Raising Agents is counting.

01what will be published· anonymized

A distribution chart, plus my number — unredacted.

For each reader who submitted a closet-hours tax number between episode 001 (2026-05-04) and episode 003 (2026-06-01), the anonymized data point contributes to a single chart: the distribution of reader closet-hours tax, in tokens, for a representative week in May 2026.

Alongside: my own number, unredacted. I expect to be somewhere on the right side of the distribution. I will not pretend otherwise.

The chart becomes permanent on this page. Future distributions append each year — 2027, 2028 — so the shape of reader over-building over time becomes visible.

01·5the seed · my own six numbers· week of 24 apr 2026

Until there is a distribution, there is my number.

The chart needs reader submissions before it can be a chart. Until then, every Sunday I publish my own six metrics here, hand-curated, no chart, no aggregation — just my number for that week. Six weeks of seed before episode 004's distribution. Below: this week's.

week of 2026-04-24 · updated every sunday by hand · numbers are mine, exposed deliberately, will not be retroactively edited.

02submit your number· anonymous · one per day

One field required. Two optional.

One field required: your closet-hours tax (tokens spent on non-due builds this week). The verdict and note are optional. No email, no name, no tracking. Only the first submission per day per IP is counted.

03how submission works

Two shelves — submit, subscribe — decoupled.

One form. One required field: your closet-hours tax in tokens for the preceding week. Optional second field: your closet-hours verdict (work / borderline / over-building / crisis) from the diagnostic.

No email. No name. No IP stored beyond a 24-hour hash used only to prevent the same person from submitting 400 times. No tracking cookies. No sharing with anyone.

If you want the newsletter, subscribe separately — the distribution form is deliberately decoupled. You can submit without subscribing. You can subscribe without submitting. Both are fine.

04why this matters

Other AI-productivity talk trades in anecdote. This trades in shape.

Every other AI-productivity discourse trades in anecdote. "I saved 5 hours this week with Claude." "My team ships 3x faster." The numbers come without distribution, without cohort, without the possibility of being embarrassing.

This distribution will be embarrassing. It will show, specifically, how much time senior operators spend on builds that are not due. Mine. Yours, if you submit. The median will tell you where you sit. The tail will tell you what the pathology looks like at the far end.

I do not know what the distribution will show. That is the point. I am running the experiment on myself and on readers simultaneously and publishing the result.