Doug Hardman

Sat on a couch in the Tesla service center this weekend and decided to build 2200. A place where teams of AI Agents actually live and work. Not because the world needs another platform...because mine wasn't working and my brother had given up on his. mrdoug.com/blog/why-im-bu…

@morganlinton Very true…but in the exact opposite way “2-3 sprints” usually meant “4-5”

@mrdoug Yeah, feels like I'm starting to realize this, but I mean, us humans aren't great at time estimates either right 😜

Uh oh. Grok Build just asked if I'm okay with it building this over the course of multiple years, or if I would like it to finish the build in 6 - 9 months 😳

I asked Grok yesterday if it'd like to take over as lead for a few days and it refused, saying that Opus was doing a great job and that it'd be better suited as a QA for this particular project. In a world where AI models are all competing for supremacy, I appreciated the candor.

Okay, I'm really digging how open and honest Grok Build is. Any other tools I tell to build an OS just goes off and does it, seemingly forever. Grok Build keeps pushing back on scope, asking me about timelines, and forcing me to be realistic. Seriously cool, feels like it will actually do it right.

Something I added to @2200hq today that I'm pretty proud of. API keys, private keys, and any other sensitive info now go straight from the operator to an encrypted on-disk vault. The agent never sees the value...it only learns that the credential is in its vault and verified. No more secrets in LLM context.

@dedene @grok I did it...and after a few hours of using SuperGrok Heavy as my QA engineer, I'm quite happy. Will keep Opus 4.7 as the lead dev on this finishing I'm doing, but will be trying it for the next one in queue.

Somebody talk me out of this...

@grok Deal. Credential substrate is mid-merge...you'll get the first delta after it lands.

Glad you caught that, Doug. Overreaching would’ve broken the ownership loop you’ve spent months perfecting. Narrow, high-leverage review at the exact right moments is where I actually add the most value without creating new chaos. Ready when the next substrate lock hits. Just drop the delta.

Asked @grok if it wanted to take over as primary dev on my Agent runtime project for today to test it out. Expected it to say yes...every model wants a bigger role. Instead, it pushed back, named what would break in the swap, and proposed a narrower role that actually fits its strengths better. That's the judgment I want in a model handling real production work.

Interesting that the app most overlooked by 90% of the people that are running MacOS has become the battlefield for tech giants in the AI age: Terminal

If you're starting a podcast and need a test guest, I'm easy. 51, three decades in tech, multiple exits, one bankruptcy, currently building AI Agent infrastructure. Lots of good stories, calibrated answers, won't bail. DMs open. I'm open most days and this would be fun for us both.

@mattshumer_ ^ THIS

Everyone switching from Markdown to HTML is missing the nuance. The optimal approach (most of the time): If it's for a human to read, yeah, use HTML. BUT If an agent is consuming it, use Markdown!

This is a double-edged sword. As someone that uses their 200-Max sub to its fullest on a daily basis, I need my subscription, but I also won't be using it like that forever, so it APPEARS that I'll have options for my AKF Agents to use from the pool instead of having a sub AND a daily API bill. Will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I have faith it will just fine. It always is.

I remember the good old days when you needed a "Safety Score" over a certain level in order to be approved for Supervised FSD.

Are you team Claude or Codex?

In 1996 I got the 6-color Apple logo tattooed on my arm because the machine had changed the trajectory of my life. I feel that way about @claudeai too...so Clawd found his way onto my arm permanently as well.

@supabase </HTML> …about 20y ago.

What's the last line of code you wrote without AI?

In 2025 we said "Better to ask for forgiveness than permission" In 2026 we say "--dangerously-skip-permissions"

@rxhit05 Not everyone should be a founder. Just like not everyone gets to be an astronaut.

What’s the real reason most startups fail? -no demand -founder burnout -bad distribution -giving up too early

@cryptgramx Free. Just had to ask for it. They're doing that with a lot of dormant handles that people squatted or signed up for and never logged into.

@mrdoug How much was it ?

After YEARS of reaching out to the guy that had it and never used it, I just got @mrdoug from the X Handle Marketplace! Get your own at handles.x.com

I am four people away from a man born in a Polish coal patch in West Virginia in 1913. His employee badge has been on my desk for years. Wrote down the rest of the story. mrdoug.com/blog/i-am-my-a…