Shipping with Agents Means Choosing Your Grit Level

Sure you can polish, and polish and polish some more. But deciding when to hone the thing and move on because it's sharp enough to do the job is a trick.

Is this a 100 grit project with a few big features that needs to do a single task reliably? Think: Ax.

Is this a 300 grit job where the tasks require a little finesse and have a lot of edge cases? Think: Pocket Knife.

Is this a 1000 grit job where there is a lot of detail work that matters to the customer? Think: Kitchen knife.

It's probably not a 3000 grit job requiring a mirror finish. This isn't a knife sharpening contest, it's an AI slop app.

Remember, the higher the grit level, the more detail work is required. It's time and tokens, baby.

Shipping really means deciding when to jump ship on the AI find-fix-deploy loop. Can you think of more features? Sure. But maybe wait until somebody asks for them or you'll end up with something too big to maintain a sharp edge on.