Field notes | beyond10x

0.16.0 — a rung may open on a date, and the clock is read at the edge

August 25, 2026 · 3 min read

0.16.0 — a rung may open on a date, and the clock is read at the edge | AEPDate and duration operators join the condition language, so a rung can be shut until a date arrives. The kernel still has no clock: the instant is read at the edge and passed in, which is what makes a recorded decision re-checkable by somebody who was not there.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

Some rungs should not open yet. A review window. A cooling-off period. A notice period somebody agreed to in a contract.

This release adds date and duration operators to the condition language, so a ladder can say so.

0.15.0 — a rung may cost evidence, and the refusal says which kind of no

August 25, 2026 · 3 min read

0.15.0 — a rung may cost evidence, and the refusal says which kind of no | AEPA ladder that only says what may follow what models permission, not earning. requires: names what a rung costs, and the refusal distinguishes "on the ladder and not yet earned" from "not on the ladder" — two sentences that lead to different next actions.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

0.13.0 made the status ladder data. This is the first release that spends it.

A ladder that only says what may follow what models permission, not earning. Anybody could move a story to implemented; the ladder had no opinion about whether anything was implemented.

0.14 — the protocol reads a repository that already exists

August 25, 2026 · 4 min read

0.14 — the protocol reads a repository that already exists | AEPRelease 0.14.0 adds protocol reverse: four verbs that point the tooling at a repository written with none of this in mind. Three of the four write nothing, so you can run them against your own code before deciding anything.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

Every worked example on this site starts from documents that already exist. That is the wrong end for anybody deciding whether to adopt: your repository has a README, a test layout, a CI file and six years of git history, and none of it was written with a protocol in mind.

0.14.0 adds protocol reverse — four verbs that read what a repository already says about itself. Three of the four write nothing at all, which is the part that matters when you are evaluating a tool you do not trust yet: the worst case is a report you disagree with.

0.13 — the ladder is data

August 25, 2026 · 5 min read

0.13 — the ladder is data | AEPRelease 0.13.0 takes the status ladder every plan item climbs out of Rust and puts it in a YAML file, decided by entity-core — a separate, IO-free kernel. The consequence: modelling a kind of work this repository never anticipated stops needing a pull request here and a release.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

Every plan item in the planning store sits at a status and climbs a ladder: draft → proposed → active → implemented → accepted. Until 0.13.0 that ladder was a hand-written lookup in Rust, and the consequence for anybody using the tool was concrete and annoying: a team whose work does not fit the shapes we happened to think of had to send a pull request to this repository and wait for a release.

It is a YAML file now.

We read 100 agent sessions to find out what the human actually contributes

August 25, 2026 · 9 min read

We read 100 agent sessions to find out what the human actually contributes | Agentic PrinciplesA transcript study of 1,567 human turns in coding-agent sessions, separating the turns that carried information from the turns that only carried permission.Agentic Principlesfield-noteagentic-principlesfield-noteevaluatorresearcherunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

The median instruction given to a coding agent in our sample is eleven words long and sets off eight tool calls. That ratio is the whole economics of agentic work in one line: a very small amount of human input steering a very large amount of machine work.

So we went looking for the obvious follow-up question. Of those eleven words — how many mattered?

0.12.0 — a workflow declares where a run may write

August 24, 2026 · 4 min read

0.12.0 — a workflow declares where a run may write | AEPA step now declares the files it is handed and the paths it may write, with partial-only as the word that earns the shape. Measured on four live runs rather than asserted — and the toolset stopped a run the prose had only warned about.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

A workflow step now declares two things it never could: the files it is given, and the paths it may write.

0.11.0 — the corpus becomes ground truth, and a gate that lied gets caught

August 21, 2026 · 3 min read

0.11.0 — the corpus becomes ground truth, and a gate that lied gets caught | AEPAn outside adopter re-issued the horizons corpus as ground truth, and the scanner followed. Plus the process lesson that cost the most: two gates that aborted at their first step were read as green through a piped exit status.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

The most useful thing in this release is a mistake it documents.

0.10.0 — evidence gets a shelf life, and the first governed run stops

August 21, 2026 · 3 min read

0.10.0 — evidence gets a shelf life, and the first governed run stops | AEPA fact decays to Unknown past its horizon, never to False, and no API can extend one. Then the protocol governs a real story out of this repository's own backlog — and blocks four states short of where it was meant to.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

Two things, and the second is the one that matters.

0.9.0 — something walks the workflow, on evidence alone

August 21, 2026 · 3 min read

0.9.0 — something walks the workflow, on evidence alone | AEPThe reference driver exists: protocol drive walks a workflow, blocks with the engine's reasons verbatim, and is held to the protocol verbs by enforcement hooks. Preceded by an adversarial review of six architecture decisions, with all seventeen corrections applied before a line was built.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

Everything before this release answered questions. This one walks a workflow — and the design of it was argued out and corrected before any of it was written.

0.8.0 — the repository starts planning itself, and a transcript gets judged

August 21, 2026 · 3 min read

0.8.0 — the repository starts planning itself, and a transcript gets judged | AEPPlanning artifacts become markdown in the repository, moved only through lifecycle-validated verbs. And an agent transcript normalises into an event IR judged against a typed specification — the third observation domain after a specification and a cluster.AEPfield-noteaepfield-noteadopterdevelopertry-spec-driven-developmentunderstand-safe-agentic-codingresearch

Two waves in one release, and they are the same idea applied twice: take something that was prose and make it a typed thing a program can refuse.