Better with Kent

Kent C. Dodds
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Solo episodes from Kent C. Dodds on durable skills for people who ship software: judgment, accountability, problem clarity, and what stays valuable as AI takes on more implementation. Kent teaches directly on camera — no guest, one idea at a time. Complements guest interviews on Become a Product Engineer (Chats with Kent). Episode 1 adapts The Last Software Engineer; later episodes cover traps like building the wrong thing faster and skills like making user pain visible. Subscribe for evergreen episodes as the series grows.

  1. 20h ago ·  Video

    Make your agent safe and autonomous

    Gmail has no drafts-only OAuth scope. If an agent can draft, it can send. Two Kody locks make drafts-never-send actually true. (00:00) - Cold open: agent sent email without review (00:52) - Better with Kent (01:25) - PocketOS: overscoped token callback (02:20) - Gmail has no drafts-only scope (02:46) - Two locks: token + package (03:40) - Elephant: your current Gmail plugin (05:47) - Ask the agent / paste the guide (07:17) - Google Cloud OAuth client (13:03) - Connect Google to Kody (15:38) - Smoke-test draft (no send) (16:56) - Save and lock the drafts package (19:16) - Pin the Google token in Integrations (19:47) - Browse the locked package files (20:35) - Verify: execute blocked + promote (22:52) - Close: lock the grant (23:49) - Homework: .env God-tokens Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Gmail has no drafts-only OAuth scope. gmail.compose can draft and send. If an agent can draft, it can send - unless you put a real grant in front of the token. Kent walks the locked-gmail-drafts path on Kody: smoke-test a draft with the coarse Google token, then save a thin drafts-only package, lock that package so it cannot grow send without a promoted commit, and pin the Google connection so ad hoc execute cannot call it. Two locks. The Google token stays coarse; the pair is the grant Google will not issue. Homework: open your .env, look at the God-tokens your agent can slurp, and put them behind a grant the agent cannot widen. Kody is one way. The skill is the grant, not the product. Guides: https://kody.codes/guides/locked-gmail-drafts and https://kody.codes/guides/google Links Locked Gmail drafts guideGoogle connectKodyBetter with Kent

    Make your agent safe and autonomous

  2. Sep 8 ·  Video

    Introducing Kody: Your Personal Software Factory

    You already paid an agent to figure it out. Tomorrow you ask again. Kody turns the good answer into a package you keep, so any agent can run it forever. (00:00) - You ask again (00:22) - What if you only had to ask once? (00:43) - A personal software factory (01:05) - Then it keeps running (01:25) - Still running (01:50) - Not another agent (02:06) - Secrets stay in Kody (02:36) - Say it once, run it forever Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. You ask your agent to do something. It figures it out eventually. Tomorrow you ask again. New chat, new agent, new device. You didn't keep it. You just paid for the agent to do it again. What if you only had to ask once? Kody is not another AI agent. You've already got one of those. Probably several. Kody is what the agent reaches for when the work shouldn't disappear when the conversation ends. Your agent figures something out once. Kody saves it as a package: real code you own. Think of it as your own mini GitHub and npm. Then it runs on a schedule, a webhook, a tap on a phone. No model in the loop. Faster, cheaper, safer. And it keeps running in the cloud when your laptop is sleeping or dead. Secrets stay in Kody. The agent stays blind. Packages can lock so an agent cannot go rogue and delete your email. Use the agents you love. The personal software they wrote comes with you to all of them. Say it once. Run it forever. For all the agents you use today and the ones you'll use tomorrow. Give your agents a home for free at https://kody.codes Source is on GitHub. Go give it a star. Related: How Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5G8uaZHrVI Links KodyKody on GitHubHow Kody worksHow Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home (ep 22)Better with Kent

    Introducing Kody: Your Personal Software Factory

  3. Aug 27 ·  Video

    How Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home

    You already pay for more than one agent. Give them a shared home so Cursor, Grok, and Devin share software, memories, and tasks instead of starting from zero every chat. (00:00) - Meet Kody (00:22) - Better with Kent (00:46) - How Kody works (01:08) - Cursor asks what the bot shipped (01:40) - Search, conversation ID, memories (03:03) - Execute + secrets stay in Kody (04:35) - Code mode: only the answer comes back (05:45) - Save it as a package (07:23) - Grok reuses the package (09:16) - Devin: tell me when it ships (11:36) - What the agents wrote (13:15) - Any agent can run it (13:52) - Early-access invite (14:28) - Close: give agents a home Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. You probably subscribe to more than one agent. Cursor on the laptop. Grok on a walk. Devin when you want something watched overnight. Each one starts from a blank context window. None of them share the software, memories, or secrets you already built in the last one. Kody is that shared home. Kent walks the How Kody Works page end to end. Cursor does not know the favorite bot, so it searches Kody, picks up memories plus a githubAccessToken secret it never actually sees, and runs the fetch in an isolate. Code mode returns only the answer you asked for, type-checked. Then it saves the work as a package: @u/kodybot what-shipped. Grok reuses that package from a phone with no rewrite. Devin cannot hang a webhook on someone else's GitHub activity, so it adds a morning job and a daily digest email instead. The files look like normal package.json plus kody.jobs, a README intent, and JSDoc the next agent can search. Secrets stay in Kody. Packages can lock a secret so only that package can use it. You can edit a package from a phone with no local git because the agent opens a repo session that simulates git. You do not have to install Kody to take the skill. Agents leapfrog each other. Give them a place to share software, ideas, memories, and tasks so you can switch freely. Early access invite code: YOUTUBE-FRIEND Redeem it at https://kody.codes/signup?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=bwk-shared-home&utm_content=signup Related (context only): I built my own OpenClaw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnztlHzhYvk Links KodyEarly access signup (code YOUTUBE-FRIEND)How Kody worksKody on GitHubI built my own OpenClaw (ep 06)Better with Kent

    How Kody Gives Your Agents a Shared Home

  4. Aug 25 ·  Video

    Turn your agent on auto-pilot with ADRs

    New agent chats keep asking product questions you already answered. Write short ADRs so the next agent opens the no instead of making you the memory. (00:00) - Fill the agent's mind (00:36) - Better with Kent (00:46) - The problem: decisions die in chat (02:06) - The solution is ADRs (03:06) - Epic Stack + Remix origin (03:32) - Template + AGENTS.md pointer (04:21) - What to write ADRs about (05:22) - Cameron - 0001 + 0006 (06:59) - Darren - wait on skills / 0015 (07:54) - One-off hooks - 0021 (08:50) - Persistent services - the missing no (11:13) - Don't write diaries or an ADR per PR (11:45) - Homework - three declined decisions (12:33) - Close Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Every new agent conversation starts from zero. Last week's product decision lives in a chat nobody will reopen. You become the memory. That does not scale. The old fix still works: architecture decision records. An ADR is a short record of a decision already made. Context, decision, consequences, and a revisit-if. Put them in docs/decisions/. Point AGENTS.md at the folder so the agent checks before it proposes a new primitive or surface. They are not set in stone. They give the next agent a starting place so it does not re-decide, re-ask, or plow into a direction you already refused. Kent walks real Kody receipts. Cameron's call became 0001 (no package versioning) and 0006 (no repo CI primitive). Darren's call became 0015 (wait on skills over MCP). A late-night one-off hooks idea became 0021: talk first, stay in packages. Then the missing no: persistent services kept getting defended because there was no written decision. After the back-and-forth, the primitive was deleted in kody#1552 and 0025 was written. Write the no before the next agent. Do not write essays nobody opens, UI diaries, or an ADR on every PR. Ten seconds on the trap, then homework. Homework: create docs/decisions/ this week. Write three declined decisions you already made. Link the folder from AGENTS.md. Agents will start asking whether the thing you just discussed should be an ADR. Links Episode slidesADR template (sample)Nygard: Documenting Architecture DecisionsKody AGENTS.mdKody decision recordsKody ADR template0001: no package versioning0006: no repo CI primitive0015: wait on skills over MCP0021: publish-gated package composition0025: no package services primitivekody#1552 (removed package services)Better with Kent

    Turn your agent on auto-pilot with ADRs

  5. Aug 20 ·  Video

    Here's how the new MCP spec works

    MCP is stateless now. Any instance can answer a tool call. Kent walks the 2026-07-28 release: sticky sessions vs a normal load balancer, CIMD vs DCR, multi-round-trip elicitations, and how to run both lanes until the metrics say you can drop the old one. (00:00) - They fixed MCP (01:13) - Better with Kent (01:37) - Cloudflare + the dual-lane upgrade (03:13) - MCP is now a stateless protocol (03:25) - Sticky sessions vs any instance (06:20) - Self-describing requests and headers (07:17) - What else shipped (08:24) - Formal deprecation policy (10:05) - Roots, sampling, logging, SSE (11:58) - Client ID metadata documents (12:38) - How DCR used to work (14:15) - Unbounded client registrations (15:59) - The client ID is a URL (18:33) - Multi-round-trip requests (22:17) - Dual-lane until the metrics say so (23:54) - Homework: instrument old cruft Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. They fixed MCP. The people who called it a bad protocol have less of an excuse now. The 2026-07-28 spec is the biggest change since the beginning, and the headline is that MCP is a stateless protocol. Kent walks the before-and-after. The old world needed a sticky session on one instance behind the load balancer. If that instance fell over, the client was stuck. The new world is ordinary HTTP: any instance can serve the request. App state can still live in a database. The transport session is what died. That unlocks the rest of the release. Requests are self-describing. Method and tool names travel in Mcp-Method and Mcp-Name headers, so a gateway can route without reading the body. Multi-round-trip requests replace held-open SSE for elicitations: the server returns the input it needs, the connection closes, and the client can come back days later on any instance. List responses are cacheable. Extensions are formal now (MCP Apps, Tasks). DCR is deprecated in favor of Client ID Metadata Documents: the client_id is an HTTPS URL, trust is ownership of the domain, and you stop minting an unbounded registration record per reconnect. Kent's own early Kody numbers: about 125 DCR registrations per user. There is a formal 12-month deprecation window. Roots, sampling, logging, and HTTP+SSE are on the way out. Kent is glad Roots is gone, a little sad about sampling, and fine with streaming replacing SSE. The receipt is a dual-lane /mcp: Cloudflare's Agents SDK classifies isLegacyRequest, the new spec already shows up from Claude Code, and weekly agents watch the metrics. Homework is the durable move: instrument your old cruft so data, not a calendar, tells you when it is safe to remove. Links MCP 2026-07-28 release postMCP 2026-07-28 changelogCloudflare: the next generation of MCPCIMD (client.dev)Kody dual-lane MCP PREpisode slidesBetter with Kent

    Here's how the new MCP spec works

  6. Aug 18 ·  Video

    The craft "dying" is your OPPORTUNITY

    People worry AI is destroying craft and making developers lazy. Kent says that is incomplete: most will hand judgment to the agent. The differentiators own the system, the UX, and what the agent learns to care about. (00:00) - AI is destroying the craft? (00:22) - Humans were never deterministic (01:17) - Judgment was always easy to outsource (02:27) - Your opportunity (04:21) - Ownership is the job (05:25) - Close the loop (06:41) - Walk away from the code (07:53) - Homework Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. A lot of people are worried AI is destroying the craft and making developers lazy. Some of that is true. It is not the whole story. LLMs are not compilers. They are not deterministic. Neither are humans. Slop and abdicated judgment are real. The idea that AI invented software bugs is not. People have always been happy to defer decisions: a library from a big company, a ticket from someone else, now an agent that will take the whole job if you let it. That is the opportunity. Most developers will find it easier than ever to hand system design to the model. The people who stay in the loop, design the primitives, and keep ownership will be the ones who stand out. Kent's own half-million-line codebase since March is a hint of the direction: spend less time on semicolons and framework nuances, more time on the software factory the agent works in. The agent mirrors what you care about. If you care about UX, cost, and sustainability, it will keep bringing those up. If you only care about closing the ticket, that is all you get. Bugs are not new. GitHub Actions was down for eight hours. Humans still admit agent mistakes into the factory loop. Craft survives by designing primitives, not by reading every line. The agent amplifies you. It does not replace you. Users already expect more. Homework: look at the corrections you give your agent. Are they marginally useful, or high-impact UX and system issues? Raise the bar to the ones that actually change the product. Links Use AI to make product decisions (previous episode)Better with Kent

    The craft "dying" is your OPPORTUNITY

  7. Aug 13 ·  Video

    Stop Burning Your Context Cash

    A giant AGENTS.md feels responsible. It is often just burning tokens. Kent walks the Claude Code 80% cut, a research paper that found +20% cost for little gain, a live prune of his own file, and homework: make the always-on file a router, not an encyclopedia. (00:00) - Cold open: you're burning context dollars (00:43) - Better with Kent intro (00:59) - Claude Code cut 80% of the system prompt (01:43) - When system prompt, skills, and user requests clash (03:05) - Context engineering best practices that became myths (04:12) - Avoid stating the obvious / progressive disclosure (04:42) - You don't need useMemo for your agent (05:36) - Performance optimizations are not free (06:17) - Research: AGENTS.md often doesn't help (+20% cost) (07:06) - The cargo-cult loop (07:24) - Overstuffed AGENTS.md walkthroughs (09:01) - If the agent can find it in the repo, cut it (09:54) - Live prune of my own AGENTS.md (14:05) - I audited 37 agents (15:30) - AGENTS.md should be a router (16:30) - Shrink always-on context (18:30) - Homework: slim the always-on file (19:54) - Close: get better together Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. Stuffing AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and auto-loaded skills because it feels responsible is the new useMemo-everywhere cargo cult. Context is not free. Claude Code cut about 80% of its system prompt for newer models. A research paper evaluating AGENTS.md found those files often do not improve task success while increasing inference cost by over 20%. Kent walks real overstuffed files (discoverable repo trees, package managers, test commands the agent can find itself), then prunes his own Kody AGENTS.md live: keep what the repo is for, keep landmines, keep a short index, cut the rest. He audited 37 of his own agents from one day: 0 re-read AGENTS.md, 86% pulled docs and skills on demand, and most went straight to the leaf. The durable skill: treat the always-on file as a tiny map. Progressively disclose the rest. Measure whether the extra tokens still help after the models change underneath you. Homework: take 15-30 minutes with your agent. Rip out everything discoverable from the repo. Keep the gotchas that trip it every time. Index the rest. Delete docs nobody has opened. Links When to useMemo and useCallbackThe new rules of context engineering (Claude blog)Evaluating AGENTS.md (ETH Zurich / arXiv)Episode slidesBetter with Kent

    Stop Burning Your Context Cash

  8. Aug 11 ·  Video

    Use AI to make product decisions

    Most people use agents to write code. Watch Kent use one to decide what to build: gather evidence, argue primitives, peel cleanup into side quests, keep the judgment - and only then type go. (00:00) - Cold open: I think we are aligned, so let's go (00:05) - Better with Kent intro (00:24) - The durable skill: making a product decision with your agent (00:31) - Start at the top: hand the agent the Agents Week post (01:11) - Your agent needs a computer, not a container (02:49) - Agent TLDR: opportunities and a workspace assistant primitive (03:47) - How Kody repo sessions work today (05:32) - Will King: use agents to gather, keep the judgment (06:17) - Built-in primitive or community package? (06:27) - Primitives are hard to remove once you add them (07:37) - Entitlements, cost, and whether the business survives it (09:16) - Ask for real usage data, not speculation (10:38) - Push back when the data is wrong (11:05) - Side quests: spawn other agents so the thread stays on the decision (12:30) - A gap can mean expanding a primitive, not adding one (13:34) - Durable objects vs R2: expertise that saved 13x (15:17) - Catching the agent being sloppy (15:47) - Artifacts is the better backing primitive (17:39) - Least surprise is a product principle too (18:08) - Research: large files in Cloudflare Artifacts (30 MB, 413s, no LFS) (19:39) - Price-conscious prompts make price-conscious agents (20:22) - The call: one repo primitive with a package marker (21:10) - Progressive disclosure, then go (21:52) - Why almost no skills for this conversation (22:20) - Homework: ask for one research deliverable (23:12) - Close: get better together Better with Kent - durable skills for people who ship software. A Cursor cloud agent is sitting mid-conversation and the next thing Kent types is one word: go. Before that, there is a whole product conversation worth watching - because none of it was "write the feature." Cloudflare Agents Week drops @cloudflare/computer, and the real question is not "can we build it" but "what should Kody's primitives be?" Kent walks the actual thread: asking the agent to gather evidence instead of implementing, pushing back when the data is wrong, measuring the large-file ceiling in Cloudflare Artifacts (about 30 MB, 413s, no LFS), catching a durable-object storage choice that would have cost 13x more than R2, and spawning side-quest agents so surfaced tech debt never hijacks the decision thread. The call that comes out of it: no new data-repo primitive - expand the repo primitive with a package marker, gate large files with a friendly redirect instead of an opaque rewrite, and respect the principle of least surprise as a product principle, not just a programming one. Homework: before your next "build it," ask your agent for one research deliverable that could change your mind. If it surfaces cleanup, spawn a side quest. Then say go. Links Cloudflare: Your agent needs a computer, not a containerThe Cursor cloud agent conversation from this episodeHuman factors, product debt, and industrial design with Will KingEpisode slidesBetter with Kent

    Use AI to make product decisions
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Solo episodes from Kent C. Dodds on durable skills for people who ship software: judgment, accountability, problem clarity, and what stays valuable as AI takes on more implementation. Kent teaches directly on camera — no guest, one idea at a time. Complements guest interviews on Become a Product Engineer (Chats with Kent). Episode 1 adapts The Last Software Engineer; later episodes cover traps like building the wrong thing faster and skills like making user pain visible. Subscribe for evergreen episodes as the series grows.

Information

  • Creator
    Kent C. Dodds
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Kent C. Dodds Tech LLC
  • Show Website
    Better with Kent

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