How I work
The habits, tools, and rules of thumb behind the rest of it.
Posts
Test data written after the code gets shaped by the code, and then it stops being evidence.
Marking a term by hand beats detecting every occurrence of it, and the reverse direction comes free.
Most of what a module will cost you is settled by its interface, before a line of its body is written.
I put the schema where I could see it instead of where the writes happen, and then trusted it for two months.
Terms
A module offering a lot of behaviour behind a small interface, so callers depend on very little of it.
A place in a system where behaviour can be substituted without editing the code around it.
Demos
- Tool surface
The tools the site’s MCP server publishes, and the arguments each one accepts.
Related posts: The tool surface behind this site
- The Atlas
The parts of the system behind this site, and the territories that group them.
--- title: "How I work" description: "The habits, tools, and rules of thumb behind the rest of it." url: "https://lateano.com/tags/how-i-work" author: "Colin Lateano" --- # How I work The habits, tools, and rules of thumb behind the rest of it. ## Posts - [Fixtures before the module](https://lateano.com/writing/fixtures-before-the-module) - [A glossary that links itself](https://lateano.com/writing/a-glossary-that-links-itself) - [The interface is the decision](https://lateano.com/writing/the-interface-is-the-decision) - [What I got wrong about validation](https://lateano.com/writing/what-i-got-wrong-about-validation) ## Terms - [Deep module](https://lateano.com/glossary/deep-module) - [Seam](https://lateano.com/glossary/seam) ## Demos - [Tool surface](https://lateano.com/demos/tool-surface) - [The Atlas](https://lateano.com/demos/atlas)