Field Notes

A GTM agency's detailed playbook for running outbound campaigns through Claude Code as the orchestrator, with Apollo/Clay/Instantly-equivalent tools (via MCP) as endpoints. Covers folder structure, MCP connection setup, a seven-step signal-to-meeting workflow, skills files, reusable prompts, and eight recurring failure modes.

Vas (CEO of Varick Agents) argues enterprise AI spend fails because companies apply AI to broken processes instead of redesigning them, echoing Michael Hammer's 1990 critique of IT investment. He details a mapping methodology (process mining + interviews), a 3-bucket classification for steps (deterministic/agentic/human-in-the-loop), and real deployment results.

YC convened researchers and founders to examine how agent 'harnesses' (scaffolding, context management, tooling) drive dramatically different performance from identical model weights, covering harness history, self-improving harnesses, and YC's internal agent stack (QM).

Nate Berkopec describes a 'spiking' workflow using Astra/Fable agents: let an agent run unsupervised for hours optimizing against a hard correctness oracle, then decompose the resulting spike into ranked, atomic changes that are manually reviewed and landed one at a time.