Chris Watson: Writing https://watson.geek.nz/writing/ Essays on agent identity, governance, civic AI, and hands-on technical leadership. en-NZ Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT Match the autonomy to the blast radius https://watson.geek.nz/writing/match-autonomy-to-blast-radius/ https://watson.geek.nz/writing/match-autonomy-to-blast-radius/ Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT A practical method for deciding how much autonomy an AI agent should get: start from the worst thing its permissions allow. The agent that improves itself through pull requests https://watson.geek.nz/writing/agents-that-improve-by-pull-request/ https://watson.geek.nz/writing/agents-that-improve-by-pull-request/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT A self-improving agent is a governance problem until the improvement loop runs through version control. The pattern in detail. Ask the partner for their problems: lessons from a civic hackathon https://watson.geek.nz/writing/run-a-civic-hackathon/ https://watson.geek.nz/writing/run-a-civic-hackathon/ Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT What running New Zealand's first Claude Impact Lab taught me about problem statements, team drafting, and judging on usefulness. An emergency tool that needs the internet is not an emergency tool https://watson.geek.nz/writing/emergency-tools-offline-first/ https://watson.geek.nz/writing/emergency-tools-offline-first/ Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT The Wellington Claude Impact Lab's winning team ran everything on local models. The design principle generalises to all resilience software. Why technical leaders should stay close to implementation https://watson.geek.nz/writing/stay-close-to-implementation/ https://watson.geek.nz/writing/stay-close-to-implementation/ Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT The moment a technical leader stops understanding the system at implementation level, their strategy starts to drift from reality. Governance is an enabler for agentic systems https://watson.geek.nz/writing/governance-enables-agentic-systems/ https://watson.geek.nz/writing/governance-enables-agentic-systems/ Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT Controls are not the brake on agentic AI. They are the reason you can say yes to autonomy at all, written by someone who builds both. Production AI agents need identities, not shared credentials https://watson.geek.nz/writing/production-agents-need-identities/ https://watson.geek.nz/writing/production-agents-need-identities/ Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:00:00 GMT Why an AI agent doing real work needs its own scoped identity, and the credential patterns that make autonomous systems defensible.