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Agents2026-06-22 · source-backed

Thorsten Ball: "a lot of code will be written while nobody is watching."

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1
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Story

In his latest Register Spill, the Sourcegraph/Amp engineer argues the near future is agents running longer and everywhere, kicked off from anywhere, with code increasingly written unattended. He points to Google's new gws ("CLI for all of Google Workspace, built for humans and AI agents") and Simon Willison's growing Agentic Engineering Patterns project as concrete signals. Single-source commentary, but a sharp read on where the workflow is going.

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  1. Shared entities / Same source domain / Shared topic / Earlier coverage

    Thorsten Ball (Amp): "The Coding Agent Is Dead. The Text Editor Is Dead."

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  4. Karpathy Retires "Vibe Coding," Willison Publishes Definitive Agentic Engineering Guide.

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  6. Simon Willison: "Hoard Things You Know How to Do" (Agentic Engineering Ch. 3)

    Both cover Agentic Engineering Patterns, Simon Willison; overlapping topics (agent, agentic, code, engineering); earlier Agentic Engineering Patterns coverage from 2026-02-28.

  7. Shared entity: Agentic Engineering Patterns / Shared topic / Earlier coverage / Tension

    Willison: "AI Should Help Us Produce Better Code"

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  8. Shared entity: Thorsten Ball / Same source domain / Shared topic / Earlier coverage

    Thorsten Ball: "Useful to Agents = 10x Value; Built for Humans = Dead"

    Both cover Thorsten Ball; reported by the same outlet (registerspill.thorstenball.com); overlapping topics (agent, argu, ball, growing).

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Story unit
2026-06-22-thorsten-ball-a-lot-of-code-will-be-written-while-nobody-is-watching
Labels
source-backed, canonical briefing excerpt