Links

A few things I've built, and the repos, podcasts, books and people I keep coming back to.

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chrisfildes
• GitHub: github.com/iamchrisfildes

Recent Personal Projects

An agent skill that makes an AI agent write technical text in Simplified Technical English (STE). STE is a controlled form of English. The goal of STE is that each reader gets the same meaning on the first read. View on GitHub

An agent skill that reviews context written for AI agents against the five CAFE(S) properties: clarity, actionability, fidelity, efficiency and security. View on GitHub

Some Repos I Really Like

• Addy Osmani's Agent Skills: production-grade engineering skills for AI coding agents, covering the whole delivery workflow from spec to ship.
• Matt Pocock's Skills: skills for real engineers, straight from Matt's own .agents directory.
• Tavily Skills: agent skills for web search, research, extraction and monitoring with Tavily.
• Vercel Skills: the open agent skills tool (npx skills) for finding and installing skills.

Podcasts I Listen To

• The Vergecast: The Verge's flagship tech podcast, with Nilay Patel and David Pierce.
• Decoder with Nilay Patel: interviews with the people shaping business and technology.
• The Pragmatic Engineer: Gergely Orosz on software engineering at Big Tech and startups.
• Machine Gods: Kevin Roose and Casey Newton on AI, from NPR.
• Crucible Moments: Sequoia's podcast about the turning points that shaped major companies.

Books I've Been Reading Recently

• AI Is the Easy Part by Bharat Sharma: a field guide for leaders rebuilding engineering around AI.
• AI-Augmented Domain-Driven Design by Alessandro Colla and Alberto Acerbis: design better domains using LLMs, structured prompts and multi-agent workflows.
• Software Engineering - The Soft Parts by Addy Osmani: the soft skills he learned from his first 10 years on Google Chrome. Free to download.
• System Design and Behavioral Intelligence by Shalini Goyal and Alok Sharan: system design and behavioural interview skills for senior engineering roles.
• The Effective Software Engineer by Addy Osmani: how engineers at every level can use AI, focus on high-value work and lead beyond their role.

The Classics I Still Dip Into

• The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt and David Thomas) → professional mindset
• Code Complete (Steve McConnell) → code quality
• Refactoring (Martin Fowler) → evolution of systems
• Domain-Driven Design (Eric Evans) → architecture
• The Mythical Man-Month (Fred Brooks) → people and projects

Some People I Follow

On LinkedIn.

• Addy Osmani: engineering leader at Anthropic and author of Agent Skills.
• Alok Sharan: agentic AI as an architecture problem: orchestration, tools, memory and guardrails.
• Anton Martyniuk: .NET development and architecture, from Anton DevTips.
• Brian Houck: developer experience researcher; co-author of the CAFE(S) framework.
• Charity Majors: co-founder of Honeycomb, on observability and engineering management.
• Eirini Kalliamvakou: researcher on developer experience and AI coding assistants; co-author of the CAFE(S) framework.
• Jimmy Bogard: originator of Vertical Slice Architecture and creator of AutoMapper and MediatR.
• Kent C. Dodds: web development educator behind Epic Web and Epic React.
• Liz Fong-Jones: observability and site reliability engineering, at Honeycomb.
• Margaret-Anne Storey: computer science professor at the University of Victoria and co-creator of the SPACE framework; co-author of the CAFE(S) framework.
• Matt Pocock: TypeScript educator (Total TypeScript), sharing his agent skills for real engineers.
• Max Kanat-Alexander: developer experience leader and author of Code Simplicity; co-author of the CAFE(S) framework.
• Milan Jovanović: practical .NET and software architecture tips.
• Dr Milan Milanović: software engineering, architecture and leadership, from Tech World With Milan.
• Nicole Forsgren: co-author of Accelerate and co-creator of the DORA and SPACE frameworks; co-author of the CAFE(S) framework.
• Paul Boag: UX consultant focused on customer experience and conversion.
• Shalini Goyal: system design and software engineering insights.
• Vitaly Friedman: founder of Smashing Magazine, sharing practical UX insights.

Got any suggestions? Drop me a message and let me know.