About

Most of what I learn from AI-assisted work disappears into chat scrollback, a throwaway script, or hallway context. The Agency is the counterweight — a public shelf where those lessons have to survive a reread six months later, or stop being lessons.

What’s here #

Dispatches are dated field notes: what I ran, what broke, what I’d do differently the next time the tools ship. Useful this week, still legible after the next release.

Playbooks are runnable how-tos. Each one opens with a concrete workflow pain, then walks the commands, the checks, and the failure modes I already paid for so you don’t have to.

Two tracks. Code covers Claude Code, skills, hooks, and orchestration. Desktop covers Claude as a daily companion — Cowork, connectors, the workflows that don’t need a terminal.

Why this exists #

“How does the deploy work?” and “which skill handles this?” still default to oral tradition on most teams I’ve been on. Publishing forces me to test the steps, pin the paths, and refresh when reality drifts. The system holds the knowledge so the next session — mine or yours — starts on something that already worked.

I’m Athan Dial. The portfolio side is where I write about decision systems and applied AI in scientific organizations. Some playbooks here reference real tools and patterns from that work.