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Matt Pocock

British educator and TypeScript trainer; runs Total TypeScript and AI Hero (aihero.dev). Previously one of the most visible TypeScript teachers on YouTube and Twitter; since ~mid-2025 has pivoted teaching output toward agentic-coding workflows, explicitly describing himself now as "a teacher, and I suppose now I teach AI."

This wiki's coverage

Source is his 2-hour workshop "Full Walkthrough: Workflow for AI Coding" at AI Engineer 2026 (sister session to his keynote the following day). Delivered live against a real app (Cadence, a course-management platform) using claude-code; walks the room from rough client brief → PRD → Kanban of vertical-slice issues → AFK parallel implementation via his own harness Sandcastle.

Positions that map to wiki concepts

  • LLM smart zone vs dumb zone (credits Dex Horthy / Human Layer): smart-vs-dumb-zones.
  • Memento principle: prefer /clear over /compact — explicit polemic against the practice covered in context-compaction (Zoneraich ingest). See memento-principle.
  • Grill-me skill: alignment-before-output via a tiny skill that interviews the human. See grill-me-skill.
  • PRD as destination, not compiler — argues against "specs-to-code": see prd-as-destination.
  • Tracer bullets / vertical slices from Hunt & Thomas's Pragmatic Programmer: tracer-bullets.
  • AFK / night-shift implementation: afk-implementation.
  • TDD as the feedback loop that sets the ceiling on agent output: tdd-feedback-loop.
  • Ousterhout deep modules as the structural prerequisite for agent-legible code — tied into push-vs-pull-standards and agent-legible-software.
  • Repeated meta-thesis: old software-engineering books (Pragmatic Programmer, Philosophy of Software Design, Design of Design) pre-verbalized the best practices agents now need, and should be mined for prompts.

Tools / artifacts shown

  • Sandcastle — his TypeScript harness for parallel AFK agent runs (worktree + Docker + planner/implementer/merger loop).
  • AI Hero — his course/site; publishes the "grill me" and "improve code base architecture" skills.

Cross-references