TL;DR
- Start with What Actually Belongs in My AI Dev Stack in 2026 - the canonical stack essay
- Then An AI Tooling Learning Path - phased skill-building order
- Deep dives below cover comparisons and spec-driven workflows; single-tool posts are briefs, not entry points
Canonical essays
- What Actually Belongs in My AI Dev Stack in 2026
- An AI Tooling Learning Path: Logical Phases for 2026
- Context Engineering - the production skill behind reliable coding agents
- Spec-Driven Development - when the brief becomes the product
Deep dives
- Claude Code vs Cursor: A 6-Month Comparison
- GitHub Spec Kit and Spec-Driven Development
- GitHub Spec Kit in 2026: SDD Goes Mainstream
- My AI-Augmented Design Workflow
- When to Fine-Tune vs When to RAG
Briefs (moment-in-time)
These are useful snapshots, not the starting point:
Related
- Trust series - reliability and evaluation for agents you ship
- Personal AI Development Stack - my live tooling inventory
Related Reading
- Expertise and Work in the Age of AI - how these tools reshape what expertise means and which skills remain scarce
- Agent-First Architecture: The Engineer as Curator - the role shift as agents handle more execution
- AI Economics and Hardware: A Reading Path - cost and deployment decisions behind every stack choice
- Home Agent Stack: From Mac Studio to Secured MCP Tools - building the local agent infrastructure these coding tools run on