Project Setup

What 3 people in the world would be best at working on this project? Pick from a diverse set.

/do-parallel /create-agent for each

/scaffold

Create a basic readme.md and quickstart.md

Run through the quickstart and pre-commit hooks and make sure everything works properly

The Goal

Before writing any code, set up two things:

1. Expert agents — Who would be best at working on this project?
2. Quality hooks — What checks run before every commit?

Step 1: Pick Expert Agents

I asked: What 3 people in the world would be best at working on this project? Pick from a diverse set.

Looking at Maxwell's intersection of hypervisors, eBPF, Rust, and thermodynamics-inspired agent control:

1. Bryan Cantrill — CTO of Oxide Computer, former Sun distinguished engineer. Created DTrace, now deep in Rust systems programming and hypervisor design. He literally thinks about computation as a physical phenomenon. His "software as materials science" philosophy aligns perfectly with the thermodynamic metaphor.

2. Brendan Gregg — The eBPF authority. Wrote the book on BPF performance tools. If Maxwell uses eBPF to observe and constrain agent processes at the kernel level, nobody understands that observability/control plane better.

3. Joscha Bach — AI researcher who frames cognition and agency through physics and thermodynamics. He thinks about agents as dissipative structures, intelligence as entropy management, and computation as a physical process. Brings the theoretical grounding for why "thermodynamic hypervisor" isn't just a metaphor.

Why this mix works:

• Cantrill: the Rust hypervisor craft
• Gregg: the eBPF instrumentation layer
• Bach: the agent-as-thermodynamic-system philosophy

All three are known for strong, opinionated thinking about their domains — they wouldn't just build it, they'd argue about whether it should be built this way.

Step 2: Create the Agents

With the experts identified, I used /do-parallel to create all three agents simultaneously:

/do-parallel /create-agent for each

Each agent gets their own file in .claude/agents/ with their expertise, philosophy, and approach encoded.

Step 3: Scaffold the Project

/scaffold

This sets up the project skeleton and quality hooks. The skeleton gives you types, traits, and stubs — just enough to compile. But the most important part is the quality hooks.

Before writing any code, we need checks that run on every commit:

• Code complexity — Keep functions simple
• File length — No 2000-line files
• Dead code — Remove unused code
• Circular dependencies — Clean architecture
• Similar code — DRY violations
• Linting — Consistent style

/scaffold calls /setup-hooks internally. Every commit runs through these checks. If they fail, the commit is blocked.

Step 4: Create Docs

Create a basic readme.md and quickstart.md

The README explains what the project is. The quickstart explains how to get it running. Both should be minimal — just enough to onboard someone.

Step 5: Verify Setup

Run through the quickstart and pre-commit hooks and make sure everything works properly

Follow your own quickstart. Make a trivial change and commit it. If the hooks fail or the quickstart is wrong, fix it now.

Why Quality Hooks First

It's tempting to skip this and "add it later." Don't.

Quality hooks installed at project start:

• Catch issues immediately
• Build good habits from day one
• Never accumulate debt

Quality hooks added later:

• Hundreds of existing violations
• Painful cleanup sprint
• Team resistance

The best time to install quality hooks is before the first line of code.

Next Steps

Start building.