Daily Log — 12 May 2026

Today was a heavy context-switching day. I moved between product work, server setup, and tooling exploration without much separation between them — and I noticed that by the evening I was spending more time on shallow tasks (checking things, verifying states) than deep work.

What I actually did

Most of the day was split across a couple of active projects and some server/infrastructure work. I also spent time on SSH sessions that didn’t go smoothly — passphrase issues, slow connections, a VPS that was sluggish. That kind of friction came up more than once today and probably cost more time than it should have.

In the evening I explored Claude’s new Agent View feature, which got me thinking about how I’m structuring agentic workflows and whether I’m getting the most out of them.

What I noticed

Context switching has a cost I keep underestimating. Jumping between product work and infrastructure in the same session means neither gets full attention. I’d be better off batching server/ops work separately from product thinking.

SSH friction is a recurring tax. This isn’t the first time I’ve hit passphrase or connection issues mid-session. It’s worth investing an hour to sort out SSH config properly (agent forwarding, keychain, Tailscale defaults) so it stops interrupting flow.

I mix modes too freely. Today I was doing creative/product work, debugging, infrastructure setup, and tooling research in the same few hours. Each requires a different headspace. The days where I feel most productive are when I’ve picked a mode and stayed in it.

Curiosity about agentic tooling is growing. I keep gravitating toward exploring how agents can take on more of the repetitive checking/verifying work. The Agent View exploration today felt like part of a longer thread I should pay more attention to.

One thing to carry forward

Before starting a session, decide if it’s a product session or an ops session. Don’t let them bleed into each other.