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AI SDLC

- 1 min read - 200 words
Brett Dargan
Brett Dargan
Principal Solutions Architect (AWS) | Tech Co-Founder | Product Strategy & Business Value

Another great Beyond Coding interview AWS Veteran: The New Software Development Life Cycle - YouTube.

The most practical takeaway is Lessa’s model cost discipline. After a single refactor cost 200 million tokens because Opus was “overthinking” every line, he split the workflow into three tiers:

Tier 1 — SOTA models (Opus, Sonnet): planning, spec writing, architecture decisions only Tier 2 — Mid-tier models: 70–80% of implementation work Tier 3 — Cheap models: code review, linting, adversarial checks

Product loop

  1. discovery Human
  2. whiteboard Human
  3. /roadmap Human+AI
  4. /roadmap —sync
  5. /new-work Human+AI
    • dev loop

Dev loop (Heitor Lessa)

  1. /opsx:explore - human+agent sota
  2. /opsx:plan - human+agent sota
  3. /opsx:apply - agent
  4. refinement - human+agent
  5. merge-check - agent+gate
  6. review & merge - human
  7. /retro - human. workflow loop

Kanata FTW!

- 2 min read - 400 words
Brett Dargan
Brett Dargan
Principal Solutions Architect (AWS) | Tech Co-Founder | Product Strategy & Business Value

Problem: Alt. keyboard layout issue differences between my exp. and laptop internal keeb.

I’m building my new custom low-profile 38-key (3x6) -2 +3 thumbs - but I need to solve a problem I’ll hit.

My Piantor is configured with Vial / QMK with

  • Colemak-DH
  • Home row mods
  • symbol layers
  • combo keys

The mac internal keyboard has no layers and minimal special functions.

  • Colemak-DH ANSI installed as input source
  • CapsLock as LeftCtrl per ModifierKeys
  • HyperKey allows Super ROpt / RMet
  • Aerospace keyboard shortcuts dont work when i switch, it needs stable input source.

The workaround so far: switch input source to Colemak-DH when on laptop with internal keyboard and to Australia when using the Piantor split keeb. Lots of down-sides:

  • no layers or combos on mac internal keyboard
  • Aerospace shortcuts I had to use the qwerty location always.

Action / Research

I’ve researched most of this before, I’ve tried Karabiner-Elements but I didn’t want the complexity of the kernal extension. I’d come across kanata, saw it needed that as a dependency and wrote it off.

A chance Gemini / Google AI mode question put me onto the path that let me rediscover kanata and how it can depend on the karabiner device-kit architecture.

Result

The result is I have a working base kanata configuration with qwerty (for others/troubleshooting) and colemak-dh. Keeps my Aerospace shortcuts same for either layout. I’ll continue to add the additional layers and combo keys I have from vial.

This enables me to try Sturdy / Magic Sturdy regularly till proficient - when working

It’s not 100% smooth, I’ll keep testing out and find any other issues. E.g My Arc shortcuts aren’t working.

Learnings

Continual probing of AI helps us explore the problem space and solution space quickly to eliminate sub-par paths and save time. I re-discovered a major problem worth solving (the issue was back of mind) it can help find the path to follow before commiting much time.