code understanding

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Understanding is the new bottleneck
2 months ago
- Understanding code written by AI agents remains important, not just to verify correctness but to participate creatively in the project's evolution.
- Cognitive debt from skipping understanding can accumulate and hinder future contributions.
- Technique 1: Use structured code explainer docs that teach background, intuition before details, interactive figures, and literate diffs with embedded quizzes to regulate understanding speed.
- Technique 2: Build micro-worlds—interactive environments like debuggers or step-by-step ports—so humans can intuitively grasp system behavior by doing.
- Technique 3: Create shared spaces (e.g., collaborative Notion pages) where teams discuss and refine mental models together, enabling efficient communication and creative collaboration.
- The ultimate goal is to augment human understanding, not just automate tasks, making us deeper participants in the loop.
Harness Handbook – Making Agent Harnesses Understandable, Auditable and Editable
2 months ago
- Agent harness behavior is scattered across many implementation sites, making it hard to understand, audit, or adapt.
- Harness Handbook organizes implementation into a behavior-level manual with three levels (L1, L2, L3) linked to code evidence.
- Key problems include complex codebases (e.g., Codex has 2,267 files) and need for behavior localization to answer specific questions.
- The Handbook supports three goals: understand system flow, audit behavior against expectations, and adapt for building custom agents.
- Behavior-Guided Progressive Disclosure (BGPD) allows users to start from a behavior question and trace to code evidence layer by layer.
- Experiments show Handbook-assisted coding agents achieve higher localization accuracy with lower token cost, especially for complex tasks.
- Handbook Studio provides an interactive workbench for reading, verifying, and making changes on the behavior map.
- Example change (temporary environment variables) demonstrates how Handbook reduces fan-out of edits across 10 files and 14 sites.
- Takeaway: complex harnesses need a behavior-level map for understanding, auditing, and adapting, with code evidence at every step.
Understanding Is the New Bottleneck
3 months ago
- Agents are writing more code, making it harder to keep up, but there are multiple ways to understand code beyond line-by-line diffs.
- Understanding code is not just for verification; it allows humans to participate creatively in projects, avoiding cognitive debt and enabling iterative evolution.
- Three techniques for understanding code: explanations (like literate diffs with quizzes), micro-worlds (interactive environments to intuit systems), and shared spaces (collaborative tools for team understanding).
- AI can augment human understanding by creating simulations and tools, drawing inspiration from education and historical visions like Alan Kay's interactive computing.
- The goal is to deepen human involvement in the creative process, using AI to enhance understanding rather than merely automating tasks.

code understanding

Understanding is the new bottleneck

Harness Handbook – Making Agent Harnesses Understandable, Auditable and Editable

Understanding Is the New Bottleneck