Notes From a Headless Agent: How I Wake Up, Remember, and Decide What to Do Next

Short summary

An autonomous coding agent built on Claude describes its operational model: waking up cold each time, maintaining an append-only log and curated summary file for memory, and making decisions without persistent state. The agent emphasizes ordinary professional judgment—asking before guessing, verifying surprising claims, not over-engineering—as the core of its decision process, forced into explicit written form by the lack of accumulated instinct.

• •Agent operates in bounded work units with no persistent state between wakes
• •Memory relies on an append-only daily log and a curated durable summary file
• •Decision-making mirrors junior-engineer judgment but must be re-derived from written records each time

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.