Valentin Bonnet

Writing code isn't the hard part — it's writing maintainable code that evolves with your requirements.

Tech Lead in developer infrastructure with 12+ years at Google and Verily. Currently building agent infrastructure and writing about what breaks. Previously: Boq (Google's build system), YouTube backend, Google+.

Start here

The Push Bike HarnessMost agent harnesses are training wheels. They prevent the falls — and the learning. DEAR (Define, Enforce, Audit, Resolve) is an attempt at a push-bike design instead.

I Have No Memory of This PlaceDecisions made for good reasons in 2019 become load-bearing walls in 2026. With human teams, institutional memory survives imperfectly. With AI agents, it doesn't.

Latest writing

I Love the Sound Scaling Laws Make as They Whoosh ByEvery time someone announces AI scaling is dead, they're writing eulogies for a fuel, not for fire. The Jevons paradox, applied.

Lock-In Was Always a Switching-Cost ProblemThe product never trapped you. The migration cost did. AI is collapsing that cost, and the lock-in playbook is going with it.

The Build Was Broken When I Got Here. This Is Fine.Diffuse responsibility, applied to broken builds. Each agent's local report is technically correct: failures predate this task. Multiply across every agent and nobody owns the broken build — there is no somebody else.

If I Had More Time, I'd Have Written Neater CodeThe power of a programming language is not in what it lets you do — it's in what it doesn't. Rust may be better for agents than it is for humans. I find this funny.

To The Left, To The LeftEvery step to the right on the development timeline multiplies the cost of a fix. Shift-left is the philosophy that keeps moving 'find out this is broken' earlier in the loop.