The Compound System
Capabilities times access methods. Not additive — multiplicative.
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Everything multiplies. Take inventory, learn the architecture patterns, design your own compound system. Four lessons, about 45 minutes total.
Lessons in this chapter
- Take Inventory — Capabilities times access methods — count your workflows. (~10 min)
- Architecture Patterns — Four production patterns that use everything at once. (~10 min)
- Design Your System — One workflow, end to end: trigger, data, knowledge, actions, feedback. (~15 min)
- The Journey, and What’s Next — Where you started, where you are, and the progression that never changes. (~10 min)
If you take five things from this chapter
1. Think in multiplication. Capabilities × access methods = workflows. Sometimes the highest-leverage move is a new access method for what you already have.
2. Use the standard progression: manual command → skill → routine → channel trigger → habitat. Every automation you'll ever build walks that ladder.
3. Let your week tell you what to build. Did it more than twice → skill. Check it every morning → routine. Same response to every alert → channel. Needs to improve over time → habitat.
4. Design one workflow end-to-end — trigger, data, knowledge, actions, feedback — instead of automating disconnected fragments.
5. Close the flywheel. Route every correction back into the skill or memory it came from. A system that doesn't learn from its operation is just a scheduled script.
And that completes the course. Close it out with the Production Review — ten questions across Chapters 09-10 — then, a week from now, retake whichever review scored lowest. Spaced retrieval is the cheapest retention tool there is.