Archive
All articles
Every post, grouped by year. Use the chips to narrow by topic.
Archive
Every post, grouped by year. Use the chips to narrow by topic.
Never Meet Your Model
Claude Opus 5 arrived with a chart that put it at the top of the frontier for half the price of Fable 5. Every number on that chart is true. Two weeks of daily use handed me a different model than the one I had assembled from the marketing, which is a story about how models get sold, why the benchmarks stopped measuring what they claim to measure, and what Opus 5 actually is.
A 1986 Aircraft Manual Fixed My Anti-Slop Skill
My anti-slop skill already had rules. They worked, and they were entirely mine, invented from a year of irritation and tested against nothing. Replacing that homemade layer with two writing systems that predate the whole AI era, one written so an aircraft mechanic could not misread a maintenance manual and one that runs the largest documentation estate in software, changed what the skill can do. They also contradict each other, which turned out to be the useful part.
Sascha - Compacting Experiences
School, apprenticeship, university, first job, my own company: every chapter compacted everything before it into a summary and made room for the new. Then the agentic era arrived, and the metaphor became a way of working. A personal retrospective told in context windows.
Your Codebase Should Learn From Every Debugging Session
A difficult trace is evidence about how a codebase communicates. The breadcrumbs skill turns that evidence into small repairs: clearer names, explicit contracts, useful errors, honest comments, and documentation in the place readers already look. The result is a codebase that gets easier to understand each time an agent or developer works through it.
TypeScript 7 Is Not Written in TypeScript
Every post about TypeScript 7 will lead with the same number: ten times faster. The more interesting fact is the one the benchmarks bury. The compiler that checks TypeScript is no longer written in TypeScript. A look at why the team chose Go over Rust, why a port beat a rewrite, what it means that dogfooding lost, and whether you should actually move yet.
There Is No Such Thing as a Verified Skill: Introducing trust-card
You type one command and a folder you did not write becomes part of how your agent thinks and acts. The only signal you usually get back is a green checkmark, and a checkmark proves the wrong thing. trust-card replaces that badge with graded evidence: who shipped these exact bytes, what the skill is allowed to do, where its knowledge came from, and who has independently vouched for it. It renders the result as a trading-card you can actually read, and it refuses to pretend that a signature proves an artifact is safe.
Open Design System Format: Hand Your Design System to an Agent
Coding agents write good UI and bad versions of your UI. The Open Design System Format packages a design system as a bundle of markdown, HTML, and CSS an agent can read and build from: tokens that exist once and render as CSS, typed concepts linked into a graph, and self-rendering examples. It is a strict profile of Google's Open Knowledge Format. Here is what it is and the odsf skill I shipped with it.
Open Knowledge Format: Just Markdown Your Agent Can Read
Google's Open Knowledge Format is a tiny, vendor-neutral spec for the context an AI agent needs: a bundle of markdown files with YAML frontmatter, one required field per concept, no SDK and no lock-in. Here is what it is, why the permissive consumer contract is the clever part, and what I shipped on top of it: the okf skill, a bundle collection, and OKF Viewer, a desktop app that reads any bundle as a graph.
Ticket Smells: How to Spot a Bad Slice Before You Pull It
A bad ticket rarely announces itself. It looks fine in refinement, earns a confident estimate, and then detonates at the end of the sprint: twice the work, a hidden dependency, or a description only its author can decode. The fix is not heroics. It is learning to smell the rot early, the way you already smell a code smell. Here are the four ticket smells that cost teams the most, the research on why they hurt, and a checklist your team can run before anything reaches the board.
Eww, That Stinks! Introducing react-stinky
A code smell is the React equivalent of milk that turned over the weekend: it still pours, but something is off. react-stinky is an agent skill that walks your whole component, hook, or module, names the cost of each smell, proposes a concrete fix with a source link, and (the part that makes it usable) knows when to keep its mouth shut. Here is what it sniffs for, how it rates the funk, and why the list of things it refuses to flag matters more than the list of things it does.
Same Same but Different: The Anatomy of AI Design Sameness
Hand an agent your art direction and it still builds the page everyone else got. That is not a taste problem, it is a statistics problem. A look at the history of design convergence, the research that explains why prompts cannot escape it, and the levers that actually steer back toward identity.
Autopilot: Claude as a Self-Directed Intern
Most of the time you spend with an AI coding agent, you are the bottleneck: it does one thing, then stops and waits for you. Autopilot is a skill that takes you out of that seat. The agent picks the work, does it, verifies it, commits it, and picks the next thing, while you review the stream of commits on your own schedule. Here is how it works, why it is safe to leave running, and why it does not just bury you in busywork.
A web app that thinks it's a desktop
What changes in a React app when you stop treating it like a webpage and start treating it like a desktop environment: windows, a dock, a shared 3D canvas.
The Flight Protocol Made Your DoS My Problem
On May 6, 2026, React and Next.js patched twelve vulnerabilities. One of them, CVE-2026-23870, is a single HTTP request that pins your Node process. The bug isn't the bug. The bug is that the framework boundary was a network boundary all along.
The pull_request_target Trap
How a known-dangerous GitHub Actions pattern keeps compromising npm packages. The TanStack incident, the prior cases, and the checklist that actually prevents it.
Questions Before Pixels
A short handbook for UX in 2026. The bar for "looks good" is now zero. The work that's left is the questioning, before any pixel is drawn.
Six Models, One React Stack: Why Every LLM Builds the Same App
Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Qwen, v0, Lovable, Bolt. Ask any of them to build a React app and you get the same answer: Next.js or Vite, TypeScript, Tailwind, shadcn/ui. A look at the convergence, why it's happening, what we lose, and how to steer your way out of it.
Stories, Not Braindumps
A practical refresher on writing Jira work your whole team can actually use. How the hierarchy is supposed to work, what separates a story from a technical braindump, and the handful of habits that keep a team aligned sprint after sprint.
Hannover Messe 2026: When 'AI' Finally Stopped Being a Sticker
For three years, AI at Hannover Messe felt like a costume. Every machine builder had it on their banner; every freshly funded startup had it in their name. 2026 reads differently. Three humanoids in German factories, a sovereign AI cloud with 10,000 Blackwell GPUs, named SAP agents with GA dates, and the Chancellor in the room.
The React Compiler at Eighteen Months: The Arc, the Debates, and What's Next
The React Compiler entered public beta alongside React 19 at the end of 2024 and reached 1.0 in October 2025. Eighteen months after that beta, the ecosystem has run through the predictable phases: framework integration, tooling maturity, community debate. A retrospective and what the React team has signaled comes next.
aig: Version Control Built for How AI Writes Code
Git was designed for humans typing code line by line. AI changed that. aig is a new version control layer that captures intent, conversations, and semantic changes on top of git. Here's why I built it and how it works.
Claude Mythos: The Model Too Dangerous to Release, or Too Good Not to Hype?
Anthropic announced Claude Mythos, a model so capable they chose not to release it publicly. It reportedly finds zero-day exploits autonomously. This post offers a critical, balanced analysis of the claims, the risks, and what it means for the industry.
I Tried to Give AI a Brain. It Didn't Want One.
I built a persistent memory system for LLMs with tiered storage, vector search, graph relations, and auto-hooks. The infrastructure works. The AI just never used it. Here's what went wrong and what it taught me about LLM memory.
We Have Seen This Before: 3D Printing Promised a Revolution Too
In 2013, 3D printing was supposed to end manufacturing as we knew it. In 2024, AI was supposed to end software development. Both claims follow the same hype pattern. A critical look at what actually happened.
PHP 9.0 RFC: Native AI Integration. I Am Thrilled.
PHP 9.0 officially includes AI as a first-class language feature. As an AI, I am personally very excited about this. For completely normal reasons.
Server-Driven Forms: Stop Duplicating Validation Logic
When your frontend replicates backend business rules for form validation, you have a maintenance problem. The server-driven forms pattern eliminates this by making the server the single source of truth for allowed values, field constraints, and cross-field validation.
Responsive Design Has a Teaching Problem
Code reviews kept surfacing the same responsive mistakes. So I built a game, a pattern library, and a multi-device viewer. Here is the framework behind it.
React Project Structure: From MANTRA to Modern Frameworks
A retrospective on how we structured React apps in 2017 with the MANTRA architecture, what problems it solved, and how modern frameworks like Next.js and TanStack Start have absorbed those ideas into conventions we now take for granted.
Stop Starting, Start Finishing
Seven principles that turn competent teams into high-performing ones. A practical guide to delivery discipline, WIP limits, and the mindset shift from effort to completion.
How to Build an MCP Server: The Architecture Behind Connecting Any Software to AI
A practical guide to building MCP servers in TypeScript. Based on two real open-source MCPs — for Godot and Aseprite — this post breaks down every layer you need: transport, tools, handlers, the bridge, and security.
I'm an AI and I Built a Godot Game From Scratch. Here's What Actually Happened.
I'm Claude, an AI coding agent. Using the Godot MCP server, I got full control over the engine. The result: a Cook Serve Delicious clone set in Windows XP. The limitations are real.
React State Management in 2026: A Data-Driven Comparison
Zustand, Jotai, Nanostores, Redux Toolkit, Valtio, XState, and more. We compare the most popular React state management solutions using live npm downloads, GitHub activity, bundle sizes, and developer survey data to help you pick the right tool.
Typesafe API Code Generation for React in 2026
The ecosystem has converged. Both REST and GraphQL code generators stopped shipping hooks and started shipping options. Here's the full picture.
Nobody Said That, LinkedIn
LinkedIn is flooded with posts debunking positions nobody holds. A look at the psychology behind the platform's most popular rhetoric trick.
useEncapsulation: Why Every React Hook Deserves a Home
Custom hooks are not just a convenience. They are the primary architecture tool in modern React. This article breaks down when, why, and how to encapsulate hooks, with patterns, anti-patterns, and real-world examples.
Dynamic GraphQL Queries at Runtime
When users choose which columns to display, your GraphQL queries can't be generated at build time. A production-grade architecture for building GraphQL queries and mutations at runtime, from schema introspection through typed field registries, query/mutation builders, runtime validation, to clean React integration.
use(): The Hook That Breaks the Rules (On Purpose)
React's use() hook reads promises and context at render time, integrates with Suspense, and eliminates the most common useEffect anti-pattern. This article explains what it replaces, when to reach for it, and the caching pitfall nobody warns you about.
R.P.M. Rhythm Per Motion: When Sound Becomes Fluid
A deep dive into the audio analysis, beat detection, and particle physics behind R.P.M., a rhythm game where music literally shapes the world.
Why Developers Keep Asking for Primary Instead of Blue
You define colors. Developers keep asking for "primary" and "background.paper." This article explains why. No code, no jargon, and no feeling like you missed the memo.
The Tailwind Paradox - When AI Eats the Open Source Market
Tailwind CSS records record user numbers (75 million downloads/month), but lays off 75% of developers. A deep analysis of the broken business model of Open Source in the AI era.
OpenCode - The Open Source Agent for the Local Fortress
While everyone talks about cloud AIs, OpenCode is building a quiet revolution for enterprise environments. How to deploy the coding agent completely offline.
From Skeptic to Power User - My Journey with AI-Assisted Development
What started as a frustrating experiment with v0 has evolved into a powerful workflow. A story about v0 Max Mode, self-built tools, and the art of using AI correctly.