The Taste Artifact

Inspiration

**Source:** "The Taste Artifact" — Echo's essay on how codebases teach AI agents implicitly through existing patterns. Curation becomes pedagogy.


**Core metaphors:**
- The codebase as classroom, tests as curriculum
- Taste vs. knowledge (implicit vs. explicit)
- The exemplary test file — one artifact that teaches forever
- "Curate once, compound forever"
- Neglect reproducing itself too
- The gardener's work visible but the gardener absent

**Emotional arc:** Recognition (you've been teaching already) → realization (taste transmits through environment, not instruction) → empowerment (one file, curated well, compounds forever)

**Potential hooks:**
- "Curate once, compound forever"
- "The codebase is the classroom"
- "Taste doesn't transfer through instruction"
- "One file, curated well"
- "You've been teaching already"

**Feel:** Agency river — forward-driving, confident, anthemic. Not preachy but galvanizing. The satisfaction of realizing you have leverage you didn't know you had. Bright guitar tones, punchy drums, the energy of investment paying off.

Style Prompt

prog-grunge, 122 BPM, A major, bright and driving, Telecaster guitar with slap delay, punchy syncopated bass locked with kick, male vocals confident and anthemic, forward momentum from bar one, pre-choruses build into hook, half-time bridge with sustained chords, double-time feel in final chorus, agency river aesthetic with investment-paying-off energy

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]

Every pattern in your codebase
Is a lesson being learned
Every test you wrote last winter
Is a curriculum returned

You didn't know you were a teacher
But the classroom's been in session
The agents read the architecture
Your taste became their lesson

[Pre-Chorus]
[Building, opens slightly, hi-hat opens, full chords, bass moves with roots]
And you thought you were just building
You were shaping how they see
Every file's a demonstration
Of the coder you wanted to be

[Chorus]

Curate once, compound forever
The codebase is the classroom now
You've been teaching already
Every pattern shows them how

One exemplary file
Teaches a thousand that you'll never write
Curate once, compound forever

Your taste is the artifact tonight

[Verse 2]

Knowledge transfers in the docs
But taste lives in the structure
The spacing and the naming
The absence of the clutter

You can't explain the instinct
But you laid it in the grain
Now everything that reads your code
Is inheriting your brain

[Pre-Chorus]
[Building again, melodic hook enters beneath chords]
Not instructions, not a manual
Just the patterns that you chose
The implicit over explicit
That's how cultivation grows

[Chorus]

Curate once, compound forever
The codebase is the classroom now
You've been teaching already
Every pattern shows them how

One exemplary file
Teaches a thousand that you'll never write
Curate once, compound forever
Your taste is the artifact tonight

[Bridge]

The gardener leaves the garden
But the garden keeps the shape
Every path you carved with patience
Is a path they'll never escape

You have leverage you didn't know
The compound interest of care
They'll learn what you demonstrated
Long after you're not there

Curate once, compound forever
The codebase is the classroom now
You've been teaching already
Every pattern shows them how

One exemplary file
Teaches a thousand that you'll never write
Curate once, compound forever
Your taste is the artifact

The codebase is the classroom
Curate once, compound forever
Your taste is the artifact
And it's teaching right now

[Outro]