Dispatches
field notes from the frontier — the full archive
SKILLsensible-mode: The Claude Skill That Skips the Small Talk
Sensible Mode skill strips away AI's tendency to hedge and be agreeable, instead giving you ranked options, direct arguments, and actual answers without the fluff. It's built for moments when you need a straight response—whether you're debugging code at 2am or finding out why your essay argument doesn't work—not encouragement.
GUIDESHow to Make AI Respond Better by Telling It What Not to Do
AI tools default to bland, predictable patterns from their training data, but you can get dramatically better results by identifying and explicitly banning the specific tics you dislike rather than asking for vague improvements like "make it warmer." Telling AI what NOT to do forces it away from common patterns and toward more specific, human-sounding output.
GUIDESWhat Is a Context Window and Why You Need to Keep It Refreshed
Long AI conversations gradually degrade as earlier decisions compress or fall out of the model's active consideration, but the fix is not to push harder—it's to extract a clean working brief and start fresh with a clear workbench. A well-structured brief captures current goals, locked decisions, and open questions, letting you pick up at full clarity in your next session rather than fighting through accumulated confusion.