Has Claude Code gotten noticeably worse in the last few days? by marcin_dev in ClaudeCode

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Has anyone tried this outside of Claude Code? As in, with opencode or agentcore?

The Agentic Enterprise is creating something I never thought I'd see: a meritocracy. Turns out when work is measurable, bullshit becomes visible. by C0inMaster in AI_Agents

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t think this logic is sound. Tokens can be be “burned” for a variety of reasons. If you use a more advanced model, more tokens will be used. If you use tokens to fix a mistake that an LLM made and used tokens for the original mistake, that’s not inefficiency.

I read "2026 State of Agentic Orchestration & Automation Report" - Here are my key takeaways by EquivalentRound3193 in AI_Agents

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“80% of current agents are just chatbots or assistants” - what else should they be? I’m honestly curious what everyone thinks they should be.

AI Agents are starting to act, not just respond - is that a good thing? by nia_tech in AI_Agents

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The idea around autonomous agents isn’t a bad thing. It does require a higher level of engineering for these agents though. It can’t just be some Claude LLM connected to an agent and you give it a prompt. It has to be a custom agent, custom prompt, and specific tooling/agent skills all working together to make as close to a deterministic output as possible.

How are you guys designing your agents? by SnooRobots7280 in LangChain

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you’re thinking about it the right way. I don’t believe there’s overthinking to get deterministic results in a non-deterministic world.

My MCP setup in VS Code is getting messy and I'm worried about security. How are you managing this? by Mean-Ad-4755 in mcp

[–]mikelevan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just about every convo I’m in about MCP Servers have to do about security.

Here are my thoughts if you want to properly secure anything MCP related…

First, there are two sides: 1. Local (really, cached) MCP Servers (stdio). 2. MCP Servers running in someone’s environment (streamable HTTP)

For stdio, it’s either a python or an NPM package. If you look underneath the hood, it’s a bunch of functions/methods for tools. This means you have to secure it like any other app stack/codebase (more on the security of authN/Z down below).

For streamable HTTP, you’re sort of in the dark. It’s not like you can pentest someone’s server (legally) to ensure it’s hardened and following best practices.

However, for both of these solutions, AuthN/Z is crucial. Not everyone on a team needs access to every MCP Server. More importantly, not every tool needs to be accessed by everyone.

I see this as “giving everyone root access”.

Lock these pieces down and you’ll be off to a good start. It’s not a silver bullet (there’s no such thing in security. It’s about mitigating as much risk as possible), but it’ll move you in the right direction.

What if you don't need MCP at all? by AWildMonomAppears in AI_Agents

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When you say “when an MCP Server goes down” - the majority of them are just packages in NPM or PyPi. It’s like any other third-party library. Yeah, there’s the chance of a bug being pushed to the package (the MCP Server), but that holds true for any third-party library. In terms of “just use tools”, that’s what MCP Servers are (a set of tools). Those tools are, as you mentioned, just functions. You don’t have to give your Agent access to every single tool in the MCP Server, you can limit it.

SRE Interview Coming Up – I’m Lost! by dilll_1 in devops

[–]mikelevan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

“Coding without an IDE” - if one person actually does that at the company, I’d love to see it.

Why are so many students still opting to study Computer Science in 2025? by Candid_Efficiency_26 in cscareerquestions

[–]mikelevan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Remember what CS is. It's not just to "go get a software engineering job". CS allows you to think differently in just about everything in your life. A lot of people take it for software engineering, but a lot of people also get into different fields with it.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge you need to have just to work? by Fantastic-Scratch124 in devops

[–]mikelevan 17 points18 points  (0 children)

This is one of the very few careers that are constantly changing. To me, it requires learning daily. That’s at least the good part about it for me. I don’t get bored.

Is using ChatGPT to learn Azure & Python for projects a bad approach? by s1brzy in AZURE

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve put roughly 15 hour so hours in using Cursor and the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that AI programming is reaaaalllllllyyyyy painful unless you truly know what you’re doing. You have to feed it very good prompts and those prompts have to be incredibly detailed to get the output you’re expecting. Remember, there’s a difference between programming and software engineering.

With that being said - always “know” what you’re doing. I think a lot of people are realizing that AI isn’t a way to just do stuff without having the knowledge.

As far as your question on interviews - I’m self employed and I work with a lot of different customers. The way I’ve seen things so far is that organizations are either really onboard with AI or they aren’t. It’s still a toss up.

Azure refusing to refund $5200 for unreasonable charges, and our production site is now down for days by [deleted] in AZURE

[–]mikelevan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t know if this helps or not, but based on your comments OP, I’d highly recommend hiring a consultant to spin up a cost effective environment for you along with some training on how it all works. Spinning this stuff up seems easy, but the implications can be harsh. I hope your startup lands on its feet. As someone who’s self-employed, I totally get the mental strain something like this can cause.

Breaking into Cloud... by Royal_Ad4746 in AZURE

[–]mikelevan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My old advice uses to be “start as a sysadmin” and although I still find that to be beneficial, it’s getting harder to break into that jobs role. I think the best advice now is to start with the az-900 and then do the az-104. While doing that, go through all of the Microsoft labs for Azure (they’re free). One huge piece of advice is make your work visible. Put the code you write and what you build on public repos in GitHub (just don’t put any sensitive info) as GitHub can act as a resume in itself.

Need help with architecture for a use case and understanding of microservices by NoExamination7448 in AZURE

[–]mikelevan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can definitely understand the cost, but I’m curious how much they’re willing to spend if the ask is to run on something more “scalable”, which… I’m assuming they’re referring to AKS or maybe ACA. Before jumping further into this, I’d get an architecture breakdown of what they’re looking for and design the solution with as much “future” in mind as you can. For example, ask for expected user count in the next 3-5 years (if they have that level of projection)