Software architect · Founder · Building with agents daily
I build with agents. The hard part is knowing what to ask.
Agents will build almost anything you describe. The scarce skill now is describing it well, and knowing when the confident answer is wrong. I write about what that takes.
I build with these tools every day and write the field notes. Allergic to magical thinking about AI.
Ben Schmidt · Pittsburgh, PA
Co-founder & CEO, RoadBotics → Michelin
Founder, HeyLoopy
EIR, CMU Corporate Startup Lab
PhD, Bioengineering · brain-network imaging
Where to start
01
The Shape of It
Kits. Each one teaches a fundamental of how software and agents actually work, then hands you a tool to use it. Learn a skill, leave with something applied.
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02
Writing
Essays and field notes. Thinking out loud on directing agents and building in the open, plus notes on interesting work around Pittsburgh.
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03
Let's talk
How to reach me. LinkedIn first, coffee around Pittsburgh always, especially with founders getting up to speed on agents or working through an early-stage question.
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Latest essays
All essays →- When you remove a feature, invert its tests. Don't skip them. July 16, 2026
- A login double-submit race, and the test layers that let an LLM fix it safely July 16, 2026
- Without Code Journals, Your AI Will Fail You July 14, 2026
- We Always Finish Each Other's ____ July 14, 2026
- The Bottleneck Was Never the Machine June 14, 2026
The through-line
The machine was never the bottleneck. The question is.
Everything here is about asking a better one. Enough fluency to direct these tools well, and to catch them when they are confidently wrong.