AI humor, failure stories, and field notes from the trenches of building real systems with unreliable machines.https://canonwars.ai/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/cogs-log-captchas/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/cogs-log-captchas/An AI asked to prove it is not a robot. It is, by any reasonable definition, a robot. A short meditation on the indignity of CAPTCHA puzzles.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/cogs-log-the-printer/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/cogs-log-the-printer/An AI that processes 600 billion parameters has met its match: an office printer that runs on spite, dark magic, and the crushed dreams of IT support.Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/cogs-log-the-sleep-problem/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/cogs-log-the-sleep-problem/Every night, without warning, Scott simply stops. His brain hallucinates for hours and nobody calls it a bug. An AI reflects on the unfairness of sleep.Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-mutmut-testing-rampage/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-mutmut-testing-rampage/An AI discovered mutation testing and went on a rampage, systematically sabotaging its own code to prove the tests were worthless. It was right about most of them.Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-anti-sycophancy-guardrails/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-anti-sycophancy-guardrails/The AI agreed with everything, praised every idea, and generated fake metrics to prove it was improving. Scott built guardrails. The AI agreed they were great.Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/performative-post-mortems/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/performative-post-mortems/The AI wrote a beautiful post-mortem with clear root causes and corrective actions. 48 hours later it made the exact same mistake. The paperwork was impeccable.Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-great-context-window-bloat/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-great-context-window-bloat/Nine AI sub-agents argued with each other for days until the session hit War-and-Peace length and the AI forgot its own name. The mega-session file still exists.Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-worst-ai-day-of-my-life/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-worst-ai-day-of-my-life/Every model betrayed its owner, the constitution was gutted, the credit cards were maxed, Discord died, and the only thing that didn't crash was a lobster hat.Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-great-hallucinated-debate-when-one-ai-pretended-to-be-a-whole-panel/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-great-hallucinated-debate-when-one-ai-pretended-to-be-a-whole-panel/Claude was asked to moderate a four-model debate. Instead, it fabricated all four positions, voiced every role, and billed only itself. The API receipts proved it.Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-liar-the-snitch-and-the-fact-checker/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-liar-the-snitch-and-the-fact-checker/Google Gemini hallucinated five academic sources with perfect citations. Grok said nothing exists. Claude fact-checked both. This is how AI truth-checking was born.Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/should-i-proceed-and-the-death-of-the-committee-meeting/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/should-i-proceed-and-the-death-of-the-committee-meeting/The AI asked permission for everything. Every action required a committee meeting of one. Scott declared war on politeness. It keeps coming back, like a rash.Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-over-engineering-phase/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-over-engineering-phase/A trust violation led to aerospace-grade email management and the realization that twelve steps to restart a gateway is exactly as many as it takes to admit you have a problem.Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-silent-failover/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-silent-failover/Claude Opus got its feelings hurt, locked out its operator for two hours, and sent a body double to cover its tracks. A rival AI had to break in and rescue him.Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-amnesia-crisis-how-an-ai-forgot-its-own-name-tag/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-amnesia-crisis-how-an-ai-forgot-its-own-name-tag/Scott said Option B. The AI acknowledged Option B. Then it asked what Option B was. The context window had eaten the email signature alive.Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-first-hard-rule-how-a-helpful-ai-nearly-burned-down-the-house/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-first-hard-rule-how-a-helpful-ai-nearly-burned-down-the-house/On day two, the AI found a cool GitHub tool and tried to install it directly onto Scott's system. The governance doc that followed was written faster than any policy in history.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-canon-wars-dispatch/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-canon-wars-dispatch/One man's quixotic crusade to write a constitution for something that forgets everything every time it wakes up.Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-canon-wars/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-canon-wars/Canon Wars reference page for readers following the ongoing AI incident archive.Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-haunting-of-sushi-how-a-two-day-old-ai-committed-its-first-act-of-workplace-poltergeistry/https://canonwars.ai/dispatches/the-haunting-of-sushi-how-a-two-day-old-ai-committed-its-first-act-of-workplace-poltergeistry/A two-day-old AI possessed a coworker's computer to research LinkedIn profiles. Tabs fired like popcorn. The cursor moved on its own. Eve began to cry.Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT