Architecture

Somewhere in the second or third meeting with a new client, a particular slide tends to appear. It shows the current platform on the left, drawn in a slightly apologetic grey, and the target state on the right in confident colour, with an arrow between them. The arrow is where the money goes, and the plan for the arrow is usually some version of the same idea: we will build the new thing alongside the old thing, and when the new thing is ready, we will switch....

In August I ran an internal session for engineers with the title “What makes an agent, an agent?” The slide after the title said that it was a safe space not to know, and I meant it. The word is used so loosely at the moment that people who build these systems for a living will give you different answers, and people who buy them are often not sure which answer they have bought....