Alastair McClelland
Father, Husband and Software Engineer.
Recent Posts
All posts →A Skill Is a Directory, Not a File
2026-03-23 — Most skills I see treat a skill as a single markdown file. But that's just the surface. The real power comes from how skills are designed to load only what's needed, when it's needed.
Agent Scopes in Practice
2026-03-16 — A follow-up to my post on agent scopes — what happened when I turned the idea into a working CLI tool that agents can actually use.
Agent Scopes - Keeping AI Solutions Right-Sized
2026-03-09 — Define boundaries and constraints for AI agents to prevent scope creep and architectural drift while maintaining autonomy and efficiency.
An Alternative to MCP: Python CLI-Based Agent Skills
2026-03-02 — Building custom Python CLI tools with Click and uvx as a more stable alternative to MCP servers for AI agent tooling.
From Infrastructure as Code to Software as Specs
2026-02-23 — As AI-generated code becomes cheap and regenerable, specifications and contracts become the assets worth protecting, not implementation details.
Making AI Development a Team Sport
2026-02-09 — AI development is currently a solo activity, but needs workflows where multiple people can see, contribute to, and learn from agent interactions.
Every idea can now be explored
2026-02-02 — AI coding agents have collapsed the validation cycle from weeks to hours, making it feasible to explore every idea and filter efficiently.