Files, Repos & Structure
Every file is a contract with a different reader — the browser, the build machine, git, the database, and now the model.
Class recording
The lecture recording posts here after the class is taught.
Class summary
File types taught as a taxonomy of readers: six shelves, one per audience, built one click at a time until the final state is a poster you can reproduce on paper. The reader determines the rules, which is why a .env never ships, why .md files for agents are short and hand-written, and why the same content in two places is a bug waiting to happen.
The history beat is a war over a filename happening inside the students’ own tooling — CLAUDE.md against AGENTS.md — and the .env rule is taught as a near-miss story with real numbers and a documented public case. The class closes by labelling this repository live: real file, real reader, one row at a time, then the critique.