Software
Claude Code fundamentals
The terminal colleague: plan mode, permission modes, and the session as a unit of work.
Claude Code is the literal colleague given a terminal: it reads the repository, runs the commands, edits the files, and remembers nothing next session. The working unit is the session, and the working rhythm is the one this canon has been teaching all along: open with a bounded brief, gate the plan, let it drive, verify the artifact. Plan mode makes the second law mechanical; permission modes make the fifth one enforceable rather than aspirational.
The skill that looks least like skill is the steering register. Long briefs open the session; after that, the effective operator mostly types short things: a premise correction, a one-word go, a status poke. You are not writing prose to a model, you are running a colleague who is already moving. Say less, point precisely, and interrupt the moment pointing is needed.
How to practice it
Brief once, steer terse.
The opening message carries goal, constraints, and fences. After that, one-line nudges beat paragraph re-briefings.
Plan mode is the second law.
For anything multi-step, gate the build behind a plan you actually read. The mode exists so the gate costs one keypress.
Permissions are the fifth.
Free for reversible edits, ask-first for the risky, never for deploys and pushes. Set once, then stop hovering.
The session survives you.
Long jobs keep running while you board a plane; arrange the watchers, then leave. Presence is not a requirement, checkpoints are.