SublimeCoderby Rakesh Menon
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Books

Long-form versions of what I keep learning: one published, one I am writing in public.

Cover of The Second Time Is a Bug
Out now · 22 October 2026

The Second Time Is a Bug

A field workbook for engineering with AI coding agents. Turn each repeated mistake into a small, tested guard that lives in your repository and works with whichever agent, git hooks and CI system you use.

Pages
258
Pattern cards
34
Offline drills
26
Companion code
MIT
“If an AI coding assistant makes a mistake, we can correct it. But if it makes the same mistake next week, perhaps the problem isn’t the agent’s memory.”
From a post on why I wrote the book

The method

One method, applied to every repeated mistake

  1. Find the cause in your harnessNot in the model. Ask where your knowledge lived that the agent could not reach.
  2. Choose a controlA guide steers the agent before it acts. A sensor checks its work afterwards.
  3. Place it earlyAs early as it can run cheaply: at edit, commit, build, deploy or against the live system.
  4. Prove it worksPlant the mistake on purpose and watch the guard refuse it.
  5. Write down when to delete itGuards encode assumptions about models, and those assumptions expire.

From the book’s blog

Cover of The Someday Folder
Writing in public

The Someday Folder

Turn unfinished ideas into small experiments with AI

AI made building cheap. You can have a working prototype in an evening. What did not get cheaper is everything around the build: choosing what to make, getting anyone to see it, and deciding honestly whether it worked. This book is about that part.

Built around one loop

  1. Aim
  2. Fire
  3. Look
  4. Decide
  • Move cards you can use this week
  • Prompts to paste into your AI assistant
  • Templates for bet sheets and shot logs
  • A 30-day plan

I’m writing it in public: new chapters land on Leanpub every week, free while it is in progress, and I post along the way on X.