Debugging notes, dead ends, and measurements from building Vodou: an AI operating system with local memory and MCP orchestration.https://blog.vodou.ai/en-ushttps://blog.vodou.ai/page-axis-agent-memory/https://blog.vodou.ai/page-axis-agent-memory/Agent memory stores what was said and drops where it happened. Adding a page axis to a memory store took four live-only defects and a per-site permission model.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:19:46 GMTai-agentsmemoryretrievalarchitecturebrowserChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/your-retired-button-is-still-mounted-still-handling-clicks/https://blog.vodou.ai/your-retired-button-is-still-mounted-still-handling-clicks/A refactor left an old injected control alive in the page. It called the retired handler, threw no error, and looked exactly like the button that replaced it.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:01:57 GMTjavascriptchromedebuggingwebdevChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/agent-approval-gates-that-actually-stop/https://blog.vodou.ai/agent-approval-gates-that-actually-stop/We shipped plan cards, real parallel tool calls and an approval gate for an MCP agent. The gate was decoration for two days, and the fan was never parallel.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:09:10 GMTai-agentsmcporchestrationarchitectureobservabilityChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/silent-failures-in-agent-surfaces/https://blog.vodou.ai/silent-failures-in-agent-surfaces/Shipping an agent surface into 22 chat sites we don't own: the Chrome gesture that doesn't survive an await, and three builds all claiming one version number.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:03:50 GMTai-agentsobservabilityarchitecturebrowser-extensionsmemoryChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/vocabulary-drift-in-agent-systems/https://blog.vodou.ai/vocabulary-drift-in-agent-systems/Four surfaces minted the same token four different ways, and all four agreed. How we found the drift, why the tests couldn't see it, and the guard that now can.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:59:36 GMTai-agentsarchitectureobservabilitymcpllmChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/your-isolated-test-lab-isnt-isolated/https://blog.vodou.ai/your-isolated-test-lab-isnt-isolated/My failure-injection harness wrote to the live database, health-checked a stranger's process, and leaked 8 daemons. Three bugs in the test, none in the code.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:27:05 GMTtestingdebuggingsqlitedevopsChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/node-execfile-was-2-7x-slower-the-spawn-cost-nothing/https://blog.vodou.ai/node-execfile-was-2-7x-slower-the-spawn-cost-nothing/Two implementations of the same memory lookup, one over a Unix socket and one shelling out to a CLI. I blamed the subprocess. The timing block said otherwise.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:44:29 GMTnodeperformancedebuggingmcpChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/why-my-llm-agent-fabricated-numbers-from-stale-context/https://blog.vodou.ai/why-my-llm-agent-fabricated-numbers-from-stale-context/An agent replayed a ten-minute-old CPU reading as live. The bug wasn't the model: a guard checked whether cached tool output existed, not whether it was fresh.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:49:27 GMTtypescriptllmdebuggingcachingChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/cached-tokens-is-0-because-your-system-prompt-isnt-stable/https://blog.vodou.ai/cached-tokens-is-0-because-your-system-prompt-isnt-stable/Our provider reported cached_tokens 0 of ~16K prompt tokens every turn. The cause: per-turn memory glued into the system prompt. Freeze the prefix instead.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:48:02 GMTllmcachingtypescriptdebuggingChad Priesthttps://blog.vodou.ai/sqlite-fts5-ands-your-search-terms/https://blog.vodou.ai/sqlite-fts5-ands-your-search-terms/Our search box returned zero results for any sentence longer than four words. The bug wasn't ranking or embeddings: it was one space in a join() call.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:45:27 GMTsqlitesearchdebuggingjavascriptChad Priest