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Book Cube

Books, ideas and engineering culture — every week

A Telegram channel with original notes and reviews on books about technology, architecture, management, economics and personal growth. Long-form posts with practical takeaways, no fluff, no ads.

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  1. #AI4SDLC

    Research Insights #47 Materials: Does AGENTS.md Help the Agent? (Series #AI4SDLC)

    Episode materials on checking whether repository instructions improve outcomes as well as compliance.

  2. #Books

    Contemporary Architecture in China: Buildings and Projects 2000–2020 (Series #Books)

    A personal look through an architecture photo book, from Shanghai’s skyline to the wall of a museum in Ningbo.

  3. #AI4SDLC

    Research Insights #46 Materials: How Much Harness Does a Strong Model Need? (Series #AI4SDLC)

    Episode materials on file tools, subagents, context compaction, and execution environments.

  4. #AI4SDLC

    3 AImigo S1E14: A Token Budget / How Much Does AI in Development Cost? (Series #AI4SDLC)

    A live discussion about planning AI spending and calculating the cost of an accepted change.

  5. #AI4SDLC

    Research Insights #45 Materials: Model or Harness? (Series #AI4SDLC)

    Episode materials on separating model and harness effects and checking benchmark failures.

  6. #Agent

    [2/2] When One Analyst’s Memory Helps the Whole Team (Series #Agent)

    How analytics platforms turn individual corrections and query patterns into shared guidance.

  7. #AI4SDLC

    Does AGENTS.md Help the Agent? Live Research Insights

    A live episode on the effect of repository context files on agent behavior, cost, and task success.

  8. #Agent

    [1/2] MemCurrent: What an Agent Carries Over from the Last Session (Series #Agent)

    Databricks’ two-layer memory architecture, its benchmarks, and the author’s notes on the ablations.

  9. #Management

    From Developer to CTO and COO of Manychat: Episode Materials (Series #Management)

    Dmitry Kushnikov on returning to coding, scaling teams, and taking on operations.

  10. #AI4SDLC

    Live Research Insights: Harbor Adapters and Harbor-Index

    A live invitation to discuss the large-scale Harbor benchmark experiment.

  11. #AI

    Do Agents Dream of Electric Sheep? How Claude Revisits Its Memory (Series #AI)

    Anthropic’s background memory consolidation and questions about how to evaluate it.

  12. #Software

    Gitleaks and the Secrets Git Remembers (Series #Software)

    The history of Gitleaks, what local scanning covers, and where Betterleaks takes it further.

  13. #AI4SDLC

    Live Research Insights: Beyond the Model

    A live invitation to discuss the study of harness effects in software engineering agents.

  14. #Management

    [2/2] The AI-Native Organization: From Signal to Action (Series #Management)

    An equipment failure illustrates how an AI-native company could connect detection, decisions, execution, and feedback.

  15. #AI

    [1/2] Organizing Intelligence: The Economics of Coordination (Series #AI)

    A theoretical model of firms that can rent copies of AI and of what happens when coordination scales.

  16. #Management

    Code of Leadership: How a CTO’s Responsibilities Grow, with Vasiliy Gigauri (Series #Management)

    An episode announcement on engineering leadership, platform reliability, and decisions at board level.

  17. #Software

    “Video.js: The Documentary” and the Cost of Maintaining Open Source (Series #Software)

    A documentary on what happens when a widely used project loses its maintainers.

  18. #Management

    Code of Leadership S2E29 Materials: Organizational Redesign and Handing Over Authority (Series #Management)

    Episode materials on dividing a large engineering organization and handing decisions to new CTOs.

  19. #AI4SDLC

    Live: 3 AImigo on Infrastructure for Agentic Development

    A live invitation to episode 13 of 3 AImigo.

  20. #AI4SDLC

    Research Insights #44 Materials: Randomness in Agent Evals (Series #AI4SDLC)

    Episode materials on repeat runs and distinguishing small improvements from evaluation noise.

  21. #AI4SDLC

    Harbor: How to Tell Why an Agent Failed a Task (Series #AI4SDLC)

    Harbor’s benchmark adapters, model and harness comparisons, and notes on auditing evaluators.

  22. #AI4SDLC

    IDE vNext: Who Will Build a Home for AI Agents? (Series #AI4SDLC)

    Materials from the DotNext roundtable on development environments for engineers and agents.

  23. #AI4SDLC

    AI Dev Live 2026: What to Watch and How to Measure AI’s Impact (Series #AI4SDLC)

    Three talks to start with and a session on measuring AI’s effect on development.

  24. #Management

    Live: Redesigning an Organization of 1,000 Engineers

    A live invitation to hear how the author redesigned his engineering division.

  25. О канале

    A Guide to Book Cube

    A guide to the channel’s topics and the author’s other projects.

  26. #Books

    American National Parks: A Book to Leaf Through (Series #Books)

    A personal note about enjoying a photo book on US national parks.

  27. #AI4SDLC

    What Does a Reviewer Check When Anthropic Merges 30,000 Changes a Day? (Series #AI4SDLC)

    A talk about giving code reviewers evidence they can examine and challenge.

  28. #Management

    Organizational Redesign for a Division of 1,000 Engineers

    A solo episode announcement on dividing a large engineering organization into five units and handing authority over to CTOs.

  29. #PlatformEngineering

    3 AImigo S1E13: Infrastructure for Agentic Development

    An episode announcement on how CI, review, and access management change under workloads created by agents.

  30. #Books

    Corporate [Trans]formation: Strengthening a Business by Developing People

    A review of the Borisovs' book on HR processes, employee learning, and management maturity.

  31. #AI4SDLC

    State of AI4SDLC: How Software Development Changes as Code Becomes Easier to Write

    The DotNext keynote recording, summary, and slides on delivery, migrations, and knowledge that should outlive the code.

  32. #Engineering

    [3/3] Octoverse 2026: Agents, Models, and Development Workflows

    Part three of a look at GitHub's report, covering delegation to agents, model selection, review, and security.

  33. #Book

    Code of Leadership: How to Lead Engineers by Example When Agents Write the Code

    A working plan for a 20-chapter book on a leader's practice, delegation, and change in engineering teams.

  34. #Engineering

    [2/3] Octoverse 2026: Languages, Industries, and Open Source

    Part two of a look at GitHub's report, covering languages, industry classification, and open-source growth.

  35. #Engineering

    [1/3] Octoverse 2026: Methodology, Scale, and Geography

    Part one of a look at GitHub's report, covering methodology, activity at scale, and community geography.

  36. #AI4SDLC

    Beyond the Model: When a Harness Helps an Agent

    A breakdown of a comparison of agent harnesses and NanoHarness experiments on ProgramBench.

  37. #AI

    3 AImigo S1E12 Materials: October 2026 AI Digest

    The October digest materials cover agent security, model economics, robotics, and checking results.

  38. #AI4SDLC

    Laurie Voss: What's Left for Engineers When AI Writes the Code?

    A talk breakdown on the future of engineering work and the author's view on the limits of agent autonomy.

  39. #AI4SDLC

    On Randomness in Agentic Evals: Noise in Agent Evaluations

    A breakdown of repeated SWE-bench Verified runs and notes on telling a real improvement from noise.

  40. #AI4SDLC

    Research Insights #43 Materials: Agent Skills and Open Knowledge Format

    Episode materials on testing agent skills, shared knowledge bases, and data provenance.

  41. #AI

    3 AImigo Live: October News Digest

    An invitation to the live stream of the 3 AImigo October news digest.

  42. #AI4SDLC

    AI Dev Live 2026: Did AI Speed Up Your Development?

    A talk announcement on measuring AI's effect on development flow and accounting for the full cost of a result.

  43. #AI4SDLC

    Code of Leadership #86 Materials: AI Agents and Developer Productivity

    Episode materials from a conversation with Vladimir Dolgov about metrics, planning, and trust in AI adoption analytics.

  44. #SystemDesign

    System Design Interview: Architectural Thinking in Big Tech

    A book announcement with a seven-step system design interview framework and a map of all 35 chapters.

  45. #AI4SDLC

    3 AImigo S1E12: October 2026 AI Digest

    A live stream announcement covering Anthropic's IPO, model costs, agent security, and AI in engineering workflows.

  46. #Data

    Andy Pavlo: What AI Agents Change for Databases

    An interview breakdown covering agent workloads, permissions, memory, database tuning, and the convergence of OLTP and OLAP.

  47. #AI

    3 AImigo S1E11 Materials: The AI-Native State

    Episode materials on automating government procedures, agent permissions, and the right to appeal decisions.

  48. #AI4SDLC

    Harness at Giga Conf: Talk Materials

    The recording, slides, and long read for a talk about which parts of an agent harness to reassess when the model changes.

  49. #AI4SDLC

    Evaluating AGENTS.md: What Context Is Still Missing?

    A look at how context files affect agent costs on CTXBench and SWE-bench Lite, and why task preparation may matter.

  50. #AI4SDLC

    Max Kanat-Alexander: do we need quality in code that can be replaced?

    Code quality, replaceable implementations, and the knowledge that must survive component regeneration.

Continue in the full archive
What's inside · manual May 2026 snapshot
4,500+
posts
30+
topic tags
5 years
of regular posting
1
author · no editorial

Why subscribe

  • 01Get notes on key books with practical takeaways and links to the originals
  • 02See how the same idea echoes across engineering, management and economics
  • 03Be the first to hear about new talks, articles and podcast episodes
  • 04Keep a ready-to-use list of recommendations: 'what should I read on X'

How the channel works

Deep reviews

Reviews of books, research, and talks: key ideas, context, practical conclusions, and a personal perspective.

Topic tags

Posts are tagged: #Engineering, #Management, #AI, #Economics, #Software, #Leadership and more — easy to find everything on a topic.

Announcements & threads

New talks, tellmeabout.tech articles and Code of Leadership episodes are announced here too. One feed for everything.

Channel sections

Real tags from recent months — frequency reflects the channel's focus: tech, AI and management at the center, but not only.

01#Engineering
02#AI
03#Management
04#Software
05#Processes
06#Agents
07#Leadership
08#SystemDesign
09#Productivity
10#Architecture
11#Whitepaper
12#DistributedSystems
13#Database
14#Future
15#Economics
16#PopScience
17#Strategy
18#Math

Post genres

What you'll actually see in the feed.

01book review

Engineering book review

From 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications' to fresh AI engineering whitepapers — with a take on what's useful and for whom.

02talk announcement

Talk announcement

When a new conference talk comes out — recording, slides, references and a short recap land here.

03engineering note

Practice note

Short observations and ideas: how we build architecture, how culture changes, what works in large orgs.

04research

Whitepapers & research

Reviews of DORA, DevEx, AI4SDLC and other studies — with focus on what's actually applicable.

Who it's for

  • Engineers who want depth, not summaries of summaries
  • Team leads and managers looking for books in their growth zone
  • CTOs and founders holding both the tech and the business context
  • Anyone who prefers long, thoughtful posts over a news feed

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