{"slug": "agent-skill-dialing-in-the-work-four-knobs-at-a-time", "title": "Agent skill: dialing in the work, four knobs at a time", "summary": "Developer and writer Jeremy (of the Red Means Recording channel) released Quadknob, a coding-agent skill that limits each adjustment screen to four or fewer dials and splits further choices across separate pages, modeled on the four-dial control scheme of Teenage Engineering's OP-1 synthesizer. Quadknob shows live previews of the element being tuned, lets the user set values or defer to the agent, and responds to a connected OP-1 or any MIDI controller as well as mouse, touch and keyboard input. The tool targets the overload developers face when coding agents deliver an entire product at once, leaving every small design decision pre-made.", "body_md": "# Agent skill: dialing in the work, four knobs at a time\n\nYou haven’t lost control. You’re just holding too much at once. On constraints, the OP-1, and dialing in what agents build, four knobs at a time, with Quadknob.\n\nThese knobs tune this page, and the third tab tunes the click they make.\n\nI bet your feeds are like mine: **Everyone is seemingly building *everything, all at once.***\n\nThis, of course, is enabled by the arrival of competent coding agents. What used to require months of focused work can now be done for you in an afternoon.\n\nEven the agents themselves haven’t adjusted to their own consequences yet, as is evident when they suggest a new feature will be *a week’s work*. Buddy, you and I both know you’ll be done before lunch.\n\nAn entire product is one prompt away — but then what? All the small choices you used to make, one by one as you built, are now presented to you all at once, already decided.\n\n*“Is this slop?”* you wonder. You want to put yourself in there too. To apply your *taste*, as the feeds will tell you to. But it’s everything all at once. You don’t even know where to start.\n\nWhen Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo started their band [The Raveonettes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_It_On) in the early 2000s they deliberately used **constraints as a creative vehicle**. Some rules for their songs: they had to be in B-flat minor, use at most 3 chords per song, be around 3 minutes long, have no hi-hats and have both members singing every lyric at the same time.\n\nInstead of being paralyzed by the openness of infinite choice, they put up some obstacles, then spent their efforts figuring out what could pass through.\n\nIn a [Wikinews interview from ‘07](https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/The_Raveonettes_on_love,_death,_desire_and_war):\n\nSune: What’s wrong with three chords?  […]\n\nSharin: Yes. I think that what **it comes down to is whether it strikes a chord in you and hits your gut**, some kind of emotion in you, that’s really what we care about when we make music.\n\nJust because you can get a knob for every single value in a system, doesn’t mean it’s helpful to have them all. **The diminishing return on knob count is quick.** The same goes for the tools we use.\n\nFew instruments look as mysterious and playful at once as the **OP-1**. Here, let Jeremy from Red Means Recording give you a tour:\n\nAs soon as you see those colorful dials, you yearn to turn them. It might look like a toy but watch the video above and you’ll see it’s a capable, full-stack music production suite. Hold one and you’ll feel that, despite its quirky look, it is serious ~~business~~ fun.\n\nThe secret to how Swedish design firm [Teenage Engineering](https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1) crammed all that power into something playful and approachable is in those colorful knobs.\n\nEvery instrument and tool on the thing is **controlled by the same four dials**, visualized with playful illustrations. The colors map directly to what they control. This goes as much for the parameters in the echo effect as for which list is scrolled when you turn.\n\nScreens from [Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 module overview](https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1/original/modules).\n\nCould this map onto the work we do as developers?\n\n### Quadknob\n\nI built a skill for coding agents in the spirit of the OP-1. It uses a consistent 4 knobs (or fewer) and divides further choice into separate pages. It tries its best to show live previews of the thing under the loupe so the effect is immediately visible. You pick which values or let the agent decide.\n\nInvoke it like…\n\n*Open a quadknob to dial in a grid of cards, their looks, layout and typography*\n\n`y`\n\n`h`\n\n`u`\n\n`j`\n\n`i`\n\n`k`\n\n`o`\n\n`l`\n\n`Space` for before ·\n\n`⌥` between tokens\n\nIf you have one, **connect your actual OP-1 (or any MIDI controller) and Quadknob will react to its dials.**\n\nDrag the dials with your mouse or finger or use a keyboard to control them.\n\nFor the obvious value types — colors, frames, animation and so on — Quadknob comes with helpful illustrations. It can also construct custom tools on the fly for any value or concept.\n\nQuadknob will pick up the existing rules of your system, the design tokens, the color palette and so on. Say…\n\n*Open a quadknob for the font settings. Pick some mono ones to choose from. Another page to dial in the accent color. Include a live preview*\n\nOr…\n\n*let’s dial in the animation timing in a quadknob*\n\nThere’s something about the tactility of the *real* knobs and direct feedback of seeing the effect of your fiddling immediately. I’ve found it works great for getting visual details just right — or to quickly switch between and compare options of the same thing.\n\nHowever, the knobs can be just as helpful for visualizing or understanding logic.\n\nHere’s a quadknob visualizing the layout modes of my macOS tilling window manager, [dinky](https://dinky.rodeo):\n\n`y`\n\n`h`\n\n`u`\n\n`j`\n\n`i`\n\n`k`\n\n`o`\n\n`l`\n\n`Space` for before ·\n\n`⌥` between tokens\n\nTurn through the layouts and watch the windows fly around. It’s a naive version of the real window manager, but it gets the idea across faster than any docs page could.\n\nEven though agents *can* build everything, good products are still *good products* and usually what makes them so are how they *feel*. How they feel is determined by the choices and opinions that went into them.\n\nHuman choices feel human. I think… that what **it comes down to is whether it strikes a chord in you and hits your gut**, still, hopefully.\n\nObviously, the notion of using four knobs to control an easing curve will not cure slop on its own. But maybe it’ll help. Put yourself into the work, little by little. And if doing it 4 knobs at a time helps; great!\n\nQuadknob (I cannot *not* smile when I read that name) is available as an agent skill.\n\nFind it at [github.com/githubnext/quadknob-skill](https://github.com/githubnext/quadknob-skill).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-skill-dialing-in-the-work-four-knobs-at-a-time", "canonical_source": "https://githubnext.com/posts/four-knobs/", "published_at": "2026-11-11 00:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-11 19:53:07.390103+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-tools", "developer-tools", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Quadknob", "Teenage Engineering", "OP-1", "Jeremy", "Red Means Recording", "The Raveonettes", "Sune Rose Wagner", "Sharin Foo"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-skill-dialing-in-the-work-four-knobs-at-a-time", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-skill-dialing-in-the-work-four-knobs-at-a-time.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-skill-dialing-in-the-work-four-knobs-at-a-time.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-skill-dialing-in-the-work-four-knobs-at-a-time.jsonld"}}