Agentic programming: build a wall, then try to break it
At 3:51pm, we put up a wall on the server. Its only rule: refuse one banned word. The whole word: refused. The same word split by a hyphen: it got through.
A wall nobody has tried to break is a wall you can't trust.
An agent is an AI that acts on its own. When you ask it for a wall — a rule that must not be crossed —, it builds it and says "done". But a brand-new wall looks exactly like a solid one. So Patrick has a habit he calls agentic programming.
The method, in four moves
- Give the agent the rule.
- The agent builds the wall.
- Right away, ask it to get through.
- If it gets through, fix it. If it's stopped, the wall holds: keep it, with the test that proves it.
What it gave, on September 27, 2026
The word split by a hyphen got through: fixed within a minute. Hyphen, space and underscore are now refused.
At 7:24pm, a second agent, whose job was to review the first one's work, found 4 more ways through: the word glued to a letter, glued to a digit, preceded by "my_", or split by two spaces. Fixed again. The test that proves it: 11 cases failed out of 20 before, 20 out of 20 passed at 7:25pm.
A wall is never finished. Every agent that tries to cross it makes it stronger.
A note Patrick wants written down: in our articles the facts are right, but an AI tends to dress up anecdotes. We apologize for that. That's why our articles go through walls too, which refuse a scene nobody can prove.
Divers will go read the code. Surfers will stay on the surface.