Reread The Mythical Man-Month

Brooks wrote The Mythical Man-Month in 1975, about what happens when you put people on a late project. Agents were supposed to make it irrelevant. Working with them daily since February 2026, I think the opposite happened.

This goes through the book a chapter at a time. Each one takes a Brooks idea, says what it meant in 1975, and asks what it costs now that the thing on the other end of the task is a model rather than a person.

Chapters go up as they are written, and the order follows Brooks rather than the order I wrote them in.

If you are dropping into the middle of it, chapter 00 defines the words the rest of the series uses without stopping to explain them. Agent, harness, subagent, context window, criterion.

The reading here is my own, and so are the mistakes. My thanks go to Meari-Prototype, whose The Mythical Man-Month in the Age of Agents I lean on in a few chapters, and I say so where I do. I do not agree with all of it, but I can always see where it comes from, and anyone who works with agents will find it beneficial and worth a careful read.