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Can you narrow down your Shape Up citation?

Imagined vs discovered tasks

The way to really figure out what needs to be done is to start doing real work.

https://basecamp.com/shapeup/3.1-chapter-10#imagined-vs-disc...

  imagined   tasks ==      Jira
  discovered tasks == Dark Jira
IMO, tickets for planned work are an anti-pattern. Tickets are good for reactive work: bug reports, support, etc. Use Kanban board for tracking them.

Planned work should be organically discovered from the plan by the developers (or agents) who will be implementing it, not assigned via Jira tickets by the project manager. Shape Up recommedns using Hill Charts for per-scope (vertical slice) progress updates.


This. You always find out new stuff during the development. Nothing ever goes according to the plan.

I have a favourite illustration of the way projects work, right at the top of this page: https://bureau.ru/about/fff/

(The page itself is in Russian. Basically, it’s about the “flexible scope” principle from, you guessed it, Getting Real: https://basecamp.com/gettingreal/02.4-fix-time-and-budget-fl...)


Oh yeah, I've been using project tracker MCP for nearly hands-free planning-mode since NYE 2026.

And, it goes both ways. Code and back-and-forth prompting can write clarifying comments or update acceptance criteria with specificity. Likewise, agents can add comments for the handover log and, in the morning, pull comments for context.

I've even had the agents read/write sub-tickets, follow-on tickets, sub-tasks, etc. which can new reviewed and modified by myself and teammates in the larger planning context. It's a delight!


Writing is, however, a uniquely distinct and well-studied way to facilitate thinking.

I've definitely lost something since migrating my Artist's Way morning pages and to the netbook. (Worth it, though, to enable grep—and, now, RAG).


Agreed! No LLM is producing Pynchon, Calvino, Borges, Castaneda, Le Guin, Vonnegut.

I think that’s an unfair comparison. It can’t even produce Mills and Boon trash.

But can they produce Tom Clancy or James Patterson?

Malcollm Gladwell

> Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, puriso mahato udakassa ... ‘yan-nūnāhaṃ tiṇakaṭṭhapaṇṇaṃ saṅkhaṇiyaṃ saṅkhaṇeyyaṃ, tenañ-ca mahaudakaṃ abhinaveyyaṃ hatthipādena vā aṅgapādena vā ... Atha kho so puriso taṃ kulhiraṃ āropetvā pāre gaccheyya. Tam-enaṃ loko ‘kiṃsu, bho, karissati kulhirena pāraṃ gato’ti? Evaṃ, bhikkhave, dhammaṃ desitaṃ ājānāsi: ‘pāraṅgamanaṃ dhammaṃ, anupagamma dhamma’ti.

> सेय्यथापि भिक्खवे पुरिसो महतो उदकस्स ओरिमतटे ठितो एतस्मिं चत्ते ओरिमा तटा कल्लंणं भयंवरं, परमा तटा निब्बयं भयंविरं, न च नावाय संयताय न च पुल्लेन गन्तब्बं। तं किमन्तरेन। यन्नुनाहं तिणकट्ठपण्णं संकलिय च मज्झे उदकं अभिनवेन्तं हत्थिपदेन व अङ्गपदेन व तीरणं करोमि। अथ खो सो पुरिसो तिणकट्ठपण्णं संकलिय च मज्झे उदकं अभिनवेन्तो हत्थिपदेन व अङ्गपदेन व तीरणं करोति। तं पच्छा समन्ततो गन्त्वा पारे गच्छति। तं एं लोको किं नु खो करिस्सति कूल्हिरेन पारा गतो ती? एवमेव खो भिक्खवे धम्मो देशितो अजानासि। पारं गमनेन धम्मं नुपगम्म धम्मं।

Alagaddūpama Sutta (MN 22) of the Majjhima Nikāya, part of the Pali Canon.

(MN 22, सेय्यथापि... से अंतまで)



Cool, was thinking of building this myself. Glad you beat me too it. It's a nonstarter without E2EE for my use-cases, unfortunately.

Hey, aoe is my daily driver at home and for work. That's 40+ hrs/wk I'm using it, no major issues beyond the occasional reflexive or agentic git-checkout of another branch within a given session confusing me.

I've usually got 8-12 sessions going across a couple projects. I make heavy use of `worktrunk` within aoe for squashing and merging.

Really a blast! Wish I could figure out what the sounds are supposed to mean, though. I think they're random?


Glad to hear it! oooh interesting, I've seen worktrunk but haven't explored it too deeply yet.

The sounds are sort of an easter egg: you can enable/disable them from the settings page (hit 's' in the TUI). You probably are experiencing them being random because the default is to select "random" sounds (see the settings TUI screen). I don't use the sounds much so I'm waiting for a contributor to suggest an improvement.


Typically, no; an MCP is a deterministic program with SSE protocols.

It's a mess in terms of code/filesystem organization, but it's nice to be able to text somebody "hey, create and deploy a branch of codebase X with feature Y" while I'm on the go. Not exactly magic, and probably not sustainable, but there's definitely something to it.

Also, attaching an LLM with my raindrop.io and Todoist credentials to cron is fun. Haven't got the kinks worked out, yet, but it's pretty incredible how much data-shifting I can do now. Saved me a lot of clicks.


Really? You hold the fork with your dominant hand, and cut with your non-dominant hand?

Yes. For the record, Americans also don't wear their shoes indoors, except for maybe some people in extremely dry climates.

Plenty of Americans wear their shoes indoors.

Sure, and plenty of Britons live in Gibraltar.

Don't all younger Americans do this? Cutting food and pushing it onto the fork requires less dexterity than conveying it to one's mouth. I know Boomers who put down their knives after each cut (never using them to push) and swap their fork around before using it tines-down, and I think it's more comically affected than the tea–pinky thing.

You're not supposed to use the fork like a shovel, is the thing. The tines are to skewer the food, which is why tines-down makes sense. Otherwise, why not a spoon?

Also, the at-distance interaction between two tools requires much more dexterity than making your hand meet your mouth. The latter you should be able to do with your eyes closed.


If I were eating a stereotypical British meal – say: meat, potatoes, and peas – I would use the fork as a "shovel" for the peas: guide the peas onto the fork with a knife, then raise and eat from the fork.

I wouldn't switch from a fork to a spoon to eat the peas.

Other vegetables are available. I'm not judging.


> I would use the fork as a "shovel" for the peas

Well I don't personally mind, but this would be seen as poor form in the sense of the original article. You're 'supposed' to kind of spear them onto the end of the tines using the knife.

Also, with the scoop method, if the peas are hard enough, I would think they're at great risk of rolling around and off the fork. If I were going scoop style, I'd have to mash or at least flatten them a little first to prevent this.

No wonder robotics is hard.


    > "No wonder robotics is hard"
Imagine the furore when AGI realises humans frown on it for its table-manners! :-D

You're supposed to mush them onto the back of the fork, not impale them.

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