I'm In On Agents
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It's the start of 2026 and agents are getting a lot better than they were. I'm using opencode at home, free mode with Zen and big pickle. At work I have...

Date: January 11, 2026

It’s the start of 2026 and agents are getting a lot better than they were. I’m using opencode at home, free mode with Zen and big pickle. At work I have access to a wider variety of models including what seems to be the gold standard 3 from anthropic opus, sonnet, haiku.

NOTE
│ I’ve sat on this post for over a month, refactored it a few times, things feel like they are moving so fast that its hard to keep my feelings straight.

Things are changing
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Around Aug 2025 I wrote I'm Out On Agents </im-out-on-agents/>. I saw others in the space having such great success I gave it a solid shot, but found it to egregious edit more than I asked, make massive unneeded changes, and make more small bugs hidden in the details than was worth it.

This was just after the tipping point where not just hype bros were making the switch, but people I work with, people I trust and have made really good Software in their career. People like the creator of Flask Armin Ronacher. People who are really good at writing code and do not need it to do the work were finding themselves more efficient working with agents than making edits by hand.

Planning
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Currently as I see it there is no free lunch. Software engineering is still very much needed, but the work is switching. The models have been good for awhile, they don’t seem like they are getting leaps better with each release like they were for so long, no matter how much t3.gg hypes up the new models. The tools feel like what is really making the difference right now. The ability to take short human prompts figure out what context is needed, getting that context, and keeping it in the context window is getting better and better making agents useful for more things.

These improvements in tooling is making our job look different. Knowing syntax and how to write clean efficient DRY code is less and less of the job every day. Learning how to create detailed plans with the help of agents, editing them, knowing when they are good enough that you can be confident in an agents ability to execute on them. Knowing how to balance the context is becoming the job. Moving forward its likely that models can handle more context and this will look different, and change, but planning and context management is a key part of the job moving forward.

│ Context is king, good plans are paramount, syntax barely matter.

Issues
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