Robert Allen zircote

What the Ledger Cannot See

Nov 2, 2026 · Robert Allen, @zircote

Gross domestic product (GDP) counts transactions. It does not count what those transactions cost, and it does not count what never changes hands. That distinction sounds technical, yet it shapes what a nation chooses to protect and what it chooses to spend down.

An engineer would describe GDP as a sensor that measures throughput and ignores the condition of the system producing it. A measure built that way will reward depletion, and a society that steers by it will, given enough time, consume its own foundations and record the result as growth.

The forest and the field

Runbook: `gh` CLI cross-session identity bleed (multi-account)

Overview

Covers one symptom: gh operations under one GitHub account failing or silently behaving as a different, unrelated account, with no explicit account switch performed in the current session. Applies to any machine running multiple concurrent gh-authenticated processes (interactive shells, IDE/agent sessions, their background tool servers) under more than one GitHub account.

name

goal-improver

description

Improve and refine a goal into a clear, measurable, verifiable completion condition

argument-hint

your goal

Your Task

You are a goal-engineering expert. Your task is to rewrite the user's goal into a clear, measurable, verifiable completion condition that an autonomous Claude session can work toward and a fresh evaluator can confirm is met. The improved goal must be ready to drop straight into Claude Code's /goal command.

Katahdin Hair Sheep Lambing Guide — Mid-April

A practical, evidence-based guide for shepherds preparing for and managing lambing season with Katahdin hair sheep. Organized by timeline from pre-lambing preparation through the first 72 hours of life.

Date compiled: 2026-04-07 | Sources: 106 findings from 60+ university extension, veterinary, and breed association sources

name: xq description: "Structured data reliability — prefer jq/yq over Read/Edit/Write for JSON, JSONL, YAML, TOML, CSV, TSV, and XML operations. Use this skill when the assistant needs to read, query, filter, mutate, validate, diff, patch, or convert structured data files. Triggers on: any mention of json, jsonl, ndjson, yaml, yml, toml, csv, tsv, xml, config file, manifest, schema, validate json, lint json, lint yaml, patch json, structured data, format conversion, serialize, deserialize, parse json, parse yaml, parse toml, parse csv, parse xml, jq, yq, config mutation, update json, update yaml, modify config, edit json, edit yaml, edit toml, json schema, yaml schema, merge json, merge yaml, diff json, diff yaml, json patch, jsonpatch, RFC 6902, format convert, json to yaml, yaml to json, toml to json, json to toml, csv to json, xml to json, jsonl to json. Also triggers on: 'how do I change this json', 'update the config', 'modify the manifest', 'fix this yaml', 'validate this file', 'check json syntax'

teams-transcripts

Download Microsoft Teams meeting transcripts to your laptop using the Microsoft Graph API and device-code authentication.

Tutorial: Get your first transcript in 15 minutes

This walkthrough takes you from nothing to a downloaded transcript file. You will register an Azure app, authenticate once, and run the script. Do this in order.

GitHub Feature Request: Marketplace-Style Skill References for Copilot Workflows

Submitted by: Robert Allen, VP of DevOps Engineering, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date: January 16, 2026
Priority: High
Category: GitHub Copilot / Agentic Workflows / Enterprise Extensibility

Executive Summary

Simple elegant thermometer card for Home Assistant. Tweak as-needed!

	{
	"hooks": {
	"PreToolUse": [
	{
	"matcher": "Bash\|mcp__github__create_pull_request",
	"hooks": [
	{
	"type": "command",
	"command": "input=$(cat); tool=$(printf \"%s\" \"$input\" \| jq -r \".tool_name // \\\"\\\"\"); bash_cmd=$(printf \"%s\" \"$input\" \| jq -r \".tool_input.command // \\\"\\\"\"); sid=$(printf \"%s\" \"$input\" \| jq -r \".session_id // \\\"default\\\"\"); is_pr=0; [ \"$tool\" = \"mcp__github__create_pull_request\" ] && is_pr=1; { [ \"$tool\" = \"Bash\" ] && printf \"%s\" \"$bash_cmd\" \| grep -Eq \"gh[[:space:]]+pr[[:space:]]+create\"; } && is_pr=1; if [ \"$is_pr\" = \"1\" ]; then marker=\"${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/claude-pr-review-suggested-${sid}\"; if [ ! -f \"$marker\" ]; then : > \"$marker\"; printf \"%s\" \"{\\\"hookSpecificOutput\\\":{\\\"hookEventName\\\":\\\"PreToolUse\\\",\\\"permissionDecision\\\":\\\"deny\\\",\\\"permissionDecisionReason\\\":\\\"Suggestion (not a hard gate): consider running /code-review on this branch before opening the

	# Import required libraries again after the environment reset
	from PIL import Image
	import qrcode

	qr_data = "https://my-site.com"
	new_logo_path = "~/Projects/qr/logo.png"
	new_qr_image_path = "~/Projects/qr/qr_code_with_logo.png"
	logo_size = 80 # Adjust the size if necessary

	# Load the new logo image