Talking to agents in shorthand

I discovered that I’m (unsurprisingly) a very predictable person over longer periods of time.

So I pretend I don’t know what to do next and ask the agent every time. It updates the plan, and I mostly make small adjustments along the way.

Of course, sometimes I have to stop and write a lot of profanity. But most of the time it works surprisingly well and even suggests ideas I wouldn’t have arrived at as quickly myself.

The funny part is that models like GPT-5.5 are already good enough at understanding my habits that I can communicate in increasingly caveman-like language. I have prompt-template shortcuts for many common interactions, and I keep making them shorter and more cryptic. These days I often type just a few letters and let the rest unfold from there.

I’m gradually formalizing the process and will probably write about it soon.