# Don’t make them guess

link · 2026-07-02

> I think that’s a great summary of the things we’ve done to make agents more productive in our codebase: don’t make them guess.

I’ve been trying to articulate to friends and colleagues why I never seem to have my agent screw up that much and it boils down to this: not letting them guess. Whether it’s via skills or instructions, but also tooling[^1] and scripts, having everything in front of your agent decreases its chances of doing things wrong.

Of course it’s hard work to keep all of this up to date, but I find it way more rewarding than running a random `npx skills add`[^2] and crossing finger that it will solve all my problems.

[^1]: e.g. plugins for [your favorite linter](https://github.com/aliou/biome-plugins) that explain why something is prohibited.

[^2]: No shade!

[via Thorsten Ball](https://x.com/thorstenball/status/2072726252566270021?s=46&utm_source=aliou.me&utm_medium=markdown)