DorrisField manual
Getting an AI to write code is the easy part now. The expensive lessons are the ones you learn by breaking something: what to build first, what never to build, and how not to take down the thing your business has started running on.
Here are eleven of mine, so you don't have to learn them that way. Each chapter is one rule, what taught it to me, and what it means for you.
-
Build what you do every day
Build the thing you do every day, not the thing that would be impressive.
Needs a key -
Build or buy
Build it only if you use it daily, it is mostly your own rules, and being down for an afternoon will not sink you. Otherwise keep paying.
Needs a key -
What never to build
Some things you will build, regret and delete. Know the shape of them before you start.
Needs a key -
How not to take production down
Treat the live system as a separate machine with its own state, its own defaults and its own memory of what you did to it.
Needs a key -
Backups and restore
Version control protects committed code and nothing else. Keep a separate backup of your data and your configuration, and restore from it once while nothing is wrong.
Needs a key -
When to stop trusting the agent
The agent is faster than you and wrong in ways that sound right. Learn the signs and make it prove things.
Needs a key -
How to know it's done
Done means you watched it work, not that you were told it works.
Needs a key -
Which gates to keep
Keep the checks that have caught something real, delete the ones that only look like engineering, and write down why you deleted them.
Needs a key -
Your rules file is the product
The file that tells your agent how to behave is worth more than any feature. Every rule in it should come from something that already went wrong.
Needs a key -
When you leak a secret
Rotate first, clean up second. Deleting the file does not delete it from history.
Needs a key -
The economics, honestly
Price the upkeep, not the build. Almost all of the cost arrives after the thing already works, and for some businesses it never pays back.
Needs a key