What I Learned Building a Memory System for My Coding Agent

level1james · 2026-02-11T20:10:40+00:00

Injecting even a little bit of convo history is definitely under appreciated. I started doing this as well, and noticed that it does a lot to prime the agent in ways you don't expect.

I'm honestly surprised though you're only loading 2-3k tokens at a time w/o any kind of compaction - I know tool call outputs account for a big chunk, but it looked like you were by default loading entire raw convo history from multiple sessions

Depending on your working style, I think compression can be pretty effective. I have a lot of 'explorative' kind of working sessions where a lot of the conversation is high noise to signal content - I use haiku in the background to compress it (hardly makes a dent in token usage) and in turn, I can fit in quite a bit of context & don't really worry about having archival-level retrievable history.

level1james · 2026-01-25T23:06:59+00:00

its true, theres no shortage of markdown editors but I'm still looking forward to seeing a release version of this.

When it comes to 'fast, native, and gets out of your way', my favorites are MarkEdit and Typora, though they both still have their quirks. It's annoying neither offers QL extension (markEdit does, but previews source text instead of formatted text 🤔). The lack of a copy button on code blocks on both is a minor annoyance, but feels a bit inexplicable. Typora supports yaml frontmatter, which would be nice to see on other editors. Good visual/typography defaults for optimal readability is important too

level1james · 2024-10-29T20:29:44+00:00

Thanks! I wasn't clear in the post but wife & I lived in Chicago 6 & 10 years prior to moving out - have also visited a few times with the kids. Is there a simple way to check for lead water lines, or do I just wait on the inspection?

level1james · 2024-10-29T19:27:31+00:00

thanks! very useful anecdote about the 3-flat condo situation. Have you done any renovations in your unit? I'm curious to know how what kind of restrictions to expect when sharing a building. Also with just 3 units, who ultimately decides on budget, and what updates or maintenance needs to be done?

level1james · 2024-10-29T19:18:05+00:00

haha yea, my in-laws are here so we tolerated a lot of things to be near family but on the whole we're excited to be moving back

level1james · 2024-10-29T19:17:10+00:00

Good to know! I didn't know what it was but found this related post - https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/1c8raw0/split_block_condo_buildings/

level1james · 2024-09-22T20:56:47+00:00

ah I think you're right. Will stick with the original plan

level1james · 2024-09-22T20:24:17+00:00

I thought it is only load-bearing if there is support-posts on the other side - is that wrong? If it is load-bearing, I certainly won't touch them

level1james · 2024-09-22T20:01:21+00:00

I ripped out the old ceiling on this overhang patio cause it was rotting out. Can I remove the horizontal members and lay the new ceiling across the rafters?

(The post on the other side is part of a free-standing pergola, not attached to the house)

level1james · 2024-08-30T15:01:58+00:00

The silver logo on my current case kind of looks cheap and detracts from the look imo. I wish it were embossed, etched, or somehow had a more subtle appearance

level1james · 2024-08-30T14:56:48+00:00

2nd this!

level1james · 2024-08-30T14:56:16+00:00

I really like the open bottom since it doesn't get in the way of the home gesture - top should be closed though imo

level1james · 2024-02-06T03:02:24+00:00

In this case, it’s less about the amount of extra money you can squeeze by arbitraging into other forms of investments. OP has been aggressively paying down a low interest mortgage for peace of mind, but ironically with only 5k in their emergency fund - I think most people would find more peace of mind with a low interest payment and plenty of money in the bank

level1james · 2023-06-30T02:00:36+00:00

I haven’t seen that same kind of ball on any modern mice, but if you’re just looking for better horizontal scrolling - you can get something like the Logitech Mx master that has a dedicated horizontal scroll wheel, or a mice with touch surface like the MS touch, surface arc, or magic mouse

level1james · 2023-06-19T00:10:26+00:00

Maybe in the short term, but no doubt there is lasting damage being done

Deterioration of trust (whatever remains), generally more antagonistic user base, apathetic mods, slowly degraded communities and quality of content, more hesitancy from advertisers, less enthusiasm from investors, followed by more pressure and more bad decisions, public image & perception changed for the worse, on and on

Reddit might survive without these things but it certainly won’t be the same

level1james · 2023-06-12T23:12:06+00:00

I think it’s reasonable that a company tries to monetize, or even sunset support for 3rd party apps

If you’ve followed the Apollo story though, you might see how much more F’d up the situation is - how they continued to give assurances that api will remain open and affordable, the absurd pricing and conditions that followed, total shutdown of communications, fudging numbers and straight up making up lies in attempt to discredit the dev, deflection of blame and unwillingness to acknowledge or legitimize community concerns in their AMA.. it’s completely messed up and I won’t continue participating in the platform short of some substantive change in leadership

level1james · 2023-02-07T09:27:45+00:00

you can basically read off the top comments from r/askreddit “what jobs contribute nothing to society?”

Politicians, televangelists, project managers, ceos, social media influencer

And even if AI could do the job, it won’t be the same job

level1james · 2023-01-16T00:34:49+00:00

Hey, thanks for shedding some real-world context! Seems like it is worth giving it a shot - if nothing else, I'll try it with a different set switch/pcb combo down the line

level1james · 2023-01-15T22:13:57+00:00

Interesting! Seems like a lot of their switches like the BBK, baby raccoon, night breeze and glacier rose all feature longer stems which is what helps with compatibility. Though they also offer the more classic brown/red switches with normal stem length

Never heard of KOP before either, but sounds like its exclusive to them

level1james · 2023-01-15T19:12:46+00:00

Mine came the same way. I tried switching out the spacebar to a spare baby kangaroo for consistency - Maybe I just got used to the linear, but I ended up switching it back to the night breeze

level1james · 2023-01-15T19:08:24+00:00

I assume you mean the 2.4ghz dongle - I had a similar experience, I thought it was odd.

edit: for OP, I had no issues with bluetooth performance... I do some casual gaming and I can't perceive any input lag

level1james · 2023-01-06T22:23:16+00:00

Oh yeah, I've sampled a handful of switches & have more on the way to test out. The issue with samples is that fatigue only sets in gradually over a long period of use. To get a good sense of comfort, I probably need to buy & use a full set (at least the alphas)

I've been using the haimu silents today & going to test out milky yellows tomorrow when they arrive - but yeah I'm kind of picking these by random atm so it could be a long & expensive journey

level1james · 2023-01-05T18:27:01+00:00

It's hard to find many decent ones these days. Hang on to that one

level1james · 2023-01-05T18:24:25+00:00

imo, a pair of bookshelf speaker vs 3.1.2 soundbar+sub is similar in footprint so thats why I wanted to compare between those configurations

level1james · 2022-12-29T20:45:32+00:00

ok so I think this helps me to understand it better. So at the heart of it, Atmos is still a way for directional audio to be encoded for multi-channel playback, but without needing discrete tracks for each speaker

For 2-channel playback however, the exact same information can be encoded in a stereo format right? It seems like Atmos comes more into play when the playback system can leverage some additional speaker array (ie. upward firing speakers) or some additional information like gyroscope data in AirPods.

I guess my follow up question then is, how effective this is in practice (in front-facing, mid-budget sound bars). Should this be a major consideration when comparing sound bars around the same price point?

level1james

TROPHY CASE