software by Stafford Williams https://staffordwilliams.com/ Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:33:38 GMT Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:33:38 GMT Astro After failing a number of times to implement worktrees, I got over my frustration and made it happen. The result was a huge productivity multiplier, though not without solving some tricky problems. In this post I'll share both how I solved the problem of continuously failing, and how I ended up implementing worktrees. Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/09/15/steering-the-vibe-worktrees/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/09/15/steering-the-vibe-worktrees/ ai code-assist assist The pace of AI improvement has meant the way I build software looks very different to how I did six months ago, and again six months before that. The change over time is now so constant that it's difficult to explain to others what the tools are and what my current approach is without sounding like the charlie-day.gif. In this post I hope to explain to you, and myself, what my approach to building software is right now. Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/06/28/how-i-build-software/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/06/28/how-i-build-software/ ai code-assist assist Earlier this year I spoke to the idea of Agent Orchestration where changes to software span multiple context windows, and work needs to be split and passed to agents while monitoring progress deterministically Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/04/30/steering-the-vibe-orchestration/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/04/30/steering-the-vibe-orchestration/ ai code-assist assist Once your agentic code-assist workflow is consistently producing acceptable code the bottleneck to productivity becomes the speed at which you can produce this code. One of the biggest slowdowns is when the tool prompts you - usually for permission to perform some task, and even just a few questions from the tool can severely cap sessions running in parallel. In this post we'll look at refining Claude Code's permissioning approach to reduce the number of questions asked and speed up the workflow. Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/03/08/steering-the-vibe-permissions/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/03/08/steering-the-vibe-permissions/ ai code-assist assist In this post I'll describe an improved method to guide the output of code-assist tools towards more maintainable code. In a previous post, I described a refactor approach where periodically I would command the tool to break down files into smaller modules. However knowing (or remembering) when to run it, and having it based on some arbitrary line count was not ideal. That earlier approach has now been superseded by a complexity-based approach that runs as a part of the normal verify workflow. Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/02/22/steering-the-vibe-complexity/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/02/22/steering-the-vibe-complexity/ ai code-assist assist This is the fourth post in a series about steering AI code assist (code-assist) towards producing maintainable code. This particular post will look at a workflow outside the core loop of generating code and gives insight into how the tools we're already using can be leveraged to improve more than just writing code. Specifically this post will explore improved pull request (PR) processes. Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/02/11/steering-the-vibe-review/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/02/11/steering-the-vibe-review/ ai code-assist assist The way I deliver software is grounded in a belief that quality matters and is the route to less suffering. After building software for a long time my approach has become tacit knowledge - helpful in work I'm directly involved with but elusive to others, and more recently, AI. I need to write it down but I've been extremely good at allowing the annoying complexity to keep me procrastinating. For every guideline I have, I can think of exceptions and a context where it doesn't apply. But the efficiency of having it written down is now higher than ever - not only can it help me clarify my thinking, and you to understand my approach, but I can use it to build or evaluate AI tooling to help teams deliver software better and faster than ever before. Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/02/01/quality-and-suffering/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/02/01/quality-and-suffering/ software-delivery ways-of-working quality So the agent and I determined what it needed to do and it built a plan and the plan was split into multiple steps with the intention of progressing one step at a time with the reasoning being I want to use as little of the context window as possible for each step so quality remains high. I had a progress file and it would check off each step as it was done, and I'd clear the context window between steps. This approach revealed some problems: Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/01/15/agent-orchestration/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/01/15/agent-orchestration/ ai code-assist agent-orchestration 2025 was the year of agentic AI code assistants and programming will never be the same. For some, these tools have become a critical part of their daily workflow and produce most, if not all, of the code they write. For others, these tools remain experimental and unreliable, producing more frustration than value. Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/01/04/twelve-months-of-agentic/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2026/01/04/twelve-months-of-agentic/ ai code-assist claude-code This is the third post in a series about steering AI code assist (code-assist) towards producing maintainable code. In this post I'll discuss the refactor commands I've added to assist, the CLI tool I'm building to share deterministic patterns across code-assist workflows. Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2025/12/29/steering-the-vibe-refactor/ https://staffordwilliams.com/blog/2025/12/29/steering-the-vibe-refactor/ ai code-assist assist