Desire paths design: making agent hallucinations real¶
Insight: Steve Yegge describes "desire paths" design for AI agent interfaces: systematically implementing whatever agents try to do with your CLI until nearly every guess by an agent is correct. His tool Beads evolved 100+ subcommands with many aliases and alternate syntaxes — not for humans, but for agents. This required 4 months of iterative design, turning hallucinations into real features.
Detail: This inverts traditional API/CLI design. Instead of designing for human ergonomics first, you observe what AI agents attempt and make those attempts succeed. The approach naturally produces interfaces optimized for LLM tool use — a key consideration for MCP server design and any tool that agents will interact with.