http://programmer.ie/tags/instrumentation/ Recent content in Instrumentation on Programmer.ie: Modern AI programming Hugo en-us Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:00:02 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/context/02-chapter/ Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:00:02 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/context/02-chapter/ <p>A developer debugging a slow, expensive coding agent opens the session log. The visible transcript shows eight user messages and eight assistant replies. It looks modest. Then the developer enables request logging at the harness layer and discovers that the eighth model invocation carried 61,000 tokens: the same project instructions re-sent for the eighth time, three full tool definitions for tools never called in this session, two file reads whose contents overlap by 80 per cent, and a conversation history that includes four failed tool calls and their stack traces in full. The user typed perhaps 400 words in the entire session. The model received a novella.</p>