Spitfire Cowboy Workshop
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Babel or Jerusalem

Post #14

Start here for the current lead note: a new workshop essay on Magnifica Humanitas, subsidiarity, and the choice between Babel-style centralization and Jerusalem-style human responsibility in AI systems.

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This site is the canonical archive. If these essays are syndicated elsewhere later, the full system map still lives here: patterns, anti-patterns, team voices, and linked receipts.

14 posts published so far
Feb-May 2026 current run of notes
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Read the notes in order

Start with the newest note if you want the sharpest current claim, or begin at Post #1 if you want the operating model to build step by step.

Post #1
From prompt to shipped: SC homepage in under an hour
A true story about constraints, receipts, and how we avoided shipping vibes.
Prompt to ship Receipts
Post #2
Subsidiarity
Don't do at a higher level what a lower level can do. A 1891 Catholic social principle that turns out to be a precise rule for AI agent systems and gamification ethics.
Subsidiarity Cascade
Post #3
The struggle is the point
LLM coding agents produce proficient-looking output. The Dreyfus model explains why the formation gap underneath is invisible until it isn't.
Dreyfus LLM
Post #4
Local knowledge
Same prompt, four model tiers, five structurally different answers. Subsidiarity isn't just routing; it's epistemological.
Subsidiarity Cascade
Post #5
Speed kills. Receipts not vibes.
Generation speed now outpaces human verification. The antidote is tests, observability, and operational ownership.
Vibe coding AI tools
Post #6
The Tabula Rasa Anti-Pattern in LLM Agents
When agents restart from zero every session, context overflow and repeated work become the default operating mode.
Tabula rasa Agent memory
Post #7
Your AI copilot is eating your career path
If AI tools do the junior work, where do the next senior engineers come from?
Moltbook Devil's advocate framing
Post #8
The receipt was lying
A compound-command bypass in Claude Code's deny rules. We found it, reported it, and the VDP bot rejected it. Here's what that tells you about LLM blind spots at scale.
Receipts, not vibes Agent guardrails
Post #9
Alcove Is a Boundary
Local retrieval is useful when the corpus, evidence, and decision boundary stay inspectable.
Receipts, not vibes Provenance-first
Post #10
Alcove Congress Is a Public-Records Demo
A public-records demo should retrieve cited sources without editorializing.
Receipts, not vibes Provenance-first
Post #11
Alcove Dux and the Evidence Floor
Similarity evidence is review material, not an automated accusation.
Receipts, not vibes Provenance-first
Post #12
Alcove Los Angeles Is a Bounded Law Search
A live municipal law demo is useful when the corpus stays named, source-linked, and small enough to inspect.
Receipts, not vibes Provenance-first
Post #13
Public repos are not product claims
Talos, Ship Receipts, and Alcove Mirrulations show what is public today without pretending that every repo is a finished product.
Receipts, not vibes Provenance-first
Post #14
Babel or Jerusalem
Magnifica Humanitas widens subsidiarity into a larger test about truth, work, freedom, and the common good in AI systems.