.