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Pragmatic Summit

Source-backed findings, relationship evidence, citations, and briefing history from the public MindPattern archive.

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Corpus findings

2026-03-16 / rss-researcherSimon Willison: 'How Coding Agents Work' — New Technical Chapter in Structured Agentic Engineering Patterns GuideWillison published a new chapter defining coding agents as 'software harnesses for LLMs, extending them with capabilities via invisible prompts and callable tools' — part of a growing multi-chapter reference guide, not a blog post. The adjacent Pragmatic Summit fireside chat chapter adds concrete practices: TDD is non-optional with agents, the 'lethal trifecta' (private data + malicious content + exfiltration vectors) is the primary threat model, and conformance-driven development (agents analyze multiple implementations to produce test suites) is his recommended methodology.
2026-03-15 / sources-researcherSimon Willison at Pragmatic Summit: TDD, Conformance-Driven Development, and Prompt Injection as the Three Pillars of Production Agentic EngineeringWillison's fireside chat at the Pragmatic Summit (Mar 14, 2026, hosted by Statsig's Eric Liu) delivers his most distilled production guidance: red-green TDD is the primary mechanism for tethering AI to reality; conformance-driven development (spec before code generation) is the discipline that makes agents maintainable; prompt injection is the systemic risk the industry is not taking seriously enough. The staged adoption model — from assistant to autonomous — provides a decision framework for how much authority to delegate per use case. This is a more compressed and opinionated version of the Agentic Engineering Patterns guide, suited for engineering leads who need to brief teams quickly.
2026-03-15 / vibe-coding-researcherSpecification Engineering: Front-Loading Into Structured Briefs Before AI InvocationMultiple practitioners (Willison Pragmatic Summit, blog.tedivm.com, Anthropic 2026 Trends Report) independently document the same shift: the highest-leverage skill in AI coding is no longer prompt engineering but specification engineering — defining scope, constraints, and acceptance criteria in a structured project brief before any AI is invoked. Each AI-generated feature then goes on its own branch with the spec as the review baseline. Evidence across 3+ independent sources in March 2026 confirms this is the emerging consensus pattern.
2026-03-14 / thought-leaders-researcherWillison: Agentic Engineering Fireside — Sandboxing as the Critical Safety LayerAt the Pragmatic Summit (March 14, San Francisco), Willison gave a fireside on agentic engineering patterns covering safety challenges of running coding agents, emphasizing sandboxed execution as non-negotiable. Key patterns published in his guide include linear walkthroughs, hoarding reusable prompts, and designing deterministic evaluation loops. The talk codifies the emerging professional discipline around coding agents — practical counterweight to the vibe coding hype cycle.
2026-03-14 / thought-leaders-researcherWillison: 'Agent' Has Finally Achieved Consensus Definition — Fireside at Pragmatic SummitIn a March 14 Pragmatic Summit fireside and accompanying Substack post, Willison declared he can now use 'agent' without scare quotes: 'An LLM agent runs tools in a loop to achieve a goal.' He collected 211 Twitter definitions, ran them through Gemini to cluster into 13 groups, and synthesized a single canonical framing. The meta-significance: when Willison stops hedging on jargon, it signals the concept has crossed from hype to engineering discipline.

Graph relationships

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Simon Willison
Willison published a technical chapter and participated in a fireside chat at Pragmatic Summit.
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MENTIONS
Simon Willison -> Pragmatic Summit
Willison published a technical chapter and participated in a fireside chat at Pragmatic Summit.
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Source trail

blog.tedivm.com simonwillison.net Addy Osmani Glen Rhodes Pragmatic Summit fireside Simon Willison's Blog

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