# Bobby Smart

> Opinions, hot takes, and stories from building with AI. The personal counterpart to practical writing at Codewalkers.

## Site

- [Bobby Smart](https://bobbysmart.dev/): Opinions, hot takes, and stories from building with AI. Practical guides live at Codewalkers.
- [Projects](https://bobbysmart.dev/projects/): Things being built around AI coding tools, agents, and evaluation.
- [Writing](https://bobbysmart.dev/blog/): Opinions and stories from building with AI: hot takes, lessons, and the occasional rant.
- [Notes](https://bobbysmart.dev/notes/): Short, dated notes: cost lessons, prompting habits, and small things learned building with AI tools.
- [Topics](https://bobbysmart.dev/topics/): The writing and notes browsable by category.
- [Now](https://bobbysmart.dev/now/): What Bobby Smart is building, testing, and thinking about this quarter.
- [Stack](https://bobbysmart.dev/stack/): The AI coding tools Bobby Smart pays for and runs day to day.
- [About](https://bobbysmart.dev/about/): A developer in Australia writing about AI coding tools, agents, and craft.
- [Privacy Policy](https://bobbysmart.dev/privacy/): Privacy policy for bobbysmart.dev.
- [Terms](https://bobbysmart.dev/terms/): Terms of use for bobbysmart.dev.
- [Topics: Opinion](https://bobbysmart.dev/topics/opinion/): Hot takes and honest opinions on where building with AI is really going.
- [Topics: Agents & tools](https://bobbysmart.dev/topics/agents-tools/): Opinions and stories from the coding agents and AI tools I run day to day.
- [Topics: AI engineering](https://bobbysmart.dev/topics/ai-engineering/): Lived experience building, testing, and shipping features that lean on models.
- [Topics: LLM fundamentals](https://bobbysmart.dev/topics/llm-fundamentals/): How the models actually behave, and how I have learned to prompt them.
- [Topics: Shipping product](https://bobbysmart.dev/topics/shipping-product/): Getting real software out the door without burning out.

## Projects

- [Build your own coding agent](https://bobbysmart.dev/projects/build-your-own-coding-agent/): An eight-step workshop that builds a working code-editing agent from a bare API call, because the magic is an illusion.
- [Codewalkers](https://bobbysmart.dev/projects/codewalkers/): A publication about AI coding tools and agents, written by people who actually ship with them. I'm the lead author and editor there.
- [HQ: a memory system for agent work](https://bobbysmart.dev/projects/hq-agent-memory/): Markdown, git, and a few conventions that let AI agents pick up work across sessions without re-explaining anything.

## Writing

- [The agent orchestration trap: what have you shipped this week?](https://bobbysmart.dev/blog/agent-orchestration-trap/): Agent swarms that look impressive but ship nothing. Productivity theater versus actually building things.
- [You probably don't need an eval platform](https://bobbysmart.dev/blog/evals-for-small-teams/): What actually caught regressions while building an AI detection product: traces, a tiny golden set, and a CI gate.
- [I spent a year building AI features and shipped nothing](https://bobbysmart.dev/blog/shipping-ai-features-without-burnout/): What over-engineering burnout actually looks like from the inside, and the ordering mistake that caused it.

## Notes

- [Make two agents plan, then trade their homework](https://bobbysmart.dev/notes/swap-the-plans/): The cheapest quality trick I run: have Cursor and Claude Code each draft a plan, then hand each the other one.
- [The meal that explains vibe coding](https://bobbysmart.dev/notes/what-the-chicken-hearts-taught-me/): A friend fed me a dinner she wouldn't describe until after I'd eaten it. I think about that every time I ship code I didn't read.
- [A whole tool, between 10pm and 1am](https://bobbysmart.dev/notes/overnight-tab-manager/): The best thing about this era isn't the big rewrites. It's how cheap it got to scratch a small itch.
- [Prompt like you order coffee](https://bobbysmart.dev/notes/the-black-coffee-prompt/): Ask for exactly what you want. You can always add the sugar later; you can never take it out.
- [The interview I won by not writing code](https://bobbysmart.dev/notes/the-date-problem-that-wasnt/): Everyone reached for a date library. I asked what the user actually needed and answered it with plain integers.
- [Set the spend limit before the first prompt](https://bobbysmart.dev/notes/the-60-dollar-lesson/): An agent left running on premium models is a great way to donate money to a cloud provider.

## Discovery

- [XML sitemap](https://bobbysmart.dev/sitemap.xml)
- [Markdown sitemap](https://bobbysmart.dev/sitemap.md)
- [RSS feed](https://bobbysmart.dev/rss.xml)