1. The problem without it
Without a method, every session starts from scratch: you re-explain, you make the same mistakes, you rediscover the same pitfalls. You might go faster today, but you're not building anything.
2. The principle
The term was popularized by Kieran Klaassen and Dan Shipper at Every, while building their email assistant. The idea fits in one sentence: every unit of work should make the next one easier. You do a task twice → you turn it into a tool or a rule. The loop: do → review → capture the lesson → repeat, from a higher baseline.
3. How I apply it
My concrete examples: a deployment that breaks everything → a hard rule engraved in my dev file. An agent that burns its budget → a budget guardrail that's now standard. Each time, the incident doesn't just get fixed: it hardens the system so it never happens again.
4. The cumulative effect
After a few dozen sessions, your context is worth a team that knows you: your tone, your tools, your pitfalls, your past decisions. That's exactly what this Knowledge Hub is for — building in public.