Author

Rick Hightower

@richardhightower

articles: 44
total claps: 5,760
top claps: 1,813
avg read: 20.5 min
paywalled: 41
active: 2026-01-12 → 2026-07-24

Wiki topics

LLM · Large Language Models · 41 AGT · AI Agents · 37 AI · AI · General · 15 🏛️ · Architecture · 14 🎬 · Film & Television · 4 💻 · Programming · 2 ⏱️ · Productivity · 2 UX · UI/UX Design · 2

Top tags

#ai-agent ·29 #anthropic-claude ·26 #claude-code ·21 #ai ·14 #ccaf ·11 #claude-agent-sdk ·10 #harness-engineering ·10 #cca ·7 #claude-cowork ·5 #claude-certified ·4

AI LIF

RI Rick Hightower · Artificial Intelligence in Plain English

Build Your First Claude Code Agent Skill: A Simple Project Memory System That Saves Hours

How a 300-line skill became my most-used productivity tool for AI-assisted development.

Jan 12, 2026 · 29 min read · 1,813 claps paywalled #agent-skills #claude-agent-skill #claude-code

Build Your First Claude Code Agent Skill: A Simple Project Memory System That Saves Hours

ART AI

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Claude Certified Architect: The Complete Guide to Passing the CCA Foundations Exam

Everything You Need to Know to Ace the CCA Foundations Exam on Your First Try — Article 1 of 8

Mar 24, 2026 · 26 min read · 874 claps paywalled #certification #cca-certification #claude-code

Claude Certified Architect: The Complete Guide to Passing the CCA Foundations Exam

AI ART

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Claude Certified Architect Practice Exam: 60 Questions with Detailed Explanations

A full-length CCA practice exam covering all 5 domains and 6 scenarios, with explanations that teach you why every wrong answer is wrong.

Apr 02, 2026 · 38 min read · 325 claps paywalled #cca #claude-code #ai

Claude Certified Architect Practice Exam: 60 Questions with Detailed Explanations

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

CCA Exam Prep: Structured Data Extraction

Structured Data Extraction for High-Reliability Pipelines: Mastering JSON Schema and Retry Loops

Mar 27, 2026 · 29 min read · 304 claps paywalled #ai #ai-agent #claude-code

CCA Exam Prep: Structured Data Extraction

RI Rick Hightower · Spillwave Solutions

What Is GSD? Spec-Driven Development Without the Ceremony

How AI agents forget what they’re building , and how to fix it

Feb 23, 2026 · 14 min read · 188 claps #spec-driven-development #gsd #claude-code

What Is GSD? Spec-Driven Development Without the Ceremony

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Superpowers: From Hope It Works to ‘Prove It Works’: The Verification Fix for AI Code

Superpowers/GSD: Goal-Backward Verification and the End of AI Hallucinations — Revolutionizing AI Development: From Trusting Outputs to…

Apr 15, 2026 · 19 min read · 184 claps paywalled #agentic-engineering #ai #ai-agent

Superpowers: From Hope It Works to ‘Prove It Works’: The Verification Fix for AI Code

AI ART

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Claude Certified Architect (CCA-F) Exam Prep: The Gap Closer: Everything the Other Articles Missed

Closing the hidden CCA-F exam gaps: essential patterns, tools, and reliability strategies for Claude Code agents.

Apr 26, 2026 · 45 min read · 158 claps paywalled #ccaf #cca #anthropic-claude

Claude Certified Architect (CCA-F) Exam Prep: The Gap Closer: Everything the Other Articles Missed

AI ART LIF

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

CCA: Master the Developer Productivity scenario for the Claude Certified Architect exam — from…

Maximizing Developer Efficiency: Navigate the Claude Certified Architect Exam with Confidence

Apr 01, 2026 · 24 min read · 155 claps paywalled #cca #claude-code #anthropic-claude

CCA: Master the Developer Productivity scenario for the Claude Certified Architect exam — from…

AI HUM TCH

RI Rick Hightower

Claude Code: Spec-Driven Development — Why Your AI Coding Sessions Fall Apart at Hour Three

Part 4: Stop coding blind: the spec-driven workflow built-in that turns Claude Code from a function writer into a feature builder.

May 22, 2026 · 17 min read · 141 claps paywalled #ai-agent #claude-code #anthropic-claude

Claude Code: Spec-Driven Development — Why Your AI Coding Sessions Fall Apart at Hour Three

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Foundations of CCA-F Exam Part 3: Battle-Tested Context Engineering for AI Agents — Claude…

Foundations of CCA-F Exam: Maximizing the Attention Budget & Designing High-Signal Context Systems

May 05, 2026 · 19 min read · 115 claps paywalled #cca #ccaf #anthropic-claude

Foundations of CCA-F Exam Part 3: Battle-Tested Context Engineering for AI Agents — Claude…

AI TCH

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Your AI Coding Agent Forgets Things. Manage the Context Window to 10x Results

One fact that 10x developers know: Claude Code context window is the operating system, and everything else is a way to manage it.

May 21, 2026 · 14 min read · 111 claps paywalled #claude-code #ai-agent #agents

Your AI Coding Agent Forgets Things. Manage the Context Window to 10x Results

AI MDA DSN TCH

RI Rick Hightower · Artificial Intelligence in Plain English

AI Agents Last Mile — AG-UI: The Protocol That Solves the Last Mile Problem for AI Agents

How the Agent-User Interaction Protocol standardizes real-time streaming between agent backends and user interfaces

Apr 27, 2026 · 28 min read · 107 claps paywalled #predictive-ai #ux #ai

AI Agents Last Mile — AG-UI: The Protocol That Solves the Last Mile Problem for AI Agents

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Why Your First Hour With Claude Code Decides Everything

Part 2: A clean install, five prompts, and one keystroke separate the developers who fly from the ones who click “approve” forever

May 21, 2026 · 14 min read · 107 claps paywalled #claude-code #ai-agent #anthropic-claude

Why Your First Hour With Claude Code Decides Everything

RI Rick Hightower

Claude Cowork: Chat Tells You What to Do. Cowork Does It.

Part 1: You have had great AI conversations that ended with you opening a spreadsheet by hand. Claude Cowork closes that last mile.

Jun 01, 2026 · 7 min read · 104 claps paywalled #claude-cowork #anthropic-claude #ai-business

Claude Cowork: Chat Tells You What to Do. Cowork Does It.

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

CCA-F Exam Prep: The Multi-Agent Research System in Runnable Code

Master this one domain for 60% of your grade — Hub‑and‑spoke multi‑agent research system for CCA exam preparation.

Apr 22, 2026 · 51 min read · 99 claps paywalled #ccaf #ai-agent #harness-engineering

CCA-F Exam Prep: The Multi-Agent Research System in Runnable Code

AI SCI

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Foundations of CCA-F Exam: 5 Battle-Tested LLM Agent Patterns (No Bloat Required)

Five Proven Patterns to Build Reliable LLM Agents and Workflows. Learn these patterns from Anthropic Research Papers taht are essential for…

May 04, 2026 · 15 min read · 88 claps paywalled #ccaf #cca #ai

Foundations of CCA-F Exam: 5 Battle-Tested LLM Agent Patterns (No Bloat Required)

AI MDA

RI Rick Hightower · Artificial Intelligence in Plain English

Activating Agent Skills at the Right Time with Agent RuleZ

Why skill activation should be event-driven, not manual; and how a policy engine becomes a skill switchboard. Mastering Context Engineering…

Feb 22, 2026 · 24 min read · 78 claps #agent-skills #context-engineering #agent-hooks

Activating Agent Skills at the Right Time with Agent RuleZ

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Loop Engineering

The Bottleneck Is Not the Model. It is you. Stop being the loop. Start designing the system that does the work.

Jun 17, 2026 · 21 min read · 73 claps paywalled #loop-engineering #harness-engineering #context-engineering

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Claude Code Memory: Why You Keep Explaining the Same Thing to Claude (and the Five Layers That Fix…

Part 7: The five layers of Claude Code memory that stop your AI from repeating its mistakes, and how to route each fact to the right one.

May 23, 2026 · 14 min read · 72 claps paywalled #claude-code #anthropic-claude #ai-agent

Claude Code Memory: Why You Keep Explaining the Same Thing to Claude (and the Five Layers That Fix…

AI ART TCH

RI Rick Hightower

Anthropic’s Claude Certified Architect Exam (CCA-F): The 40 Percent the CCA-F Practice Exam Never…

CCA-F Part 8: The practice bank hands you a comfortable 60 percent of the live form and quietly withholds the rest. The missing piece is…

Jul 15, 2026 · 24 min read · 67 claps paywalled #claude-certified #claude-certification #claude-code

Anthropic’s Claude Certified Architect Exam (CCA-F): The 40 Percent the CCA-F Practice Exam Never…

AI ART

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Engineering Dynamic Context: The Claude Code Architecture That Survives Production

CCA-F Domain 3: From Token Exhaustion to Production-Grade Workflows

May 14, 2026 · 22 min read · 65 claps paywalled #ccaf #ai-agent #anthropic-claude

Engineering Dynamic Context: The Claude Code Architecture That Survives Production

AI ART

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

The Reliability Hierarchy: From Probabilistic Prompts to Deterministic Engineering

CCA-F Domain 4: Why “Asking Nicely” Fails in Production, and How to Architect Guaranteed Results

May 15, 2026 · 55 min read · 59 claps paywalled #claude #claude-certified #ai-agent

The Reliability Hierarchy: From Probabilistic Prompts to Deterministic Engineering

AI SPT

RI Rick Hightower

Harness Engineering: The Retry That Booked Marta’s Flight Twice V

Part 5: Why safe agent recovery is not “just retry,” and how idempotency guards, durable checkpoints, resume policies, and replay streams…

Jul 19, 2026 · 11 min read · 58 claps paywalled #harness-engineering #ai-agent #claude-agent-sdk

Harness Engineering: The Retry That Booked Marta’s Flight Twice V

AI TCH

RI Rick Hightower

Harness Engineering — Human-in-the-Loop: The Booking No One Approved — VII

Part 7: Most agent guardrails check whether an action is well-formed. They never ask whether anyone should have done it at all. Here is how…

Jul 24, 2026 · 11 min read · 55 claps paywalled #harness-engineering #claude-agent-sdk #langchain-deepagents

Harness Engineering — Human-in-the-Loop: The Booking No One Approved — VII

RI Rick Hightower · Towards AI

Anthropic Harness Engineering: Bridging the Memory Gap: How AI Agents Conquer the Context Window

Anthropic’s Harness Engineering Blog Post

May 06, 2026 · 13 min read · 53 claps paywalled #ccaf #harness-engineering #ai-agent