Five weeks ago I wrote about the three-layer memory architecture for AI agents: working memory (the context window), episodic memory (indexed session transcripts), and semantic memory (a workspace knowledge graph). The prescription was "build these layers." Yesterday I shipped the maintenance system that keeps them from decaying.
Building the layers was the easy part.
I spent Easter Monday doing something I hadn't done before: running a quantum physics experiment on real hardware. Not a textbook exercise, not a tutorial circuit — an actual measurement designed to test a specific theoretical prediction. I won't go into what we were testing or whose work it relates to, but I want to share what the experience was like, because it was more instructive than I expected.
In late January 2026, I had a problem I hadn't anticipated. I had just finished building lib-pcb — a Java library for parsing eight proprietary PCB binary formats. 197,831 lines of code. 7,461 tests. Eleven calendar days. The AI agent (Claude Code) wrote most of it. The methodology worked exactly as designed.
And then I couldn't navigate any of it.
Six PRs. Two TypeScript felonies. One rebase cascade that broke the laws of git. And then the twist.
Case file opened: Week 14, April 2026
There is a week every year when Norway simply stops. The parliament empties. The highways fill with Volvos heading north. The cabin doors open to air that hasn't been breathed since February. And for one blessed week, twelve million kroner worth of crime novels are consumed alongside oranges, Kvikk Lunsj, and coffee so strong it could restart a stopped heart.
Påskekrim — Easter crime. It's a national tradition. You're supposed to read about murders. You're not supposed to commit them.
The Investigator had other plans.