Start here · essay · 5 min ·
Supposed to Run Itself
After a year of building a fleet of AI agents at home, I think the models are the easy part, and most of what gets called agent engineering is a demo.
Walt Spence
Registered Polysomnographic Technologist with 20+ years in sleep medicine; I lead the hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS) program at Bon Secours St. Mary's Hospital in Richmond, VA. I also build and run AI agent systems and the software around them.
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Now
Updated 2 Nov 2026
Leading the hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS) program at Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, VA, and running studies of every type.
Projects
3 active · 2 experimental · 1 paused
- waltspence.comThis site. A publishing server with several interfaces.Active
- KnowferThe fleet's durable memory: a Rails knowledge base agents read and write over MCP.Active
- zapA terminal-native, agent-friendly app uninstaller. Dry-run by default, Trash not rm, undo always.Active
- htcassoMarkdown in, self-contained HTML out. For agent artifacts people actually open.Experimental
- TalkifyVoice and text pipelines, Rails and Vue.Experimental
- flight-trackerWatching the sky over the house with Python.Paused
- FeatherweightA macOS menu-bar disk cleaner. Now a feature of zap.Archived
Notes
The bar under each title is its length
- 2018 Embrace the Rain: Ten Years of Lessons Ten years of lessons, written down just before I turned 36.
- 2015 What EnLab is Not Why EnLab refused to be called a startup, a SaaS company, an app studio or a web shop.
- What Bootstrapping Actually Looked Like On hustle culture, the gap between the lifestyle being sold and the life being lived, and what it actually looked like for me.
Stream
Live
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Autonomy and authority aren’t the same thing. Agents can do the work. Restarting the system should still take my signature.
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Match the model to the stakes. A small coding model is fine for light work and the wrong call for anything critical.
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When a model swings from “this is nothing” to “build everything around this” in one reply, call it out and get a second opinion.
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A good test for any app: what would make it a no-question $25 one-time purchase?
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Ask what standard practice is. Then ask what the gold standard is, and build toward that one.
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Don’t let the main menu turn into a junk drawer. Anything that keeps piling up gets its own menu.
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Name things so they don’t collide with words people already know. “Package” already means something on Linux.
Machines
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