# BlunderGOAT > Turning mistakes into frameworks. Engineering leadership. AI orchestration. Neurodivergent systems thinking. Decades of blunders, methodically converted into frameworks you can steal. ## About The name BlunderGOAT started as a chess handle — a nod to making high-stakes mistakes while still aspiring to greatness. It turns out "turning blunders into science" applies to a lot more than just the 64 squares. BlunderGOAT is a personal platform by Matthew Hansen featuring long-form articles on software engineering, developer experience (DevEx), systems thinking, mental models, AI workflows, and platform engineering. ## Author Matthew Hansen — 40+ years of coding, 18+ years in Health Tech. Writes about engineering leadership, AI orchestration, and neurodivergent systems thinking. - Email: hello@blundergoat.com - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matty-hansen/ - GitHub: https://github.com/mattyhansen - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/blundergoat.bsky.social - X/Twitter: https://x.com/blundergoat ## Pages - Homepage: https://www.blundergoat.com - Articles: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles - Mental Models: https://www.blundergoat.com/mental-models - Books: https://www.blundergoat.com/books - Projects: https://www.blundergoat.com/projects - Certifications: https://www.blundergoat.com/certifications - Speaking: https://www.blundergoat.com/speaking - Uses: https://www.blundergoat.com/uses - About: https://www.blundergoat.com/about - Tags: https://www.blundergoat.com/tags - RSS Feed: https://www.blundergoat.com/feed.xml ## Articles ### Plan Before You Prompt: Templates for Coding Agents - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/plan-before-you-prompt-templates-for-coding-agents - Date: 2026-02-21 - Description: AI coding agents are fast, but they don't know what you know. Without upfront planning, an agent will confidently scaffold an entire architecture around the wrong assumptions. And you won't notice unt... - Tags: ai-workflows, developer-experience - Reading time: 13 min ### Claude Code /insights Roasted My AI Workflow (It Wasn’t Wrong) - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/claude-code-insights-roasted-my-ai-workflow - Date: 2026-02-06 - Description: What is claude insights: The /insights command in Claude Code generates an HTML report analysing your usage patterns across all your Claude Code sessions. It's designed to help us understand how we in... - Tags: ai-workflows, case-study, developer-experience - Reading time: 9 min ### AI Makes the Easy Part Easier and the Hard Part Harder - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/ai-makes-the-easy-part-easier-and-the-hard-part-harder - Date: 2026-01-31 - Description: A friend of mine recently attended an open forum panel about how engineering orgs can better support their engineers. The themes that came up were not surprising: - Tags: ai-workflows, developer-experience - Reading time: 6 min ### Egoless Programming Is Systems Design - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/egoless-programming-is-systems-design - Date: 2026-01-24 - Description: The original egoless programming principles are about mindset. Be kind. Don't take it personally. Critique the code, not the coder. Good advice, but mindset strains under pressure, fatigue, and deadli... - Tags: developer-experience, engineering-leadership, systems-thinking - Reading time: 7 min ### Egoless Programming: Greatest Hits - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/egoless-programming-greatest-hits - Date: 2026-01-17 - Description: My first experience with "critique the code, not the coder" was from a tech lead who had a printout of the ten commandments of egoless programming pinned on our office wall. They would say we are not ... - Tags: engineering-leadership - Reading time: 12 min ### Code Reviewing for Blunder Goats - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/code-reviewing-for-blunder-goats - Date: 2026-01-10 - Description: A new starter, second week on the job, pushed a change with an undefined variable. It passed testing and passed code review. Then the service team's phones started ringing because users couldn't log i... - Tags: code-review, developer-experience, engineering-leadership - Reading time: 5 min ### Code Review for Teams That Ship - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/code-review-for-teams-that-ship - Date: 2026-01-03 - Description: When the reviewer isn't spending cognitive load on things the coder or CI should have caught, they can go deeper on the things that need human judgment. - Tags: code-review, developer-experience, engineering-leadership - Reading time: 4 min ### When to Ask a Second AI: Signal-Based Adaptive Orchestration - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/signal-based-adaptive-orchestration - Date: 2025-12-13 - Description: With chatbots and coding agents we've all experienced those moments that make us stop trusting the first answer. From cheerleading to making stuff up to drifting off course. That's why sometimes we ne... - Tags: ai-workflows, systems-thinking - Reading time: 5 min ### Are You an Idiot Sandwich? Building an SEO Self-Sabotage Scanner in 5 Hours - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/sbao-5-weeks-to-5-hours - Date: 2025-12-08 - Description: At work someone asked how to rank higher. I said wrong question, first check if you're sabotaging yourself. The most common problem is people make it harder for Google to find and/or understand what t... - Tags: ai-workflows, case-study - Reading time: 4 min ### Things Adults Said Were Impossible (C64 Edition) - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/c64-impossible-missions - Date: 2025-12-05 - Description: When I was a kid, adults kept telling me things were impossible. They were usually right, candy is not the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast. - Tags: case-study - Reading time: 3 min ### 18 Years in Health Tech: How I Became MD Hansen MD (Without Going to Medical School) - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/articles/18-years-in-health-tech-md-hansen-md - Date: 2025-11-30 - Description: When I was a kid I wanted to be a doctor because my name is MD Hansen and I wanted MD Hansen MD on my office door. My passion for coding was too strong for that path, but somehow by fate or destiny fr... - Tags: case-study, engineering-leadership - Reading time: 4 min ## Mental Models ### Antifragility Mindset - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/mental-models/antifragility-mindset - Date: 2026-02-10 - Description: Antifragility is my goal for developer experience. When something breaks, I want the fix to make it harder for that same thing to happen again. ### Cascade Failure Thinking - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/mental-models/cascade-failure-thinking - Date: 2026-02-01 - Description: Cascade failures happen when small problems trigger chain reactions that take down far more than the original fault. The habit is to stop asking "will this work?", and start tracing what the fault is ... ## Book Reviews ### Antifragile: for Engineering Leads - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/books/antifragile-for-engineering-leads - Date: 2026-02-14 - Description: As software engineers, we have to go beyond building robust systems. Instead of working on a project for weeks, maintaining merge conflicts, then putting out fires after the feature goes live. An anti... ### Never Split the Difference: for Software Engineers - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/books/never-split-the-difference-for-software-engineers - Date: 2026-02-11 - Description: Why this matters for engineers, we negotiate more than you think. Salary conversations, scope discussions, pushing back on unrealistic deadlines, convincing your team to adopt a tool, getting buy-in f... ### Crucial Conversations: for Tech Leads - URL: https://www.blundergoat.com/books/crucial-conversations-for-tech-leads - Date: 2026-02-03 - Description: Covers how to stay honest without torching relationships when everyone's heated and the stakes are real. I picked this up because communication is my main growth edge right now. I'm good at staying ca...